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What in the world happened here? (Summary)
#14609 05/29/11 01:01 PM
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
AlanK Offline OP
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Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
What In The World Happened Here?

Index: 1 - 100


What In The World Happened Here? I:  (Link)
wagga
Trinity (first nuclear test 1945)

What In The World Happened Here? II:  (Link)
wagga
Battle of Hastings (Norman conquest of England in 1066)

What In The World Happened Here? III:  (Link)
George
Solvay Conference (October 1927, Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons -- most famous physics conference ever)

What In The World Happened Here? IV:  (Link)
AlanK
Ford Theatre ("Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln,,,?")

What In The World Happened Here? V:  (Link)
AlanK
Big Chill (Leiden laboratory of H.K. Ohnnes, where helium was liquified and superfluidity discovered in 1908 and superconductivity was discovered in 1911)

What In The World Happened Here? VI:  (Link)
wagga
First Flight (human, heavier than air, powered... you know... the Wright Brothers)

What In The World Happened Here? VII:  (Link)
wagga
Dealey Plaza ("the grassy knoll")

What In The World Happened Here? VIII:  (Link)
AlanK
Sutter's Mill (site of the trigger to the 1849 California Gold Rush)

What In The World Happened Here? IX:  (Link)
AlanK
Princip Bridge (Latin Bridge, Sarajevo... site of the ambush that triggered "The War to End All Wars")

What In The World Happened Here? X:  (Link)
Harvey
Mount Cook (Aoraki/Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand -- 12,316')

What In The World Happened Here? XI:  (Link)
wagga
Ground Zero (the hot dog stand in the center courtyard at the Pentagon)

What In The World Happened Here? XII:  (Link)
AlanK
Tunguska event (believed to have been the air burst of a meteroroid or comet fragment on June 30, 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia)

What In The World Happened Here? XIII:  (Link)
AlanK
Tsar Bomba (the most powerful man-made nuclear explosion ever, October 30, 1961)

What In The World Happened Here? XIV:  (Link)
wagga
Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC)

What In The World Happened Here? XV:  (Link)
Saltydog
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), Hanford, Washington

What In The World Happened Here? XVI:  (Link)
wagga
Lookout Peak (peak near Mt. Baldy that was part of a very accurate measurement of the speed of light in 1924-1926)

What In The World Happened Here? XVII:  (Link)
AlanK
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (produced two Nobel prizes in 2 years -- 1986, 1987)

What In The World Happened Here? XVIII:  (Link)
AlanK
Radio antenna used in discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background, Crawford Hill, NJ, 1965

What In The World Happened Here? XIX:  (Link)
wagga
Tsunami Marker (see this NY Times article)

What In The World Happened Here? XX:  (Link)
wagga
Lituya Bay, Alaska (on July 9, 1958, an earthquake caused a landslide that resulted in the highest tsunami in recorded history -- 1719')

What In The World Happened Here? XXI:  (Link)
wagga
Graphic summary of world nuclear tests

What In The World Happened Here? XXII:  (Link)
wagga
Edgar Allen Poe Memorial, Baltimore, MD

What In The World Happened Here? XXIII:  (Link)
wagga
California Baking Co. a.k.a. Valley Lahvosh Bakery, Fresno, CA (with a side of music)

What In The World Happened Here? XXIV:  (Link)
wagga
Lake Peigneur, LA (on November 20, 1980, an incredible chain of events turned a freshwater lake into a salt water one, showing that oil drilling and salt mines do not mix well)

What In The World Happened Here? XXV:  (Link)
wagga
"Nuclear Energy" sculpture at site of first man-made chain reaction, Stagg Field, University of Chicago

What In The World Happened Here? XXVI:  (Link)
AlanK
Site of oldest known fission reactor (approximately 2 billion years ago) near Oklo, Gabon (Africa)

What In The World Happened Here? XXVII:  (Link)
wagga
Red Gate Woods (burial site of world's first man-made nuclear reactor)

What In The World Happened Here? XXVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Wittenburg Cathedral (Martin Luther, 95 Theses, October 31, 1517)

What In The World Happened Here? XXIX:  (Link)
wagga
Stringybark Creek Incident (Ned Kelly was hanged for the 1878 killing of three policemen in Victoria, Australia)

