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Now isn't that interesting?

Chas

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The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?
Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

So, why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And what about the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)

Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit wider, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' backsides.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control more than you realise.
 
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I've read something like this before, and it always makes me smile....
 
Yes, I had to giggle too.
 
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Thank you for that Rob, but I must state that the original post was to amuse not to educate.
And I should clarify that FACT CHECK was the site description, not me trying to shout. I thought the original post was interesting which prompted me to look for some more detail. Which I also thought was interesting. As the Snopes article says, the original post isn't incorrect, there's just a bit more to it.
 
Well whoever wrote the article sounds very slavishly anti British horses ass
 
I wonder what Egyptian gauges would have been? Only one horse wide. Who invented the wheel anyway?
 
Here we go
It has been known that for many a long time that Orville the green funny bird Wright and his brother did the first flying thing over in the gud ole yu ess ov ay
However when I go and visit me sister who lives down in Chard in Somerset driving past the town boundary sign it does say The Birth Place of powered flight and over half a century ago in junior school teacher said that Orville and his brother done it first
And when I lived down in East Sussex they had a festival of speed at Bexhill on Sea again with a claim of the Birth Place of Motor Racing
Three miles down the road from me in a place called Pilton many years ago there was a farmer named Michael Eavis who offered a bunch of hippies a place to stay after they got kicked off of Stonehenge i think and free milk well for years it was called the Pilton Pop Festival and was very manageable not too intrusive in the local area then in the 80s some underrated football team lost a significant game and the rest they say is history the place was overrun and the Pilton Pop Festival went totally Corporate got renamed the Glastonbury Festival and has turned into the unmanageable monster we have today
 
Here we go
It has been known that for many a long time that Orville the green funny bird Wright and his brother did the first flying thing over in the gud ole yu ess ov ay
However when I go and visit me sister who lives down in Chard in Somerset driving past the town boundary sign it does say The Birth Place of powered flight and over half a century ago in junior school teacher said that Orville and his brother done it first
And when I lived down in East Sussex they had a festival of speed at Bexhill on Sea again with a claim of the Birth Place of Motor Racing
Three miles down the road from me in a place called Pilton many years ago there was a farmer named Michael Eavis who offered a bunch of hippies a place to stay after they got kicked off of Stonehenge i think and free milk well for years it was called the Pilton Pop Festival and was very manageable not too intrusive in the local area then in the 80s some underrated football team lost a significant game and the rest they say is history the place was overrun and the Pilton Pop Festival went totally Corporate got renamed the Glastonbury Festival and has turned into the unmanageable monster we have today
I started reading this thinking it was going to be connected with a horses ass, no it wasn't, then I realised it came under the heading of 'Now isn't that interesting' and yes it was interesting, thank you Steve.
 
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