I was encouraged to read this book, "At Home" By Bill Bryson.
Subtitled "A short history of private life". Mr.Bryson has written about life in a Church of England Vicarage in which he lived for a period of time. He decided that he could write a history merely from the rooms of the house...and the garden. So far I am up to the garden. Capability Brown gets mentioned.
This book has been described as a good conversation. I agree and I'm not through reading the thing.
So far my favorite excerpt is from the study and I quote exactly:
At times in the past attempts have been made to capitalize on bat's special qualities. In the Second World War, the American military invested a great deal of time and money in an extraordinary plan to arm bats with tiny incendiary bombs and to release them in vast numbers -- as many as a million at a time -- from planes over Japan. The idea was that the bats would roost in eaves and roof spaces, and that soon afterward tiny detonators on timers would go off and they would burst into flames, causing hundreds and thousands of fires.
Creating sufficiently tiny bombs and timers required a great deal of experiment and ingenuity, but finally in the spring of 1943 work had progressed sufficiently that a trial was set to take place on Muroc Lake, California. It would be putting it mildly to say that matters didn't go quite to plan. Remarkably for an experiment, the bats were fully armed with live bomblets when released. This proved not to be a good idea. The bats failed to light on any of the designated targets, but did destroy all the hangars and most of the storage building at the Lake Muroc airport, as well as an army generals car.
Snort, giggle, hardy har har har.....
1 comment:
Got the book finished. There were some icky parts, particularly solving the sewage problem in London, disease, the Industrial Revolution, and the main reason why the American Civil War occurred. Hmph. Very worthy conversation.
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