Is cycling bad for the bones? A number of intriguing studies published in the past 18 months, including Smathers', have raised that possibility -- an issue that has special resonance now, with this weekend’s start of the 2009 Tour de France. . .From the NY Times.In his study, the bone density of 32 male, competitive bike riders, most in their late 20s and early 30s, was compared to that of age-matched controls, men who were active but not competitive athletes. Bone scans showed that almost all of the cyclists had significantly less bone density in the spine than the control group. Some of the racers, young men in their 20s, had osteopenia in their spines, a medical condition only one step below full-blown osteoporosis."To find guys in their twenties with osteopenia was surprising and pretty disturbing," Smathers says.
I'm not totally surprised by this. Competitive cycling is one of the toughest sports imaginable, one that really takes its toll -- even without the added issue of doping and its side effects. As the article notes, serious cyclists routinely lose prodigious volumes of sweat while burning more calories than they can consume. It's a form of starvation, and what remains to be seen is if better nutrition will be enough to set things right.
But no reason to worry for anyone other than hard-core cyclists. As the article notes, "In another study, triathletes added moderately to their bone mass over the course of a season." And, intriguingly:
Some researchers theorize that calcium must be taken during exercise to be most effective. A 2004 laboratory study of cyclists who were given either tap water or calcium-enriched water during a 50-minute, stationary-bicycle ride found that the riders drinking the tap water had much higher levels of blood chemicals related to bone loss than did the riders swigging the calcium.Gatorade, the old standby, contains potassium and sodium but not calcium. After reading this, I may start taking at least some of my usual daily calcium supplements right before a workout.
Posted July 3, 2009 9:36 AM | Link here
Australian palaeontologists say they have discovered three new dinosaur species after examining fossils dug up in Queensland.From the BBC.Writing in the journal PLOS One, they describe one of the creatures as a fearsome predator with three large slashing claws on each hand.
The other two were herbivores: one a tall giraffe-like creature, the other of stocky build like a hippopotamus.
Posted July 3, 2009 9:31 AM | Link here
On the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, next year's crop of bicycles is being watered by Benjamin Banda.From the BBC."We planted this bamboo last year," he says, "and now the stems are taller than me. When it's ready we'll cut it, cure it and then turn it into frames."
Mr Banda, is the caretaker for Zambikes, a company set up by two Californians and two Zambians which aimed to build bikes tough enough to handle the local terrain.
Posted July 1, 2009 10:52 AM | Link here
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.Uh oh.Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another.
The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (375 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.Full article here.
Posted July 1, 2009 10:48 AM | Link here
I wouldn't have thought it was necessary to detonate a 19 kiloton nuclear weapon to see what it would do to an airship, but that's just what the US Department of Energy did on 7 August 1957. . .Full story here.In 1960, the Bureau of Naval Weapons issued a report on the airship tests, entitled "Structural Response and Gas Dynamics of an Airship Exposed to a Nuclear Detonation". The abstract reveals that the aim was to see how an airship employed on anti-submarine duties -- the USN was still using these into the 1960s -- would fare after dropping a nuclear depth charge.
Posted June 29, 2009 2:03 PM | Link here
Delhi attracts migrants from all over India (as well as some like me, from the rest of world) and is now the most cosmopolitan and fastest-growing of India's large cities. . .But much of this architectural heritage remains unrecorded and unprotected -- as the author goes on to describe. From the BBC.It is also visibly preparing for its next moment of anxiously anticipated glory, the Commonwealth Games of 2010.
Unsurprisingly, then, there are construction sites all over the city. But despite this extraordinary speed of development, Delhi remains both the leafiest and most archaeologically impressive of the world's megacities.
Posted June 27, 2009 10:30 PM | Link here
Today's NY Daily News headline: "Long before Michael Jackson died, pop star looked barely alive".
So far, so good.
Below the picture, though, runs the caption: "Michael Jackson suffered cardiac arrest, a condition that can lead to death if not treated within five minutes, according to doctors". Oy gevalt.
