The width of the red sea

We all know of the biblical story of Moses and his band of followers escaping from Egypt and running east, being chased by an army until they reached the Red Sea. This is a strip of water which divides the Arabian Peninsula from the rest of Africa. The story, told in Exodus, describes how God parted the waters, allowed the Israelites to cross, and then when the pursuing army of Egyptians tried to cross, the waters were released, swamped over them, and they all drowned.
As an atheist and budding scientist, I do find this hard to believe. Why? Lets look at the Red Sea itself: its not a wee little river. It’s not even a big river. Its sea of water, around 190 km wide. And its pretty much consistently this wide, for the majority of its length.

The width of the Red Sea, as measured on Google Earth. The part I’ve measured is shown by the red line.

One hundred and ninety kilometers? Moses and his crew would have been in there for DAYS! Bearing in mind that they were fleeing Egypt and would have had all their worldly belongings with them, the young, the old, cattle, sheep, donkeys carrying Aunt Mable’s dinner set and all the rest of it, they would not have gone at a very fast speed. The Egyptians running after them were an ARMY, and probably had at least a few blokes charging along on horses.
It’s just a bit too unbelievable for my liking. It goes against a fair bit of logic.

A Theory of Finding Mates

I will not pretend that I am what can classically be defined as a lady’s man. Like any bloke I seem to meet, I am perfectly fine around female friends of mine. But when I like a young lass, and want her to like me, I become tongue-tied and awkward. I don’t know what to say, and when I do think of something its usually along the lines of “Do you like jam? I think its brilliant.” I have found, though, that the fantastic invention of alcohol does seem to help the situation – but I would issue a word of warning at this point. Alcohol has been proven to assist in making you more confident and more talkative (although studies also show that people are willing to say whatever researchers want them to say if they are being promised free booze) – two things that a tongue-tied man could do with when trying to chat up a prospective. My word of warning is thus: make sure she’s drinking too. If she isn’t, you need to really keep an eye on yourself, in which case you’re back at square one anyway.

That’s all an aside. The main jist of this post follows:

I have been out on the prowl many times. I usually don’t go out planning to get some action and just see where the night takes me and work things out as a I go along – I find that I cant really get my head around that. I prefer to go out with some specific person in mind, hope to meet them (knowing their friends and having them friended on facebook can help here). Randomly bumping into them is a lot easier if its – strictly speaking – not random. Although, having said that, I have ended up going home empty handed so many times I wrote a song about it – no really – while walking home at 2am.

I won’t reveal my songwriting talents to the world just yet, but I will tell you about this theory I came up with, at around the same time. It basically works on the law of probability of things actually working out in your favour. If you consider that probability against the amount of times you actually go out (to a club or a bar or whatever), and reduced it to a graphical representation, you might come up with something like this:

It’s basically the kind of thing people who are into graphs would call a direct proportionality: the more you go out to your local watering hole, the greater your chances of things going well. However, it might actually be a bit more complicated than that:

In other words, there’s a levelling out effect: eventually you get to a stage where you’ve gone out so much you are now basically gauranteed to meet your lady (or gentlemanly) friend on the night in question. But, of course, the levelling effect might also go the other way:

I think the most likely of these scenarios is number three. After a certain period of time (call it Y), you reach a saturation point (call it X). It doesn’t matter how much you continue to go out to your local locale, you’ve met everyone else there, and have not come away successful. The only way for this to happen would be for a change to occur: either someone new moves into the area and comes down to the pub, or you head out to another joint and keep drinking.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, largely the point of blogging: having a thought, and putting it on THE INTERNET (in big shiny, neon letters) for other people to look at. Maybe even the type of people who like graphs. Who knows.

A Question of Why

This post is a direct attack. I won’t pretend it’s anything less, largely because it isn’t.