What In The World Happened Here? XXX:  (Link)
wagga
Great London Beer Flood disaster of 1814

What In The World Happened Here? XXXI:  (Link)
wagga
Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919

What In The World Happened Here? XXXII:  (Link)
AlanK
Dry Falls, WA (site of Bretz's Floods, aka Missoula Floods, aka Spokane Floods)

What In The World Happened Here? XXXIII:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
Stingray Point, VA (site of Capt. John Smith stingray incident, he of Jamestown Colony fame and many other things)

What In The World Happened Here? XXXIV:  (Link)
wagga
Harvard Bridge, Cambridge, MA (The length of the link between MIT and Boston is 364.4 smoots +/- an ear.)

What In The World Happened Here? XXXV:  (Link)
wagga
The Ross Ice Shelf -- Gateway to the Worst Journey in the World 100 years ago.

What In The World Happened Here? XXXVI:  (Link)
AlanK
Ytterby, Sweden. Seven chemical elements were discovered there. Four were named after the town: Ytterium (Y, 39), Terbium (Tb, 65), Erbium (Er, 68), and Ytterbium (Yb, 70). The other names had local connections: Gadolinium (Gd, 64), Holmium (Ho, 67), and Thulium (Tm, 69). They areall in the Tom Lehrer song.

What In The World Happened Here? XXXVII:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
The Tengye Dzong Olympics (1933) featured spectacular pole vaulting by Jack Longland, who used a section of a wireless mast. This event was held on the approach march from India through Tibet of the Fourth British Everest expedition.

What In The World Happened Here? XXXVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Robert Louis Stevenson Museum (and burial site), Samoa. It turns out that Samoa, which has been just to the east of the International Date Line, will declare itself to be west of the line on December 31 of this year. Suddenly, it will be a day later in Samoa.

What In The World Happened Here? XXXIX:  (Link)
tdtz
Skylab debris in Western Australia. According to Wikipedia, ground controllers adjusted Skylab's orientation for ideal re-entry dynamics before reentry on July 11, 1979. It did not burn up as expected, and debris landed between Esperance and Rawlinna, southeast of Perth, Western Australia. The Shire of Esperance fined the United States $400 for littering. The fine was paid 30 years later, in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners and paid the fine on behalf of NASA.

What In The World Happened Here? XL:  (Link)
wagga
Georgia Guidestones: A large granite monument in Elbert County, Georgia. A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages, and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient languages: Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

What In The World Happened Here? XLI:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
The Lunar Landing Research Facility at NASA's Langley Research Center. The LLRF was built in 1965 to prepare the Apollo astronauts for the final 150 feet of their lunar landings.

What In The World Happened Here? XLII:  (Link)
AlanK
Iffley Road Track, Oxford, UK -- Roger Bannister ran 1 mile in 3:59.4 on May 6, 1954.

What In The World Happened Here? XLIII:  (Link)
wagga
Queen Elizabeth II inspecting Merino sheep at the Wagga Wagga agricultural show in 1954 (link). Our own wagga was there.

What In The World Happened Here? XLIV:  (Link)
wagga
Barnes mystery -- Skull from 1879 London murder victim found in 2010 (see also wiki).

What In The World Happened Here? XLV:  (Link)
wagga
Stump of the General Noble Tree, the largest tree ever cut down.

What In The World Happened Here? XLVI:  (Link)
AlanK
Superconducting Supercollider (SSC)

What In The World Happened Here? XLVII:  (Link)
wagga
First Space Shuttle landing -- Parking at Edwards AFB for the landing of STS-1.

What In The World Happened Here? XLVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Bletchley Park -- During World War II, the site of the main UK decryption effort. This is where the German Enigma machine cipher was broken.

What In The World Happened Here? XLVIX:  (Link)
AlanK
Fresno Sanitary Landfill (1937) -- The world's first sanitary landfill. Later a Superfund site, but a great innovation by the standards of its day.

What In The World Happened Here? L:  (Link)
wagga
Hetch Hetchy Valley.

What In The World Happened Here? LI:  (Link)
wagga
Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, where Captain James Cook was killed in 1779.

What In The World Happened Here? LII:  (Link)
SierraNevada
Once future site of Hoover Dam.

What In The World Happened Here? LIII:  (Link)
wagga
Ankerwycke Yew.

