How a horse's rear end came to control eveything!!!!!

[BBQMAN]

Be sure to read the final paragraph, but your understanding of it will depend on the earlier part of the content.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English
expatriates built the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the
same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used
the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would
break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because
that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads
in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which
everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel
spacing.

Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5
inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a Specification/Procedure/ Process and
wonder "What horse's a$$ came up with it?" you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
(Two horses' a$$es.)

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two
big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These
are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at
their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have
preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by
train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the
factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs
had to fit through that tunnel.The tunnel is slightly wider than the
railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as
wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's
most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand
years ago by the width of a horse's a$$. And you thought being a
horse's a$$ wasn't important?

The moral to the story:

Ancient horse's a$$es control almost everything....and CURRENT Horses A$$es are controlling everything else!!!
_________________
BBQMAN
"I Turned A Hobby Into A Business".
Providing "IMHO" Since 2005.

[Spookie]

Wow...that was great.

I now have another piece of useless trivia I can dazzle, or more likely pi$$ off my girlfriend with. She'll love it!!! I know I will.

The History Channel and Discovery Channel rule!!!
_________________
Weber Summit Gold
Weber One Touch Gold
Smokey Mountain Cooker
Ducane – Tailgate
2X Bayou Classics

[zilla]

Yes sir. That is great!
_________________
Zilla

GIANT BBQ

[texanx5]

I like that makes sense to me.
_________________
DDG

old Smokey
WSM a.k.a. Weber Smokey Mountain
Stumps Smoker (custom mobile unit with a Stretch and sw42x6 offset)

[Smokinfunk]

Classic human logic - ya gotta love it!
_________________
============================
WSM 22.5", Digi-Q ATC, Cyber-Q ATC
Brinkmann Cimarron Deluxe offset smoker
Weber One-touch 22.5" grill
Weber One-touch 26" grill
============================

If God hadn't meant for us to eat animals, He would not have made them out of meat!