The Roman Catholic Church currently ranks as the largest Christian church, with over a billion members world wide. According to its teachings, it is the One True Church, founded by Jesus Christ himself. Currently famous for people crossing themselves (most notably in mobster Chicago New York Italians-Owning-A-Judge type films), their insistence on the man in charge wearing what can only be described as a silly hat, and their resolute and consistent gay-bashing while they shag the choir boys in the cloisters.

A common rhyme taught in schools: In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two Collumbus Sailed the Ocean Blue. Good on him. But the other thing that happened in that year was that his sponsor, a young Spanish lass called Isabella, issued a royal decree which, simply put, said that anyone not under Papal control (i.e. anyone who wasn’t a Catholic) must convert, or leave. Initially, this tremendous plan worked pretty well – most of the people living in Spain at the time didn’t want to leave, so they jumped the religious fence and stopped preying to their heathen gods, and started obeying the right one. Unfortunately, Pope Sixtus IV wasn’t convinced. He’d issued Papal bulls in the past, which promoted the Portuguese slave trade in West Africa, and has subsequently been reported as a potential… erm… choir boy aficionado. But he reasoned that people might be “converting” to the One True Church, but then quietly continuing on with whatever there prior religious practices had been on the sly. So he stepped up efforts to correct this, and ushered in to play the organisation we know today as the Spanish Inquisition. This basically was done to bring as many people as possible in line with Church teachings. Unfortunately, they did this using imprisonment, torture and the well-remembered classic: tying people to a pole, and setting them on fire. It officially lasted until the 19th century, but some aspects remained in effect until as recently as 1968.

A short while after the inception of the Inquisition, a budding Italian astronomer by the name of Galileo built a telescope and had a look at the sky. He proved Copernicus’ suggestion that the Earth goes around the sun – not the other way around. Sadly, this was not what it said in the bible – quite the opposite in fact – and he was tried in 1633 and threatened with torture if he did not “tell the truth”. It took the Church a whopping 359 years for them to admit that they might have been wrong – Pope John Paul II finally apologised for the way the Catholics had treated Galileo in 1992.

The Trial of Galileo in 1633.

Ask someone “what is the worst thing in all of history”, and chances are they’ll put the holocaust pretty close to the top of the list. The head bloke in that regard, a certain A. Hitler, had prayers said for him on his birthday by order or the Vatican every year until he died. According to historian Paul Johnson, 50% of the Waffen SS (Hitlers elite armed wing of the Nazi party) were confessing Catholics. Not one of them was ever even so much as threatened with excommunication for taking part in the holocaust. Interestingly, Hitler’s number 2, Joseph Goebbels, was excommunicated from the Catholic church – for marrying a Protestant. Goodness gracious, what standards. Again, Pope John Paul II did apologise for the silence and inactivity of the Catholic Church when it came to Nazi’s dominating a continent and causing the worst case genocide in the history of ever.

Pope Pius XII meeting Adolf Hitler. His public silence regarding the Final Solution has led history to rename him Pope Gutless Bastard I.

And this finally brings me to my point: The Catholic Church does seem to get embroiled in putting across a point (whether its some nonbelievers in Spain, a naughty man with a telescope or some Bavarian’s in spangly uniforms) which it thinks is a good idea. That then turns out to be a bad idea, so apologies get made – we were wrong, we’re terribly sorry, we won’t do it again, have a biscuit – and they shift their ideas to fit in with popular opinions. So if the biggest Christian faith just goes along with what everyone wants them to go along with, and doesn’t really stand up for things too well, what is it for?

How do you know?

A few days ago I was doing my standard thing of browsing The Internet, when I came across one of those rather brilliant quotes that makes you sit back and go “Phwoar!” And then you stop and look at it a bit more, and realise that it doesn’t actually say anything much. The kind of quote that people write on dramatic backgrounds and put on their facebook wall, and expect people to be impressed.

At first glance, dearest Samuel looks like he’s on to something. But here comes the rant: how do you know?