What In The World Happened Here? LIV:  (Link)
wagga
B-29 loading pits: (1) Atomic bomb loading pit on Tinian (2) X-1 loading pit at Edwards AFB.

What In The World Happened Here? LV:  (Link)
wagga
VLA -- Very Large Array (radio astronomy observatory), New Mexico

What In The World Happened Here? LVI:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
Chalk River Laboratories Chalk River, Ontario, Canada

What In The World Happened Here? LVII:  (Link)
wagga
Newton's apple tree and Einstein's palm tree

What In The World Happened Here? LVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Molten Salt Reactor Experiment

What In The World Happened Here? LIX:  (Link)
AlanK
Pere Lachaise Cemetery (many very famous people are buried there, but Jim Morrison was the object of this thread).

What In The World Happened Here? LX:  (Link)
SaraC_UK
Magna Park was built on the Bitteswell Aerodrome, where Frank Whittle pioneered the jet engine.

What In The World Happened Here? LXI:  (Link)
Rod
Steve Jobs' Garage -- "Apple Computer manufacturing plant from 1976-77."

What In The World Happened Here? LXII:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
Titan II accident site -- Damascus, Arkansas, September 19, 1980.

What In The World Happened Here? LXIII:  (Link)
wagga
The Nine Ladies Stone Circle on Stanton Moor, Derbyshire dates from the early Bronze Age. It is believed to depict nine ladies turned to stone as a penalty for dancing on Sunday. It is featured as Ringham Moor in Stephen Booth's novel Dancing with the Virgins.

What In The World Happened Here? LXIV:  (Link)
wagga
Sculpture Symposium at Broken Hill, NSW, Australia

What In The World Happened Here? LXV:  (Link)
SaraC_UK
Callanish Stone Circles on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. The island is also the site of the discovery of the medieval Lewis Chessmen, which now reside in The British Museum.

What In The World Happened Here? LXVI:  (Link)
wagga
The Thomas Castro butcher shop in Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia figured in the infamous 19th century Tichbourne legal case.

What In The World Happened Here? LXVII:  (Link)
wagga
Residents evacuating Bikini atoll in March, 1946 prior to the first of 23 gigantic explosions (US nuclear tests). "Bikini" is also the name of the famous 1946 invention of French engineer Louis RĂ©ard.

What In The World Happened Here? LXVIII:  (Link)
SaraC_UK
Jack Kerouac's original boyhood home at 9 Lupine Rd., Lowell, MA.

What In The World Happened Here? LXIX:  (Link)
wagga
Palomares, Spain, site of the 1966 B-52 crash that dumped 3 H-bombs on Spanish soil and one in the Mediterranean Sea.

What In The World Happened Here? LXX:  (Link)
SaraC_UK
On February 13, 1950, a US B-36 crashed in the vicinity of Stewart, British Columbia and Hyder, Alaska after jettisoning a nuclear bomb (this was the first nuclear weapon loss in history).

What In The World Happened Here? LXXI:  (Link)
wagga
The Intel 4004 4-bit CPU, the first commercial microprocessor. It was was announced 40 years ago on November 15, 1971.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXII:  (Link)
AlanK
Bahia de Cochinos

What In The World Happened Here? LXXIII:  (Link)
wagga
World's first commercial solar updraft tower, in Jinshawan, Wuhai (Inner Mongolia), China (39°46'2.93"N 106°49'49.01"E).

What In The World Happened Here? LXXIV:  (Link)
HikeUp
Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands was the scene of a major Pacific Theater battle that reached a climax in November, 1942.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXV:  (Link)
AlanK
Navassa Island, which was the first island seized under the Guano Islands Act and retained as a US territory.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXVI:  (Link)
wagga
On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen become the first person to visit the South Pole.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXVII:  (Link)
wagga
Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica is available online.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXVIII:  (Link)
torpified
Heligoland is a German archipelago in the North Sea. In 1925, Werner Heisenberg visited Heligoland to escape persistent hay fever and made a major breakthrough in his development of Matrix Mechanics.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXIX:  (Link)
wagga
The SS Flying Enterprise ran into a storm on Christmas Day in 1951 and sank on January 10, 1952 not far from The Lizard. Captain Carlsen became a seafaring legend for sticking around during the prolonged sinking process.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXX:  (Link)
wagga
Operation Chastise was an attack on several German dams by the Royal Air Force on 16-17 May 1943. The attack was the subject of the 1554 film The Dam Busters

