Did You Know...

I seem to recall a Betty Brown who became quite well known as a stunt pilot in the movies in the 1940s or '50s. Same gal??

The interview I heard made no mention of that. I got the impression she got her license later in life.

There was a real balloon boy?
I heard today of an incident in 1964. I was driving so couldn't totally focus on the man's name or where this happened.
He was 10 or so in 1964 and he and a few of his buddies bicycled over to a ball field where a hot air balloon was being readied for takeoff. Men were holding it down with ropes as it filled. One of the men shouted, "Grab some ropes, kids." They gladly did.
He doesn't quite recall what happened next. He knew that he was being dragged along the ground with the nylon rope wrapped tightly around one of his hands. He remembers a man grabbing him by his legs but losing his grip. And the boy was airborne.
The balloon wasn't the kind with a basket. Rather, the pilot was on a sort of trapeze. And the noise of whatever gizmo produced the hot air drowned out the screams of the horrified spectators.
The balloon got to a height of perhaps 3,000 feet with the boy 25 feet below the pilot. The kid doesn't recall being scared. The pilot cut off the blower. There was silence. If you have ever been in a hot air balloon, the quiet is amazing. Although sometimes you might hear something like a car horn.
The boy called out, "Hey, mister." The pilot looked over his shoulder and down.
(Insert your own image here of what the pilot did in his pants and what he said).
The pilot pulled on some cord and the balloon descended rapidly. They ended up in a plum tree with the boy going through the branches to just above the ground and the balloon and the pilot on the crown. Neither was hurt badly.

Great story, rjb. First I heard that 'un.

rjb, You can give a good story on most subjects.

Did you know that the world's smallest cinema is the "Palast Kino" ...



in Radebeul, near Dresden, Germany?


9 (nine) seats

But of course, you get popcorn there



And various other "German" 'specialities' ...

Did you know that Estonian has no future tense? And - sorry, Rjb, but to use a quote here - "Needless to say, this has complex implications for the articulation of life goals and plans in written discourse, and for perceptions and attitudes concerning agency." What does it say about a society, and what could it mean for its development, to not have a future tense to speak in? Curious.

I'll have to ask a pal of mine of many years. I have never observed that her take on the future was any different than mine - and I just got to see her again a few weeks ago. She was a wee child and left estonia for sweden as a 'dp'. Her mother never made the jump from speaking only estonian.. in the US, or Sweden for that matter.

That is quite neat. I wonder if they sell out every screening?
Or turn a profit at least?

It may have to do with age and geography - and war - my estonian friend, a baby at war time, speaks better english than I do.. she adapted to sweden and then los angeles.

I'm sorry, nimh, but I find that extremely hard to believe.

Even "death?"

The quote is from Estonian Life Stories, Edited and translated by Tiina Kirss, compiled by Rutt Hinrikus, Central European University Press, p.22:



I don't know any Estonians myself, so can't check..

ooh, a rare nimh sighting

I do, but they're all on either the East Coast or in Estonia while I'm in Hawaii. I'll see if I can find some e-mail addresses if I rummage long enough. (All my Estonian acquaintances, btw, are linguists -- interpreters, translators and the like -- so they'd have the answer.)

I didn't know either, but it seems correct:



Source: Estonian

Did you know that Germany is still paying debts/reparations from WWI/Versailles Treaty?
Paying was stopped in 1953 with the London Debt Agreement, restarted after the unification on October 3, 1990 (200 million Euroes still open).... and the last Euro of the still €56 million will be paid of on October 2010.

Trip out.

There is a certain kind of conifer (somewhere) in a habitat shared with squirrels which harvest the cones before the seeds can drop. The tree has "coped" with this-by evolution-by a feast or famine strategy: years of prodigious production of cones followed by years of no cones. Starvation of the squirrels during the down years is the plan.
The squirrels are fighting back with an evolution of their own. Little reproduction in the seasons PROJECTED to be lean but with several litters in the years PROJECTED to be good. Often with the female having a new litter while a new one is still being nursed.