Knowing something is such a definitive concept: you either know something or you don’t. At this point I should also point out that a chap called Schrodinger possibly should never have been introduced to the feline species, and that the world would be a much easier place to deal with if he hadn’t.

A few years ago, I was wondering around a little corner of the Karoo – a big semi-desert that takes up most of the middle of South Africa. My reasons for visiting were geological – I was on a fossil hunting trip. I found all the theory behind it extremely interesting, and although fossil hunting can be terrifically rewarding, I found it can also be crushingly demotivational. You can spend days wondering around looking for things, and all you’ll find are a few little pieces of bone or something. You may have walked right past a fantastic whole skeleton, buried just a few centimeters from the surface that will probably be exposed to the elements the next time it rains, and you’ll never know.

Have you met the person of your dreams? The person you want to (or possibly already have, you lucky swine) fall in love with and spend the rest of your life with. What if you walk past someone in the supermarket, or on your way to work, or while getting on to the train, who turns out to be that person. How will you know?

What if you were born to do something? Play an instrument or be really good at a sport? You are just naturally predispositioned to do some little thing better that other people can. Imagine if Jimmy Hendrix had never learnt to play the guitar. Or if Ronnie O’Sullivan had never picked up a snooker que. What if they’d just gone and gotten normal jobs. How would you know what they were supposed to become?

So going back to Mark Twain’s quote: The day you were born and the day you find out why. How do you know when that day is? There’s actually a fairly simple answer: You won’t. Not at the time anyway. Maybe a few years later, you might be able to look back and remember it. But you won’t know at the time. But that’s human nature: we’re born inquisitive. We all want to find out why.

Unknown and yet Well Known

David Railton was a common or garden army chaplain who served with the British army during the First World War. Hardly anyone knows about him, and yet he came up with one of the most enduring symbols of the Great War. While serving on the Western Front in 1916, he came across the grave of a soldier. The headstone was not a stone at at all, but rather a rough cross made of wood. It bore the legend “an unknown British soldier” written in pencil.

This stirred the idea of taking the body of one such man – and Unknown Warrior – and returning it to Britain, to be given a state funeral with full military honours as a tribute to the unknown multitudes who now lay in unmarked graves across France. That year he wrote to Lord Douglas Haig, the commander of the British forces, describing his idea but received no reply. He refused to let the idea die and in 1920 wrote to the Dean of Westminster making the same suggestion, adding that he felt the most appropriate final resting place for a soldier representing so many was in Westminster Abbey, and that he be buried “amongst the kings”. The Bishop supported the idea, and wrote to King George V, as well as David Lloyd George, who was then prime minister.

Arrangements were made, and on the night of the 7th of November, just a few days before the Armistice anniversary, a body was selected from one of the French battlefields, and placed into a plain coffin. This was later sealed into an oak casket banded in iron. A sword from the royal collection, specially chosen by the king, was fixed to the top. In this manner, the Unknown Warrior was transported across the Channel to England. On the morning of Remembrance Day, six horses of the Royal Horse Artillery drew the gun carriage carrying the casket through the streets of London, past thousands who stood in silence, paying their last respects.

On arrival at the Abbey, the casket was carried into the West Nave, past a guard of honour made up of one hundred recipients of the Victoria Cross. The guests of honour around one hundred women, each one of whom had lost her husband and all of her sons in the War. The casket was buried in soil brought from the battlefields, and capped with a marble slab that had been engraved in brass from wartime ammunition. Even though people buried in the Abbey range from royals to writers (Dickens, Chaucer…) and scientists (Darwin, Newton…), the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is the only one that it is forbidden to walk on.

In 1923, when Prince Albert (later King George VI) and Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) were married in the Abbey, the new bride lay her bridal wreath on the Tomb. She had lost her brother in the War, and it has now become a tradition that all royal brides follow.
Today, the Tomb is still a great sign of tribute. Even though there are no soldiers alive who remember the trenches, every Remembrance Sunday people mark 11 o’clock – the time the guns fell silent – with two minutes of silence. The first honours those who died in the Great War. The second, those who were left behind.