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXI:  (Link)
wagga
The Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford University opened in 1770 and closed in 2007. It is an archaeological site and it was the site of the first clinical trials of penicillin.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXII:  (Link)
wagga
Haycock and Rugged Islands lie in the Red Sea and belong to Yemen. Beginning on December 19, 2011, volcanic activity resulted in a new island between them. Yes, a new island.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXIII:  (Link)
AlanK
RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXIV:  (Link)
wagga
Ryan Island, located on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, "contains Moose Flats, a seasonal pond, which contains Moose Boulder. When Moose Flats is a pond, Moose Boulder becomes the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world."

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXV:  (Link)
wagga
Lake Hillier on Middle Island, the largest island in the Recherche Archipelago of Western Australia, is one of the most unusual lacustrine features anywhere.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXVI:  (Link)
SierraNevada
Burning Man site in Black Rock City, NV.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXVII:  (Link)
wagga
The Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the Canada-US border in Stanstead, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont. A thick black line runs beneath the seats of the opera house and diagonally across the center of the library's reading room to mark the international boundary.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXVIII:  (Link)
AlanK
Texas Tower #4, one of three Distant Early Warning system towers, was built in 1957 and located in 180 feet of water in the Atlantic 58 miles offshore from New York. It collapsed in a storm in January 1961, killing 28 men and prompting courts martial and a Senate investigation.

What In The World Happened Here? LXXXIX:  (Link)
wagga
In The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, there were three tunnels: Tom, Dick, and Harry. Harry began under the stove in the picture for this puzzle.

What In The World Happened Here? XC:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
Beginning on January 27, 1951, Frenchman Flat, a dry lake north of Mercury, NV and south of Yucca Flat, NV became the site of many US nuclear tests as part of the Nevada Test Range. Bob R. has a relevant story.

What In The World Happened Here? XCI:  (Link)
wagga
A small group of non-native trees at Cuyler Harbor on San Miguel Island (one of the Southern California Channel Islands). Cuyler was the original site for the 1935 filming of Mutiny on the Bounty but the remoteness and bad weather led to a move to the isthmus on Santa Catalina.

What In The World Happened Here? XCII:  (Link)
wagga
The 1900 Summer Olympics were the only Olympic Games not run by the International Olympic Committee (The IOC ceded control to a special committee associated with the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.) At the center of the picture is the Velodrome de Vincennes, the main stadium for the Games. It was the venue for the only Olympic experience cricket (the British beat the French badly). The velodrome was also the finish of the Tour de France from 1968 - 1974, a period that included the five victories of Eddy Merckx.

What In The World Happened Here? XCIII:  (Link)
wagga
James Murray in the Scriptorium at Banbury Road, a tin shed where the volunteer's word usage slips were collected in pigeonholes -- the manual method of organizing content for the Oxford English Dictionary.

What In The World Happened Here? XCIV:  (Link)
AlanK
The Periodic Table originated inside the brain of Dmitri Mendeleev (that's the "where" in this puzzle). Element 101 is named for him.

What In The World Happened Here? XCV:  (Link)
wagga
The Sydney Cricket Ground. Some people claim (urban legend) that a cricketer actually hit the clock (that would be a Sixer). It is a fact that this stadium was the site of the Sydney Riot of 1879 (soccer riots hadn't even been invented yet, and baseball riots still haven't been invented).

What In The World Happened Here? XCVI:  (Link)
Steve C
The Tioga Gas Mart in Lee Vining, CA features the Whoa Nellie Deli ("the most unusual deli, inside a gas station, you will ever visit").

What In The World Happened Here? XCVII:  (Link)
wagga
The N1 was the Russian equivalent of the US Saturn V rocket. The second launch attempt was arguably the world's largest man-made non-nuclear explosion.

What In The World Happened Here? XCVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Krakatoa, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, exploded in 1883, killing at least 40,000 people and making the loudest noise in modern history.

What In The World Happened Here? XCIX:  (Link)
Steve C
Sable Island is a notorious sandbar (sable means "sand" in French) that is part of the Halifax, Nova Scotia municipality and also one of the "graveyards of the Atlantic."

