LarsonsWorld -- just another persons /dev/null

Well, here in Denver, this spring has brought more snow that all this past winter did -- or so it seems to me. I have shovelled more in the month of April that I did the previous 4 months. Crazy.

Rockies played today and it was 23 F. This is a record for the coldest first pitch in MLB history.

As said by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin on this day in 1961 when he became the first human in space.

Yuri's Night news on Space.com.

Bang here for full size image.

From The National Archives Today's Document Tumblr feed.

Jules Gabriel Verne -- February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905 -- was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre in Europe. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Many of his novels involve elements of technology that were fantastic for the day but later became commonplace. He is the second most translated author in the world (after Agatha Christie). Some of his books have also been made into live-action and animated films and television shows. Verne is often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction", a title sometimes shared with Hugo Gernsback and H. G. Wells.

Continue reading on Wikipedia.

December 16, 1947, scientists at Bell Labs -- William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain -- built the world's first transistor and nothing has been the same since.

The Path For Humans Is Now Cleared -- Soviet Space Propaganda Poster, 1960 -- Konstantin Ivanov

Read all about the Soviet Space Dogs on Wikipedia.

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A bit back, in one of those conversations that wanders around, and in an effort to show my great intelligence, I asked a buddy of mine how old the Peace Sign was. He thought really old. I knew it was actually from the 1960's and was related to the anti nuclear movement.
To show my actual stupidity, I couldn't remember the particulars. D'oh!

Thus --

is derived from the semaphoric symbols for N and D
standing for Nuclear Disarmament.

121-year-old western Colorado mining flume clings to its secrets -- Denver Post

There is something about the tattered remnants of a 121-year-old mining marvel that keeps drawing the curious back to this remote canyon along Colorado 141.

Those who keep returning to measure, survey, photograph and examine the mysterious structure known as the Hanging Flume call it "flume fever." The afflicted wake in the middle of the night to puzzle over how enterprising but misguided gold seekers pinned a 10-mile-long wooden water chute to a sheer cliff to create a hydraulic gold separator. They spend years in faraway city offices calculating angles and load factors and building mini models.

Read on ...

Jules Gabriel Verne ( February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised. He is the second most translated author in the world (after Agatha Christie).

Read on ...

(Source: Wikipedia)