The Race for Space

At the end of the Second World War, a thirty-three year old German rocket scientist named Werner von Braun surrendered himself and his colleagues into the hands of the victorious Americans. And so began one of the most enduring and exciting pieces of history of the 20th century. With him, he took the vital designs of the German V2 rockets to the United States. The American government quickly cottoned on to the brilliant idea of fusing together two new pieces of military technology – the use of rocket powered missiles, and their own brand new atomic bomb. Putting the two together would produce a weapon of unrivaled power – at that time there were no aircraft which could reliably chase down and destroy a missile, and no bomb that even came close to the power of even a small nuclear weapon.

It was nearly five years before the Soviet Union developed its own atomic weapons, soon after which the Russian Premier, Joseph Stalin, ordered the development of nuclear missiles with intercontinental capabilities. But there was another Russian, called Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who effectively pulled the Soviet Union into an exploratory race for space with the United States.

Both Korolev and von Braun had ambitions of being the first men to begin to explore space. Both were brilliant designers, but each came from different backgrounds, and lived in political environments that were poles apart. The communists kept Korolev under lock and key – even his name was a state secret, and during his time in the Soviet space program was only officially referred to as “Chief Designer”. Von Braun’s role in building rockets for the American government was public knowledge and he came under attack for his Nazi connections as a result. During the International Geophysical Year of 1957, the idea of launching a satellite into orbit began to appear in the American press. Although of scientific value, it was hard to justify the spending of millions of dollars to the American public in pursuit of such a venture. Korolev, on the other hand, had to only persuade a small number of politicians. As a result, the Soviets won the first race – on the 4th of October 1957, they launched an R7 rocket carrying a small satellite called Sputnik. Although it  contained no scientific instruments, only a radio transmitter, it was the first time a man-made device orbited the planet.

The Sputnik satellite being prepared for its historic flight.

The launch of Sputnik meant that Von Braun suddenly had an easier job in persuading the American public that the exploration of the heavens was a good idea. Just a few months later, on January 31st 1858, a Juno rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying Explorer 1, the USA’s first satellite, into orbit.

Again, the Soviets won the next race. Before the American’s could even launch Explorer, Sputnik 1 had a sequel – Sputnik 2 was launched less than a month later, and carried a living dog called Laika into orbit. Sadly, the Soviets had not designed Sputnik 2 to be able to return to Earth, and Laika was always going to die in space. It was not until 2002 that details of her death surfaced – she lasted just 6 hours, and died of heat exhaustion.

They also won the greatest race of all: in 1959 the Soviets initiated the Vostok Program, designed to eventually put a man into space. Applicants had to satisfy a wealth of requirements, and all of them volunteered for a program that they knew nothing about. Twenty applicants applied, and only six were chosen to become cosmonauts. These men, Gagarin, Kartashov, Nikolayev, Popovich, Titov and Varlamov, began there training soon after. Kartashov and Varlamov had to be replaced after they were injured in accidents, but by the end of their training regime, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was the clear favorite to be the first man in space.

It must be remembered that while Werner von Braun was appearing on television, and doing all he could to promote Americans in space, the Soviets were keeping everything at the highest level of secrecy. This was maintained so ruthlessly that the American government would typically only learn of the Soviet rocket being launched after it appeared in the press. On the 12th of April 1961, Gagarin blasted off from the launch pad in Baikonur. So secret was the flight kept that only a few men knew it was happening. Even Leonov, one of the other cosmonauts, did not know who had been chosen for the flight until after it had started. Gagarin’s craft was controlled exclusively from the ground, and after 10 minutes, the rockets carrying him had all stopped firing. He became the first person to see the Earth from space, the first to experience weightlessness. As he began to cross the Pacific Ocean, he gradually slipped out of radio range. As a result, he looked down on the United States of America, the enemy of his homeland, he saw the lights of cities and towns, the signs of millions of Americans quietly sleeping the night away, and not one of them – not a single one – had any idea that he was there at all. And because he was completely alone – he had had no radio contact for some time – there was no-one he could tell about it.

