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Nervous? Why would you be nervous? Photo by Aleksandr Barsukov on Unsplash
A bridge too far? I go easy on featuring listicle style articles here at Thursday Things, but sometimes they are fun. This one is a roundup of breathtaking bridges you might not want to cross when you come to them. Plan your route accordingly!
Bridges Around The World That Only The Brave Would Attempt To Cross
Sidu River Bridge, China. Hard pass. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Granted, he did a pretty good job. Is Ulysses S. Grant Due for a Promotion?
Fans of Ulysses S. Grant are campaigning for a promotion that would elevate Grant to a rank held by only two other former generals, George Washington and the World War I hero John J. Pershing — general of the armies of the United States, above even five-star generals.
Grant became the nation’s first four-star general in 1866, after the Civil War. His supporters had hoped the posthumous promotion would come through in time for the 200th anniversary of Grant’s birth.
Maybe he deserves a posthumous promotion in recognition of his role in winning the Civil War. Still, I’m not sure I’d put Grant on the same level as George Washington. For the simple reason that I don’t think the Revolutionary War, and with it America’s independence, would have been won with any other available general in command but Washington. He was a singular figure. Was Grant equally indispensable? Military historians can debate that.1 If there is one thing military historians love, it’s arguing about who was the best general.
Grant was also a better, or at least more consequential, president than you might think: Why Ulysses S. Grant Was More Important Than You Think
“Grant. Ulysses Grant.” Photo:
It’s like something from a Kurt Vonnegut novel. That time in 1930 when Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s architect dad rotated an office building 90 degrees while all the employees continued to go to work each day.
[T]he Indiana Bell Telephone Company added a second building alongside its Indianapolis headquarters — but only after hoisting up the latter and pivoting it 90 degrees on its side. “This was no small task,” says the video’s narrator, “as the eight-story, steel-frame-and-brick building measured about 100 by 135 feet, and weighed 11,000 tons.”
But between October 20th and November 14th, 1930, the company did indeed manage to turn and shift the entire structure as planned, “and the move caused no service outages, and all 600 workers within the building still reported to work every day.”
This necessitated lengthening and making flexible all its utility cables and pipes, then lifting it a quarter-inch with jacks and placing it on rollers. “Every six strokes of the jacks would shift the building three-eighths of an inch, moving it fifteen inches per hour.”
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Pershing is the outlier here. The Revolution and the Civil War were existential conflicts for America. World War I was not. We could have stayed out of that one, and arguably should have. But folks were really excited about America showing up in the 9th inning to win the Great War for the Allies, and “make the world safe for democracy” so I guess we’ll let him have it.