What In The World Happened Here? C:  (Link)
wagga
The Black Tom explosion on July 30, 1916 in Jersey City "... was an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the materiel from being used by the Allies in World War I... " The torch-bearing arm of the Statue of Liberty arm was struck by shrapnel and has been closed to the public ever since.



Last edited by AlanK; 05/25/12 08:19 PM.
Re: What in the world happened here? (Summary)
AlanK #14717 06/01/11 07:33 PM
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
AlanK Offline OP
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Posts: 583
Note on XXIX: In 1869, Ned Kelly, who was then 14 years old, was arrested for assaulting a Chinese pig farmer named Ah Fook. (What a name!) The farmer was no relation to Lee Ho Fook of SoHo fame, so go back to your dish of beef chow mein.



Video


Last edited by AlanK; 07/24/11 12:56 PM.
Re: What in the world happened here? (Summary)
AlanK #19590 11/04/11 04:15 PM
Joined: Aug 2011
Posts: 127
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Posts: 127
Topical, ive been listening to werewolves of london on my ipod today, he was looking for a big bowl of beef chow mein from le ho fuchs I wondered where the lyrics came from

Re: What in the world happened here? (Summary)
AlanK #19695 11/09/11 08:46 AM
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 8,505
Likes: 103
S
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S
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Posts: 8,505
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This is a fun thread, Alan. Thanks for keeping the summary up-to-date.

Clicking on the links, I see Wikipedia is doing their fundraiser again. I just donated, and I'd urge everyone to do the same. Here's a link to their fundraiser page.

It is so refreshing to have a source like Wikipedia -- no blinking/bleeping/annoying ads, and information that really hits the nail on the head.

I like their numbers:
Quote:
Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like 13,000 staff. We have 400 servers and 73 staff.

Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 454 million different people every month - with billions of page views.

Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn't belong here. Not in Wikipedia.

Re: What in the world happened here? (Summary: 101 -- )
AlanK #24345 05/25/12 08:11 PM
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
AlanK Offline OP
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What In The World Happened Here?

Index: 101 -


What In The World Happened Here? CI:  (Link)
wagga
Lower Merced Pass Lake in Yosemite was the scene of the legendary December 9, 1976 crash of a marijuana-laden airplane.

What In The World Happened Here? CII:  (Link)
wagga
Newhall Pass is the location of Beale's Cut, which was featured in several silent film-era movies.

What In The World Happened Here? CIII:  (Link)
wagga
Bombing of Darwin, Australia by the Japanese on February 19 1942. It was the first and largest single attack against Australia by a foreign aggressor.

What In The World Happened Here? CIV:  (Link)
wagga
A ghost bike is a bicycle set up as a roadside memorial in a place where a cyclist has been killed or severely injured, usually by a motor vehicle. Te one pictures is in New York City, where there are dozens.

What In The World Happened Here? CV:  (Link)
wagga
The Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, NY -- Home of the Miracle on Ice

What In The World Happened Here? CVI:  (Link)
wagga
Ball's Pyramid, 3600; long and 1800' tall, is 300 miles off of the east coast of Australia, southeast of Brisbane and northeast of Sydney. It is home to Dryococelus australis, a giant, lobster-like insect.

What In The World Happened Here? CVII:  (Link)
AlanK
The site of the former Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, USA. As part of the machinations that eventually led to moving the Dodgers to Los Angeles, Walter O'Malley commissed a novel stadium design that would have given Brooklyn the first domed (as opposed to doomed) stadium.

What In The World Happened Here? CVIII:  (Link)
SierraNevada
Mount Whitney, CA. The Smithsonian Hut is a speck near the bottom of the picture, about a quarter of the way from the left.

What In The World Happened Here? CIX:  (Link)
wagga
Church of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Doge's Palace in Venice, Italy (as opposed to Venice, CA, USA) were the scene of a recent experiment aimed at increasing wireless communications bandwidths.

What In The World Happened Here? CX:  (Link)
SierraNevada
The Albert Einstein House in Princeton, NJ is currently occupied by Nobel Lauerate (Economics, 2007) Eric Maskin.

What In The World Happened Here? CXI:  (Link)
wagga
The Capanna Regina Margherita is located at 14,816 feet above sea level on the Italian-Swiss border.