Gagarin suddenly went from a man placed under unbreakable secrecy to an international hero. He was thrust suddenly into the limelight, and toured the world, promoting the Soviet accomplishment. He remained in the cosmonaut program until the fatal flight of Soyuz 1. Gagarin had been selected as a backup pilot for the flight, and had warned the engineers that the spacecraft had not been adequately tested. When it crash landed, killing the pilot Vladimir Komarov, Gagarin’s hero status meant that he was to valuable to be allowed into space again. He was indefinitely banned from partaking in any further missions into space. It didn’t help – he was killed on a routine test flight in 1968, less than a year after Komarov’s flight.

Meanwhile, the Americans had been slowly catching up. Project Mercury was their equivalent of the Vostok program. It was the first chance for Americans to get their teeth into the problems associated with manned space flights. The knowledge gained was then applied to the next program: Project Gemini. The purpose of this was simple: take the experience of the Mercury missions, and use it to  train a strong team of astronauts, which could then be used for missions to the Moon. Werner von Braun’s dream was gradually coming true. In the USSR, the race began to slip away from them. They suffered a major blow after Sergei Korolev, the brains behind their rockets, died after routine surgery in 1966. His life had been kept such a secret that his mother only learnt of his activities and achievements after his death. Von Braun also had another ace up his sleeve – the F1 rocket engine. The Soviets were hoping to get cosmonauts to the moon using their N1 rocket. This used a total of 30 NK-15 engines in its first stage in order to get off the ground. Werner von Braun was able to build a rocket with similar capabilities using just five F1 engines in its first stage. The rockets that were made still hold the record for the largest and heaviest vehicles ever to lift off the ground – it was called the Saturn V rocket, and was comparable in size to a medium sized battle cruiser.

Apollo 6 became the first Saturn V to successfully leave the launch pad. Luckily, it was unmanned – during its accent it began to vibrate so violently that any astronaut carried in it would probably have been killed. Incredibly, von Braun fixed the problem, but took a huge short-cut in testing. The next Saturn V to launch not only had astronauts on board, but it carried them to the moon. The crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to see the other side of the moon. Desperately, the Soviets tried to regain control of the Race, but it was not to be. On the 20th of July 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Although he died recently, he will be remembered for taking humanities first Small Step on a world beyond our own. The monument of the Apollo astronauts will remain on the moon – their footprints in the dust will still be there long after humans have disappeared.

M & I update – a few new points

Ive been receiving a few emails from interested parties who’ve been reading my posts on Mallory and Irvine, and their disappearance on Everest in 1924. Most tend to ask questions or offer theories about where and when they were last seen, and what happened to them subsequently. Rather than reply to each person individually, this article goes in to a bit more detail than the others, about some of the more specific areas of that little piece of history.

Odell’s Sighting:

When Odell reached the 1924 site of Camp VI, he found it “in a state of disarray”, with oxygen equipment and food items lying about. This was taken as evidence that Mallory and Irvine had been delayed on their summit day by trouble with their oxygen equipment. On his return to England, Odell stated that he felt he had spotted them on the Second Step. Popular opinion at the time disagreed with him, with people saying that if they had had a late start, the First Step was more likely. Odell amended his views to fit in with this. However, a few years later, it became apparent that he would no longer be selected for any future Everest expeditions (notably the one in 1933). So he felt he no longer had to please anyone, and he changed his mind back to his original stance – that he’d seen them on the Second Step. Is there evidence to show that Mallory and Irvine were above the First Step? Yes, OK, apart from Odell’s sighting, we don’t have anything to go on – nothing left by Mallory or Irvine has ever been discovered above the First Step. But it is actually likely – going on the famous description that Odell later wrote – that he actually saw them climb the Third Step. The time it took, the topography, and the time of day certainly fit.