Posted June 26, 2009 8:35 AM | Link here
British officials considered attacking Tokyo with poison gas in 1944, more than a year before the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.From the Times of London. The article doesn't indicate how seriously the proposal was considered, but all sorts of ideas were being bruited about at the time -- as the Daily Mail reports:Documents made public today include a memorandum written by a government academic entitled Attack on Tokyo with Gas Bombs. His report was coupled with a note from the Ministry of Supply, dated May 22, 1944.
A war strategy to shower enemy troops with tens of thousands of poisoned darts that could bring death in minutes. . .ADDENDUM: Further perspectives over at Airminded.Details, revealed today in secret documents released by the National Archives, outline the gruesome physical effects of such an attack on Nazi troops.
The papers also show how the Government tried to rope the Singer Sewing Machine Company into supplying the needles.
The concept, developed between 1941 and 1945, involved darts carrying a sufficient amount of poison to cause 'death or disablement'.
More the 30,000 of the darts could be stored in cluster bombs, which could be dropped onto enemy troops from an aircraft at 3,000ft, according to the file entitled Research Into Use Of Anthrax And Other Poisons For Biological Warfare. Death of a target would occur in 30 minutes if the darts were not removed quickly.
Posted June 25, 2009 9:10 PM | Link here
Indian defence scientists are planning to put one of the world's hottest chilli powders into hand grenades.They might not work on some people, though. From the BBC.They say the devices will be used to control rioters and in counter-insurgency operations.
Researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them.
Posted June 25, 2009 8:15 PM | Link here
A long line of hospital staff wraps around the corridor outside a small conference room in New York to catch a glimpse of the precious cargo.Full article here.Inside are the three frail bodies in open wooden crates causing all the commotion. Another body -- a prince no less -- is a few rooms down in a computer tomography scanner.
The bodies are part of the Brooklyn Museum's collection of 11 Egyptian mummies, transported to the North Shore University Hospital to be scanned.
Posted June 25, 2009 9:53 AM | Link here
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.Sheep, too. From the BBC.
Posted June 25, 2009 9:51 AM | Link here
The BBC reports, with slideshow:
Whales off the coast of Argentina have acquired a new enemy - seagulls. The gulls have learned to feed on the whales by landing on their backs and just pecking away the skin and blubber. . . .
Posted June 24, 2009 3:49 PM | Link here
Michael Kimmelman discusses the Acropolis Museum and its implications for the dispute over the Elgin Marbles. Notable quote from writer Nikos Dimou, regarding the paradoxical nature of modern Greek identity:
"We used to speak Albanian and call ourselves Romans, but then Winckelmann, Goethe, Victor Hugo, Delacroix, they all told us, 'No, you are Hellenes, direct descendants of Plato and Socrates,' and that did it. If a small, poor nation has such a burden put on its shoulders, it will never recover."
Posted June 24, 2009 3:42 PM | Link here
Archaeologists reported Wednesday the discovery last fall of a bone flute and two fragments of ivory flutes that they said represent the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture. They said the bone flute with five finger holes, found at Hohle Fels Cave in the hills west of Ulm, was "by far the most complete of the musical instruments so far recovered from the caves" in a region where pieces of other flutes have been turning up in recent years.Full article in the NY Times.
Posted June 24, 2009 3:34 PM | Link here
I love Kodachrome, but I've shot so little of it for so many years now. Nothing like Kodachrome 25 and 64 -- my standbys during my art history grad student days.
Eastman Kodak Co., the photography pioneer whose Kodachrome film inspired Paul Simon's 1973 hit of the same name, said it will retire the 74-year-old product this year after sales dwindled and most labs stopped processing it.Apparently there is now only one lab left still processing Kodachrome. Full story here.Revenue from Kodachrome represents "a fraction of one percent" of Kodak's total sales of still-picture films, the company said today in a statement. Kodachrome became the world's first commercially successful color film in 1935, Kodak said
Posted June 22, 2009 2:57 PM | Link here
The Anne Frank House museum says it will put the teenage Holocaust victim's diaries and other writings on permanent display to commemorate what would have been her 80th birthday on Friday. . .Full article here.Until now her posthumously published diaries and other works have been kept in an archive at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. Some have previously been displayed at the museum, which encompasses and preserves the "Secret Annex" — the tiny apartment above a canal-side warehouse where the Frank family hid for two years.
