SWCAMBORNE

If you do not ask the answer is always no.

Owen Laughlin

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Texas Wisdom

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that’s the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.
The story goes on. The booster rocket for the Saturn missile had to be taken across the United States by rail so it was designed to fit the horse’s ass standard.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

Nietzsche

A person who chases two rabbits catches neither.

Louis L’Amour, Author

Deep in the earth, north of the Chocolate mines of Perugia and under the hazelnut forests of Umbria an amazing phenomenon occurs. The volcanic heat melts a seam of the chocolate; forces beyond our grasp press it upward through the deep roots of the hazelnut forest. The chocolate is forced onward perhaps through natural fissures, perhaps through channels created long ago by the Romans, the Etruscans or the gods themselves. No one knows. Finally high above Gubbio at a secret place known only to a few the substance now known as Nutella rises to the surface.

High above Gubbio in Umbria

It seeps slowly out of seemingly solid rocks. It is so pure that it needs no processing. It is gathered and placed in jars (or in those handy single serving packages) and shipped throughout the world. A food so sweet that honey bees stay away from it, so smooth that it spreads evenly anywhere and so supernatural that it never requires refrigeration.

The spring, now called Nutella, was first discovered by the Roman General Sweetius in 45AD and named “Fons Nutellium Sweetius.” Which translates as the spring of nutty stuff discovered by Sweetius. There is evidence, sticky pottery chards etc, that the Nutellium was sold in Rome and as far away as Pompeii.

Knowledge of the spring was lost in 450AD when the Vandals sacked Rome. It was not rediscovered permanently until the 20th century although there are some stains that might be chocolate on the page that Michelangelo wrote about a substance from Umbria that is “sweeter than honey”. In 1945 a young American soldier of Italian descent, Claude Cavoli, was patrolling the hills above Gubbio when he slipped on a seep of a brown substance. Suspecting the worst he sniffed his finger and was pleasantly surprised. He returned to the spring a few days later and discovered the ancient Roman inscription on a stone in a pile of rubble nearby: “Nutellium.”

Roman inscription discovered at the spring.

The rest, of course, is common knowledge. Within a few years the Italian national flavor was reintroduced to the world and the world is a sweeter place.