Oxygen Equipment:

Initially, there was a possible theory that – for reasons unknown to us – Mallory and Irvine decided not to make their final climb with oxygen. We now know that they definitely did – one of their oxygen bottles was retrieved from the summit ridge in 1999 (a short distance from where Irvine’s ice-axe was found). Secondly, the straps that were used to hold the oxygen mask onto ones face were discovered in Mallory’s pocket when his body was found in 1999.

I believe that they ran out of oxygen very high on the mountain – possibly on the summit itself, but more likely on the upper snowfield, just below it. This area is fairly avalanche prone, so its likely the ditched oxygen sets would been swept down the Great Couloir in subsequent years, which is why these relatively large items have not been rediscovered.

Finding Irvine:

Obviously we are now entering the final chapter in the Mallory and Irvine mystery. We know that the expedition leader Edward Norton had leant Mallory his camera for their summit attempt. We know that no camera was found on Mallory’s body, which suggests that at the time of their fatal falling, Irvine was the one carrying it. And now, thanks to the brilliant work of Tom Holzel and others, we have a fairly good idea of where his body is – if the theories turn out to be right. The last bit of the puzzle is to go up there and actually find him. Once that is done, I think we’ll be pretty sure of story of the final climb of these two brave pioneers.

Victoria Crosses

The Crimean War is, at least in the circles that I linger in, fairly unknown. If I mention it, I usually have to suggest something that went along with it, like the Charge of the Light Brigade, or Florence Nightingale. If I even mention the siege of Sebastepol (also known as Sevastepol) or the battle of Balaclava, no-one has any idea of what Im talking about.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the Crimean War is that it was the first war in which journalism played a significant part. The recently invented railways and electric telegraphs meant that the public back in Blighty were kept up-to-date with almost day-by-day accounts from reporters and photographers (one of the most prominent being William Russell) that were sent to view the battles. It was the first time that the general public was really exposed to the horrors of war. And they were so shocked at what they were reading, they decided to do something about it.

On the 29th of January 1856 Queen Victoria issued a warrant to the War Office that a new medal be struck, one that recognised acts of bravery and gallantry but importantly would be awarded regardless of military rank, class or background. She was so keen on this idea that she even had an important say in its design. Initially, the wording was to read “for bravery”, but Victoria had it changed so that it read “for valour” – she felt that by awarding a soldier a medal “for bravery” any soldier that didn’t have one wasn’t brave.

To date, 1356 VC’s have been awarded. Due to the extreme conditions under which they are eligible, about a quarter of them have been awarded posthumously – the recipients having died undertaking the act for which they received the award, or later of wounds received during the act. One of these such men was a British army doctor Noel Chavasse, who was killed during the Battle of Passchendaele during the First World War. He has the great distinction of being the most highly decorated allied soldier of the War, and one of only three people ever to win the Victoria Cross twice. His first Cross was awarded for his part in the Battle of Guillemont, France, in August 1916, where he repeatedly went into no man’s land and returned with injured men. In doing this he saved the lives of about twenty of his comrades, despite being under heavy fire. The following day he returned with a stretcher barer and made several more trips into no man’s land, saving more men, and even providing burials for the dead and collecting their identity disks. This was done despite the fact that he had been wounded in the side by shell splinters. A year later saw him in Belgium. He’d organised a forward dressing station, and despite being wounded, losing blood and worn out from lack of food and fatigue, he kept going out and bringing in injured men, again under fire. Although a private was sent to collect him and return him to the allied lines, he remained at his post because there was no-one to replace him. He continued in this fashion for two days. For this he was awarded a bar to his Cross. Eventually, by purely being in the wrong place at the wrong time, a shell hit the dressing station he had set up. He survived, but despite being operated on, he died from his wounds a few days later.