What In The World Happened Here? CXII:  (Link)
wagga
Masada

What In The World Happened Here? CXIII:  (Link)
wagga
In 1934, a few hundred miles from the finish of an 11,300 mile air race from London to Melbourne, a DC2 airliner was lost in a thunderstorm without working communications equipment. The mayor of Albury, a small town on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, had the city engineer flash the city's lights on and off to spell "Albury" in Morse code. It saved the day.

What In The World Happened Here? CXIV:  (Link)
wagga
A spectacular meteorite over Nevada and Te California Sierra landed near Sutter's Mill. Fragments were worth good money. NASA even enlisted a zeppelin in searching for a crater.

What In The World Happened Here? CXV:  (Link)
wagga
A sign in the Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin explains "The cat and the rat." The one, presumably chasing the other, became trapped in an organ pipe in the 1850s and were mummified." They are referred to in James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake", which contains the line: "as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ."

What In The World Happened Here? CXVI:  (Link)
wagga
Malibu Creek State Park in Los Angeles County has been the scene of many TV and movie shoots, including MASH.

What In The World Happened Here? CXVII:  (Link)
wagga
The Mission Inn Hotel and Spa, a historic hotel in downtown Riverside, CA, houses a museum that includes The Famous Fliers Wall.

What In The World Happened Here? CXVIII:  (Link)
AlanK
Germany surrendered to the Western Allies in a schoolhouse in Reims, France on May 7, 1945.

What In The World Happened Here? CXIX:  (Link)
AlanK
Eldoret, Kenya has produced more championship runners than any other town in the world.

What In The World Happened Here? CXX:  (Link)
wagga
Eva Pitt's panorama of St. Mary's Church, Lead, North Yorkshire, England. This "redundant church" was built in the 14th Century. It sati n close proximity to the battlefield of Towton where, on March 29, 1461, the longest and the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil took place, bringing to an end the Wars of the Roses.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXI:  (Link)
saltydog
In 1874, a rare transit of Venus across the face of the sun provided the means to measure the size of the solar system. A transit will occur on June 5, 2012.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXII:  (Link)
wagga
Colditz Cock was a glider built by British POWs in an attempt to escape form Colditz Castle in Germany in 1945. The glider never flew, but the story inspired the 1971 TV movie "The Birdmen."

What In The World Happened Here? CXXIII:  (Link)
AlanK
Deep Springs College is a prestigious and very unusual institution in Inyo County, CA with an all-male student body numbering about 26. It is currently embroiled in a controversy over becoming co-ed.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXIV:  (Link)
wagga
The Breadknife, an outstanding feature of the Warrumbungles, is off-limits to climbers due to the danger of bombarding with rocks circumnavigators on foot.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXV:  (Link)
wagga
The Museum of Lone Pine Film History houses Nudie Cohn's customized 1975 Cadillac Eldorado and the WhitneyZone Whitney Web Cam.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXVI:  (Link)
wagga
Rick Rojatt, "The Human Fly", flew standing on top of a DC-8 cruising at 250 knots at the Mojave air races, among other places.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXVII:  (Link)
wagga
During WWII, Boeing Plant 2 in King County, WA was disguised as a residential neighborhood.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson is considered a pioneering classic of outdoor literature.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXIX:  (Link)
wagga
The Cooper Vane, named for D.B. Cooper, the most famous airplane hijacker in history, is a spring-loaded mechanical paddle that prevents the rear stairway on a Boeing 727 from being lowered in flight. One does not see a lot of rear stairways on airplanes these days, but Cooper jumped from one. And maybe lived.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXX:  (Link)
wagga
2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War (Guerra de las Malvinas).

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXI:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is not accessible to the public due to U and Pu contamination from its Rocky Flats Plant days.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXII:  (Link)
wagga
The James Joyce Tower and Museum is a Martello tower in Dublin. Joyce spent six nights there in 1904