Posted June 11, 2009 10:48 PM | Link here
Cutting-edge computer modelling software has enabled a long-lost, trumpet-like instrument to be recreated – allowing a work by Bach to be performed as the composer may have intended for the first time in nearly 300 years. . .Read all about it here (with links to audio and more).Following its use to improve trombone design, the software has been deployed to help the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB), who asked the University to recreate the instrument, which is called the Lituus – even though no-one alive today has heard, played or even seen a picture of this forgotten instrument.
Posted June 2, 2009 9:33 PM | Link here
How do you drill several kilometers into the Earth's crust -- at sea, in waters themselves kilometers deep?
The first thing that strikes you when the Chikyu comes into view is the drill derrick, which stands 100m above the deck - the tallest ship-borne rig in the world.Article, videos, and more, here.Festooned from it are cables a handspan thick, and huge pieces of yellow machinery, all connected with the core business of sending a drill bit deeper into the Earth than has ever been done at sea.
Posted May 28, 2009 10:09 AM | Link here
. . . after studying X-rays of members of 10 different vertebrate groups, Dr Taylor is convinced that when they were not reaching down for a drink, the sauropods stood with their heads held very high indeed.But the case is far from closed:With their necks aloft, like giraffes, the dinosaurs would have towered up to 15m above the ground.
Dr Taylor and his colleagues found that the necks of mammals and birds - the only modern groups that share the upright leg posture of dinosaurs - are "strongly inclined" vertically.
"Our approach was embarrassingly straightforward," said Dr Taylor. "We looked at real animals, and at the whole animal."
Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist from London's Natural History Museum, thinks the sauropods were likely to have been able to lift their heads high, but he remains unconvinced that would have been their "resting posture". . .From the BBC."Sauropods are bizarre," he told BBC News. "There is no living animal built in the same way."
So, although the study of living animals' skeletons is very valuable, he added, "finding a model to explain the biology of these creatures is not that easy"
Posted May 27, 2009 8:55 AM | Link here
The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students. It stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect all of us don't seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions (like when I dropped that feeler gauge down into the Ninja). In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don't think you'll see a yellow sign that says "Think Safety!" as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?Full article from the NY Times Sunday Magazine.
Posted May 25, 2009 8:35 PM | Link here
How many of the paintings displayed at the Vietnamese National Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi are originals and how many are copies? . . .Full article here.It is well known among Vietnamese artists that the museum has been hanging works of art that are in fact copies of very famous Vietnamese paintings as some of the originals were either sold or lost. . .
Now no-one is certain what has happened to the originals, but it is thought that some were sold by officials and are now in private hands or in galleries around the world.
Artists themselves were asked by the museum to copy their own paintings, and now no-one knows for sure which are original and which are copies.
Posted May 21, 2009 9:59 PM | Link here
Train-buff friends have long regaled me with unflattering comparisons of the fast trains of the '30s with their present-day counterparts:
The aforementioned Montreal Limited, for example, circa 1942, would pull out of New York's Grand Central Station at 11:15 p.m., arriving at Montreal's (now defunct) Windsor Station at 8:25 a.m., a little more than nine hours later. To make that journey today, from New York's Penn Station on the Adirondack, requires a nearly 12-hour ride. The trip from Chicago to Minneapolis via the Olympian Hiawatha in the 1950s took about four and a half hours; today, via Amtrak's Empire Builder, the journey is more than eight hours. . .From Slate. Many thought-provoking links in the article, too.Obama's bold vision obscures a simple fact: 220 mph would be phenomenal, but we would also do well to simply get trains back up to the speeds they traveled at during the Harding administration.