Captain Noel Chavasse. One of only three men to win a VC with bar.

Noel Chavasses acts were simply extraordinary, but they were calculated. He knew the risks, and returned again and again to the line of fire in order to rescue his comrades. But there are also acts on the other end of the scale. Billy McFadzean was awarded a Victoria Cross for another quite different sort of bravery. On the morning of the 1st of July 1916, McFadzean’s battalion from the Royal Irish Rifles was preparing for what would become one of the bloodiest military operations ever recorded – the Battle of the Somme. On that morning, several boxes of grenades had arrived in the front line trench, and were being distributed to the men. These were un-primed, and relatively safe. But one of the men accidentally knocked over two primed grenades. They fell into one of the boxes, one which was still full, and their safety pins fell out. In a crowded trench, with nowhere else to go, the effects would have been devastating. Instead, McFadzean threw himself over the box of grenades, and pulled it to his chest. The explosion blew him apart, and he was killed instantly. But he saved the lives of about thirty other men – only one other man was wounded in the blast.

Billy McFadzean. Gave his life to save about thirty of his comrades.

These two men, Chevasse and McFadzean, are on two ends of the scale for which a Victoria Cross can be awarded. On one hand, there is the predetermined, premeditated acts of bravery of Chevasse. On the other, McFadzean witnessed an event – the grenades falling into the box – and had at most four seconds to do something. In those four seconds, he made his decision and acted. Both men gave their lives. Both were rewarded with the Victoria Cross – just a small unassuming piece of metal which represents an incredible and valorous act.

Oratory at its finest

On the 5th of October 1945 Winston Churchill received a letter from Dr Fran L. McCluer. They had never met before, and Churchill received hundreds of letters a day. What made this one special is that it planted the seed for on of Churchill’s greatest speeches ever – one that would define global politics for the next four decades. In the letter, the good doctor (who was President of Westminster College in Fulton Missouri) told Churchill that the College wanted to give him an honorary degree. He also wrote: “in 1936 and English-born women, Mrs John Findley Green established at Westminster College a memorial lectureship to be known as the John Findley Green Foundation. . . This letter is to invite you to delver the Green Lectures in the winter of 1945-1946, or the spring of 1946. We should be glad to arrange the date or dates to suit your convenience.” Seeing as Churchill had just led his country to victory, this could safely be added to a substantial pile of similar letters asking for Churchill to attend some event in his honour. The one thing that made this letter a bit different was that there was a hand-written scrawl across the bottom of the page: “This is a wonderful school in my home state. Hope you can do it. I’ll introduce you. Harry Trumen.”

After Churchill accepted the honour, it was no small wonder that other more prestigious university faculties – both in Britain and overseas – were left scratching their heads and wondering why they hadn’t thought of it first. As it was, Westminester College only had 212 students, and by mid-January 1946 they had received over fifteen thousand requests for tickets – and Winston would only be arriving at the beginning of March. The speech he was due to give would be broadcast across the country, but everyone who was anyone wanted to hear it from the campus it would originate from. 2800 seats in the gymnasium and nine hundred in the chapel had all been reserved. Even the basement of the gymnasium was fitted out to provide seating for four hundred pressmen. The overflow would simply have to stand in public places in Fulton, such as the town square outside the courthouse, other chapels, or even just in the street, and hear it over the town’s public address system. The whole town was mobilised to provide accommodation for the influx of visitors.

Churchill journeyed to Jefferson City by train, and then made the last bit of the trip in an inconspicuous thirty car motorcade. As it entered Fulton, Churchill called a halt – he was having difficulty in lighting his customary cigar in the wind and knew the people were expecting him to be brandishing one. The academic procession which preceded his great oration is also unique in that it included Dr Sherman Scruggs of the then all-black Lincoln University, making it the country’s first ever desegregated academic procession.

