Ghost Ship

The Mary Celeste set sail from Staten Island, New York on November 7, 1872. She was later found abandoned near the Straits of Gibralter, and passed into history as a legendary ghost ship. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a fictionalized account of her abandonment that over the years came to be regarded as fact.

Dreamboat vs. reality

Someday CrackedPot and Sugar³ would like to own one of these. Here's an older 1979 Cabo Rico for sale with some nice pictures.

And here's what we have now. A 1974 Grampian 26.

Candy conundrum

Overheard from a trick-or-treater on Halloween, "If I eat these, does that make me a cannibal?"

A classic beauty

The boat pictured right is a scale model of "Columbia" the 1901 winner of the America's Cup. She also captured the cup in 1899, becoming the first America's Cup winner to defend a title. Columbia was designed and built by Nathaniel Herreshoff, one of America's greatest yacht makers.

The classic lines of Columbia and her sisters are much prettier than these ugly things.

The Father of Frozen Foods

Thanks to inventor Clarence Birdseye we can have DiGiorno instead of delivery.

The photo of Mr. Birdseye in the bio looks like a Norman Rockwell painting.

The "Flying Lumberyard"

Howard Hughes flew his Spruce Goose sixty years ago today. Disney Corporation took quite a drubbing from the local public, press and politicians when they evicted the Goose from its home in Long Beach, CA in the early 1990's. Fortunately the Goose found a new home. The last CrackedPot heard, the huge custom built hangar in Long Beach was being used as a soundstage for filming TV shows and movies. More on Hughes here, and movies of the Goose here.

Weather or not

In 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations. They were probably wrong.

In Southern California, where there really isn't any weather to speak of most of the time, tv weatherpeople find a multitude of ways to say, "Sunny with a light breeze," and then move on to spend most of their weather segments describing the smog levels and the earthquake reports. Really.