Day: July 25, 2009

The sinking of the Andrea Doria

Fifty-three years ago today, on July 25, 1956, two large passenger liners off Massachusetts were steaming toward each other through the night at a combined speed of 40 knots. In spite of ample room to maneuver, in spite of the radar that let them spot each other from a distance, and in spite of clear rules intended to avoid collisions, the Stockholm crashed into the Andrea Doria and ripped the luxurious ship open amidships. It was to be the last great drama of the age of transatlantic passenger liners.

Read more from American Heritage.

A 14-year-old girl aboard the Andrea Doria survived in the wreckage on the Stockholm.

Big man

Lincoln at Antietam

NewMexiKen ran across this photo of Lincoln at Antietam taken just days after the battle in 1862. Look at those arms. If Lincoln lived in the present century, he wouldn’t have been president, but he would have been a great rebounder.

That’s Allan Pinkerton and General John McClernand with Lincoln, October 3, 1862.

Click photo for larger version.

Idle food thoughts

More from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which I read yesterday afternoon.

“The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of different diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them.”

“[T]oday corn contributes 554 calories a day to America’s per capita food supply and soy another 257.”

Omega-3. Get some. It’s essential and we don’t get enough. Get it from real food (not supplements). It comes from leafy plants (fish get it from algae).

“Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

“Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.” (Twinkies, this means you.)

“Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number, or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup.”

“Avoid products that make health claims.”

“Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.”

Buy local. “Shake the hand that feeds you.”

“Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does.”