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXIII:  (Link)
wagga
The United States declared war on the United Kingdom (then of Great Britain and Ireland) on June 18, 1812. Today, a statue of Orpheus at Fort McHenry commemorates the contribution of Francis Scott Key.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXIV:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
Balloons played a role in the American Civil War. The Intrepid was deployed at the Battle of Fair Oaks in 1862.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXV:  (Link)
wagga
Alan Turing was born in 1912. He lived in the pictured building at Bletchley Park (of British code-breaking fame) in 1939-40.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXVI:  (Link)
wagga
Photo 51 is a famous 1952 x-ray diffraction image that provided crucial evidence for the structure of DNA.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXVII:  (Link)
wagga
The Record Plant was a series of three recording studios founded by Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone beginning in 1968. The Sausalito Plant (pictured) opened in October, 1972 and was a major player in the San Francisco music scene.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXVIII:  (Link)
saltydog
Mount Rushmore is named after a New York lawyer. It was originally "Six Grandfathers" to the Lakota Sioux, who were granted the Black Hills in perpetuity by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.

What In The World Happened Here? CXXXIX:  (Link)
wagga
Among the notable architectural highlights of Fermilab is the new Feynman Computing Center (pic).

What In The World Happened Here? CXL:  (Link)
wagga
Ned Kelly (see XXIX) visited Jerilderie in 1879. The Jerilderie police station and gaol features 19 structural components mimicking Ned Kelly's armor. The man some called the rightful king of England died here on June 30, 2012.

What In The World Happened Here? CXLI:  (Link)
wagga
Buck Owens Crystal Palace is a highlight of Bakersfield, CA.

What In The World Happened Here? CXLII:  (Link)
AlanK
July 9 was the 50th anniversary of the Starfish Prime nuclear test, which taught the US and the world a lot about the havoc that high altitude nuclear blasts cause. (Much was already known about lower-altitude blasts.)

What In The World Happened Here? CXLIII:  (Link)
AlanK
The world's largest known specimen of Bigcone Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga macrocarpa) is located on Bear Canyon Drive in Baldy Village, CA. Regulars on this board trek past it... well, regularly on their way up the Bear Flat Trail (aka the Village Church Trail, aka the Old Man's Trail,, aka the Mount Baldy Trail).

What In The World Happened Here? CXLIV:  (Link)
AlanK
Marilyn Monroe dies on August 5, 1962 and is buried in the Westwod Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

What In The World Happened Here? CXLV:  (Link)
Steve C
The Tehachapi Loop is a spiral of railroad track in Keene, CA that helps trains going through the Tehachapi Pass gain altitude at a reasonable rate. Keene is also the site of the Cesar Chavez National Monument, which was dedicated by President Obama on October 8, 2012.

What In The World Happened Here? CXLVI:  (Link)
wagga
The camera at the end of the robotic arm on the Mars rover Curiosity has a calibration target that looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and an attached penny. Its purpose is to test performance of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Meanwhile, the vehicle was slated to complete its first 1320 feet of travel, meaning (to some) that it now holds the record for the fastest quarter mile by a nuclear-powered Martian rover.

What In The World Happened Here? CXLVII:  (Link)
Harvey Lankford
The triple crossing at Richmond, VA enables three train lines to enter Main Street Station [see also page 572].

What In The World Happened Here? CXLVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Sanger, CA: The San Joaquin River crosses the Kings River on it's way south to Bakersfield. [This point is the subject of further discussion here and here.]

What In The World Happened Here? CXLIX:  (Link)
wagga
Hospital Rock in Sequoia National Park was the site of several recoveries by injured early settlers. Hale Tharp gave the spot its name after a couple of incidents

What In The World Happened Here? CL:  (Link)
saltydog

What In The World Happened Here? CLI:  (Link)
wagga
Eli Cohen spied for Israel in the Golan Heights during the Six Day War in 1967. He suggested that the Syrian soldiers in bunkers manning the armaments would be more comfortable and productive if they were sheltered by trees, suggesting quick-growing non-native Eucalyptus, which led to the instruction to Israeli pilots "Bomb The Foreign Eucalyptus Trees."

What In The World Happened Here? CLII:  (Link)
wagga
Alvin M. "Tex" Johnston was a Boeing test pilot best known for performing a barrel-roll in a Boeing 367-80 jet in a demonstration flight over Lake Washington, near Seattle, on August 7, 1955. It was caught on film.

What In The World Happened Here? CLIII:  (Link)
wagga
Sandy Island, west of the northern end of New Caledonia, has been removed from Google Earth because it doesn't exist.