After President Trumen had introduced Churchill, he started his address (which he called Sinews of Peace) by thanking the university for giving him a degree that he didn’t even have to study for. But soon enough, he moved onto the main theme – the politics of the time. The second World War had ended only a few months before and Europe lay in tatters – Churchill described it as “these anxious and baffling times”.  He got down to the meat of the matter: The United Nations was in its infancy; USA, Canada and Great Britain had the atomic bomb; and Russia was not cooperating. He warned that another war, far worse than the one that had just ended, might be looming. Time was short and the best possible path to avoid war and tyranny was simply prevention. At its height, he spoke one of his greatest and most memorable quotes:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

He called for a unification of British and American interests: Britain had the clarity of thought, and the United States had the muscle to carry it out. Together they could spread equality and fair-mindedness the world over. A good plan that would last for a century. In the years before the war, Churchill had shouted a warning in vain. Few people heeded what he said, and as a result, Hitler tore the world open. Here, he was issuing another warning. Although a lot more people listened, many were again slow to come to the table. Some even saw it as Churchill openly asking for war – one headline proclaimed that he’d “Rattled the Sabre”. Instead of healing the world after its terrible ordeal, East and West would not see eye-to-eye for the next four decades, and the world would be divided instead.

And the world came tumbling down

I would like to turn the clock back for a bit to the 28th of July 1945. A day celebrated by Jim Davis every year – it was the day he was born. He later grew up and started drawing comics of a orange cat who hates Mondays.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. It was foggy Thursday morning in New York city, and nothing would suggest that anything unusual was about to happen. But a B-25 bomber then accidentally crashed into the Empire State Building, bringing the day of boredom to a halt.

The plane was being piloted by Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith Jr., who basically became disorientated in the fog, and thought he was a lot closer to LaGuadia airport than he was. He’d even lowered his landing gear, believing he was on the final approach to the runway. He suddenly found himself in a maze of skyscrapers – he opened up the throttle and instinctively tried to gain altitude. But it was too late – the plane collided with the Empire State Building between the 78th and 80th floors.

Fourteen people were killed in the accident, twenty-eight were injured. One of the aircraft engines and trailing part of its landing gear demolished its way into a lift shaft and was later found in the basement. Bits of mortar rained down on the street below. The emergency services reacted swiftly. One of the women hurt in the crash was placed in a lift to transport her to ground floor. Unfortunately the lift’s cables had been weakened, and she fell a record 75 floors before ending up with the engine in the basement – and survived. Firemen had to struggle up to the effected floors. The aircraft fuel had ignited, but the fire was brought under control just 40 minutes after the crash had taken place. The record for the highest successful bit of fire-fighting still stands.

And now I’d like to move the clock forward again. To the eleventh of September 2001. We all know what happened there. Some pissed off Muslims flew two planes into two skyscrapers which then fell down. Im not going to get all jumpy and conspiracy-theorist and start going to marches and handing out flyers. I just think its pretty funny that people believe the official government report, when the same thing happened a few years before, and all that happened was that the building ended up with a hole in the side which was patched up over a few weeks and the building still stands. Yes, OK, the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers were a lot bigger than the B-25 that went into the Empire State Building. But then again, the Twin Towers are a lot bigger and they were built a lot more recently. We’re told that it was the burning aircraft fuel which caused the steel in the towers to collapse. Steel melts at around 1500 degrees centigrade. But aircraft fuel only reaches – at most – 815 degrees when it burns. Even if it did collapse the Trade Centres, why didn’t it collapse the Empire State Building? I have a feeling – but I admit Im not sure – that bombers in WWII ran on gasoline, rather than the aircraft fuels of today (which is a bit more like diesel). Doing a bit of digging, I find that this burns (the temperature is highly dependant on the amount of air mixed in with the fuel) at between 400 and 600 degrees centigrade. So its all still a bit fishy.

That said, believe what you want to.