Posts Tagged ‘steamboat’
As high as an elephant’s eye…
Down in the southeastern corner of The Hawkeye State, near Fairfield, lies the lively town of Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa. Incorporated in 2001, it is home to 1,290 folks, who occupy buildings all designed according to Maharishi Vastu architecture (which promotes peace and harmony). The city, home to the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention and The Raj—an Ayurvedic health spa and vegetarian restaurant– is situated amidst 2,200 acres of USDA-certified organic farm land (and is the only city in America that has banned the sale of all non-organic food within the city limits). And it is the site of the Vedic Observatory, the only such astronomical facility in the Western Hemisphere.
Maharishi Vedic City is administered by a five-person city council, which is committed to balance, natural law and the principals of the Veda; while Sanskrit has been named the city’s “ideal language,” English and other common languages are also used.
Maharishi Vedic City has yet to be an official stop of any presidential hopeful on the Iowa Caucus trail.
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As we we just say om, we might send steamy birthday greetings to a man with a powerful hand in Iowa’s economic growth, Robert Fulton; he was born on this date in 1765. The mechanical genius who was the father of the steamboat, Fulton turned early, unreliable steam engine technology into a practical, dependable option for river transport– famously along the Mississippi, which defines Iowa’s eastern border, and which provided the territory’s (later, state’s) corn and other crops a path to market. Fulton later designed the Nautilus, the first practical submarine in history, for Napoleon; created the first naval torpedoes for the British Navy, and the first steam-powered warship for the U.S. Navy.
Your favorite star of yore…
… Rides a Bike.
Whoever that star is… many, many others at Rides a Bike. (Readers interested in emulation of the most stylish sort, click here for Public Bikes and here for the Public blog.)
As we jingle our bells, we might recall that this is an anniversary with multiple significance for other forms of transportation…
This is the birthday (1743) of John Fitch– who, though little remembered– created serviceable steamboats before Robert Fulton did.
It was on this date in 1954 that the first atomic submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Connecticut.
Then, on this date in 1970 the first wide-body jet went into service, when a Pan American Airways Boeing 747 flew its virgin flight between from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and Heathrow Airport in London, England.
And on this date in 1976, the supersonic Concorde, developed in a joint venture between the French and the English, was put into service; the first two Concordes with commercial passengers simultaneously left London’s Heathrow Airport (for Bahrain) and Orly Airport outside Paris (for Rio de Janeiro via Senegal).
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