What In The World Happened Here? CLIV:  (Link)
wagga

What In The World Happened Here? CLV:  (Link)
wagga
Pumpkin Island, near the Great Barrier Reef, has been temporarily re-named XXXX Island after a Queensland brewer leased it in 2012 in order to create a blokes' paradise.

What In The World Happened Here? CLVI:  (Link)
wagga
Boeing engineers use spuds, in lieu of actual humans, to improve WiFi service in their airplanes.

What In The World Happened Here? CLVII:  (Link)
wagga
NORAD tracks Santa, and has since December 24, 1955 (actually, it was CONAD up to 1958). It started when a Sears store placed an ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper which included a wrong number for Santa Claus. Kids got the Colorado Springs Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Center instead. CONAD/NORAD is evidently a good sport when nuclear missiles are not involved.

What In The World Happened Here? CLVIII:  (Link)
wagga

What In The World Happened Here? CLIX:  (Link)
wagga

What In The World Happened Here? CLX:  (Link)
wagga

What In The World Happened Here? CLXI:  (Link)
wagga

What In The World Happened Here? CLXII:  (Link)
wagga

What In The World Happened Here? CLXIII:  (Link)
wagga

Last edited by AlanK; 03/01/13 10:07 PM.
Contributions
AlanK #25605 07/03/12 10:54 AM
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
AlanK Offline OP
OP Offline
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
Contributions

wagga 106
AlanK 27
Harvey Lankford 10
Saltydog 4
SaraC_UK 4
SierraNevada 4
Steve C 3
George 1
HikeUp 1
Rod 1
tdtz 1
torpified 1

Total 163

Last edited by AlanK; 03/01/13 10:08 PM.
Re: Contributions
AlanK #30085 03/02/13 11:34 AM
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
AlanK Offline OP
OP Offline
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 583
Active Puzzles

What In The World Happened Here? CL:  (Link)
saltydog
There has been little progress on this one, and few hints. Here is a suggestion: Maybe we can declare success and observe that the post was made within two days of the sesquicentennial of Gen. George McClellan's dismissal by the White House.

What In The World Happened Here? CLIV:  (Link)
wagga
There were a couple of Holmes-related references in the replies. Someone should finish it off.

What In The World Happened Here? CLVIII:  (Link)
wagga
Apparently, the US of A buried a lot of perfectly goot thorium. Anyone want to comment?

What In The World Happened Here? CLIX:  (Link)
wagga
A desecration in Oz.

What In The World Happened Here? CLX:  (Link)
wagga
saltydog posted something about an Irish band.

What In The World Happened Here? CLXI:  (Link)
wagga
Mobile telegraphy predated mobile phones.

What In The World Happened Here? CLXII:  (Link)
wagga
Ho ho!

What In The World Happened Here? CLXIII:  (Link)
wagga
Elementary, my dear.

Re: Contributions
AlanK #43059 06/10/15 09:44 PM
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 2,251
Likes: 1
Offline
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 2,251
Likes: 1
Bump: What In The World Happened to AlanK?


Verum audaces non gerunt indusia alba. - Ipsi dixit MCMLXXII
Re: Contributions
wagga #43067 06/11/15 08:21 AM
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 1,256
Likes: 2
Offline
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 1,256
Likes: 2
Originally Posted By: wagga
Bump: What In The World Happened to AlanK?


No clue. Looks like the last time he visited the site was June of last year.

Re: Contributions
Bulldog34 #43075 06/11/15 02:42 PM
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 2,251
Likes: 1
Offline
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 2,251
Likes: 1
Do you want to volunteer to keep score? Or perhaps delegate it to a very smart teenage climber lady?


Verum audaces non gerunt indusia alba. - Ipsi dixit MCMLXXII
Re: Contributions
AlanK #43112 06/12/15 01:52 PM
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 1,572
Offline
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 1,572
OK lemme catch up on two of my contributions 150 and 159.

150 was a semi sarcastic response to the trend that the game was taking at the time. A number of sites were identifiable, but had so many events associated with them that is became a guessing game about which event was in the subjective imagination of the OP . SO I posted an obvious, famous site to illustrate the silliness of challenging someone to identify a site but then playing hide the ball with the specific even involved.

My entry for the solution to 159 is a U2 cockpit. Event would be a Soviet SAM explosion, too close for continued airworthiness, much less comfort.


Wherever you go, there you are.
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