October 17 – Stone Bridge Day

Posted October 17, 2016

I decided to call today Stone Bridge Day, because it is the anniversary of an amazing artist named Michael Grab creating a beautiful stone bridge.

Michael Grab isn't mostly a bridge builder. Mostly, he is fellow who plays with gravity!

As a matter of fact, his website is called Gravity Glue. 

Grab is a master balancer, and when I say “balancer”...

...I mean he's crazy good at balancing rocks! 

And when I say “master”...

...I mean an insane amount of mastery –
that looks more like magic!

Grab's artwork takes an enormous amount of concentration, dedication, maybe even meditation! He has to be patient, and he has to have a high tolerance for being cold, maybe even cold-and-wet (which is a much harder kind of cold for most of us).

He has to have a really high tolerance for failure!

• Here is a short video of how Grab builds a stone arch in moving water! 

• And here is a wonderful rock balancing video with several sequences of failure, plus lots of slo-mo and rewind tricks. 

• Another stone balancing artist tells us that WE, too, can learn to balance stones.

Also on this date:

African Penguin Awareness Day 

Paul Bert's (“Father of Aviation Medicine”) birthday  

Astronaut Mae Jemison's birthday

Black Poetry Day

Mulligan Day

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• October holidays
• October birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in October

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• November holidays
• November birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in November

October 18 – Bridge Day

Posted on October 18, 2014

Do not (I repeat – DO NOT) jump off a bridge!

Unless you have been highly trained in B.A.S.E. jumping with parachutes. And you are an adult. And you have official sanction to make the jump.

Even then!

Even under all of those conditions, I still would not want to jump off a bridge. Especially not if it meant leaping more than 800 feet into the New River Gorge in West Virginia. But, for the past 35 years, quite a few people have taken the training and made the leap – on Bridge Day!

Of course, most people who trundle out to the New River Gorge Bridge on Bridge Day are just there to watch. This year, more than 80 THOUSAND people are expected! And they will watch more than 800 BASE jumpers and some rappellers going up and down the bridge.

Bridge Day has grown to be more than just extreme sports. There is a farmers' market and a festival with food and vendors. There are music performances and a chili & cornbread cook-off. There are stunt team and car shows. There are down-under tours, in which people can ride down to the bottom of the gorge to watch the jumpers.

Is BASE jumping safe?

Actually, this sort of parachute jumping is far more dangerous than normal skydiving, which involves jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. BASE jumpers are 43 times more likely to be injured or die than skydivers!

How did BASE jumping get its name?

There are four sorts of things BASE jumpers can jump off of: Buildings, Antennae, Spans (bridges), and Earth (cliffs). The term was coined by a film making team led by Carl Boenish, probably in 1978 when their film of BASE jumps started the extreme sport.

How can we celebrate Bridge Day if we live far from West Virginia? And if we, you know, don't want to participate in one of the most dangerous and extreme of all extreme sports?

I personally prefer learning about bridges to jumping off bridges. If you feel the same way, check out this earlier post. 

Also on this date:

Anniversary of the freeing of poet Phillis Wheatley (?)

Rock musician Chuck Berry's birthday 

Persons Day in Canada   

Alaska Day

Teen Read Week (October 12 – 18)

This year's theme: Turn Dreams into Reality

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• October holidays
• October birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in October
  

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• November holidays 
• November birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in November

October 20, 2012 - Bridge Day

Have you ever wondered how people build bridges? How do you start? Do you build from the bottom up, or from the top down? How do you start to reach from side to side over treacherous waters or a deep chasm?

The Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge is an early example of a bridge that allowed pedestrians, carriages, and trains to cross a wide river—as a matter of fact, it is the world's first working railway suspension bridge. And that first step—the laying of the first line across the wide and turbulent Niagara River—was accomplished by flying a kite!

The builders were stumped because the water was so turbulent that the rapids were called Whirlpool Gorge. They didn't think a boat could take the first wire across the river to start the bridge. Someone suggested shooting a rocket attached to a wire, or some sort of bombshell with a wire, shot out of a cannon. But one many suggested offering a cash prize to the first child who could fly a kite over the gorge.

A 15-year-old boy named Homan Walsh won the prize (either $5 or $10—accounts vary) by flying a kite from the Canadian side of the gorge. Eventually, when the winds subsided, his kite descended and got caught in a tree on the American side. The day after this contest-winning flight, a stronger line was attached to the kite string; a rope followed, and then a cable made of wire.

Next, the builders created a temporary suspension bridge across the Niagara River. They used that temporary bridge to build a better, stronger, permanent bridge.

I've always wondered how bridge builders create those supportive towers in water. I found out that, in the olden days (such as the days of the Roman Empire), huge boulders were piled up in the water, and the bridge was built on and secured to the boulder piles. Later, builders would lower a caisson, which is a huge cylinder made of steel and concrete, into the water and onto the river-, lake-, or seabed. The water was then pumped out of the caisson. At this point, the caisson became a sort of circular dam that kept water away from workers and equipment. Since the 1930s, bridge builders generally float enormous metal caissons to the designated spot and then sink the caissons by gradually filling them with concrete and water. Divers are on hand to make sure that the sinking caissons settle on the right bit of ground.

To learn more about building bridges, check out the Worsley School Building Bridges page. Also, check out the Official Bridge Day website.

• Also, this earlier post deals with a bridge disaster, 
• this earlier post discusses cantilever bridges, and 
• this earlier post links to some fun bridge experiments. 

Also on this date:

Architect Christopher Wren's birthday 

Baseball great Mickey Mantle's birthday