Posted May 17, 2009 2:24 PM | Link here
So many people still think that vitamin C helps against colds; others pop vitamin E supplements, putting their faith in antioxidants -- even as that particular credo is crumbling:
About forty healthy young male volunteers took part in the study, which involved four weeks of identical exercise programs. Half of the volunteers were already in athletic training, and half weren't. Both groups were then split again, and half of each cohort took 1000 mg/day of vitamin C and 400 IU/day vitamin E, while the other half took no antioxidants at all. So, we have the effects of exercise, plus and minus previous training, and plus and minus antioxidants.Further discussion at FuturePundit as well. I stopped taking multivitamins years ago, and I get plenty of vitamin C and E from a good diet. The only supplements I now use are calcium and vitamin D.And as it turns out, antioxidant supplements appear to cancel out many of the beneficial effects of exercise. Soaking up those transient bursts of reactive oxygen species keeps them from signaling.
ADDENDUM: Another study showing widespread Vitamin D deficiency here.
Posted May 14, 2009 8:54 PM | Link here
My just-over-a-year-old Thinkpad's hard drive abruptly started giving a loud "clack clack clack" sound and became unusable. I let it cool down and tried again, only to get the same loud clicking and no boot. Called Lenovo for a replacement drive and a set of disks to restore the system (not supplied with the computer, and I hadn't burned a set since the X61 doesn't have an optical drive), and picked up an external DVD burner in preparation. While waiting for the replacement drive, tried the computer again, and this time it started up fine. Putting an ice pack over the hard drive, I quickly made a full backup to an external hard drive and burned restore disks as well.
Lenovo sent me a used drive as a replacement, and it came screwed into a metal slide that must have been for some other model of notebook. The slide had to be removed before I could install the drive, which was annoying. Then I found that the restore disks from Lenovo didn't work; perhaps not surprising, since they were labeled as being for the older X60 series. Luckily, the boot disk I had burned when my defective drive came back to life worked just fine, and I was then able to do a full restoration of my hard drive and all its contents from the backup.
The procedure was straightforward, but neither the Lenovo website nor extensive Googling gave me definitive, step-by-step instructions -- so here they are, for all of you who may need to replace or want to upgrade your Thinkpad's hard drive:
Use the Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery utility to make a full system backup to an external hard drive. Go to Start > Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media (for XP) and burn recovery disks, if you haven't already. If you have any encrypted partitions, format them after moving their contents elsewhere. Restart and press F1 on startup to go into Setup; change the boot order so that the external DVD/CD drive is on top. Open the tray on your external DVD/CD drive and leave it open. Shut down your computer, disconnect the power cord (none of this should be done on battery power), remove the battery, and do the hard drive swap. Put the battery back in place, put the bootable recovery startup disk in the external DVD/CD drive and close it up and plug it in, and plug in the external HD with your system backup. From here on it's easy. Turn on the power, and the computer should boot to the recovery utility. Follow the instructions, and all should go remarkably quickly. Note that you will not be given the option of restoring from a backup if you start without having plugging in your external HD first -- the only option shown will be a fresh installation of the factory original contents, which of course can be done with the other recovery disk(s) you burned before starting out.
Posted May 14, 2009 7:51 PM | Link here
In an extraordinary coup, the Kimbell Art Museum has acquired the earliest known painting by Michelangelo, one of only four easel paintings by the Renaissance master in the world.Full article here.The Kimbell's purchase, The Torment of Saint Anthony (1487-88), will be the only painting by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) to enter the permanent collection of a U.S. museum.
Posted May 13, 2009 9:20 PM | Link here
Chaperoning my daughter's recent class trip to the Boston Museum of Science, I was quite taken by a knitted model of a human brain on display. I had somehow missed this writeup about its creation from earlier in the year. It's also on display online -- in excellent company -- at the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Brain Art.
Posted May 13, 2009 9:44 AM | Link here
The migration patterns of basking sharks have long mystified marine biologists, but new research has finally revealed where the world's second-biggest fish hide out for half of every year. . .From CNN.Using new satellite-tagging and a new geo-location technique, the researchers found that basking sharks make long migrations through tropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean during the winter, traveling at depths of 200 to 1,000 meters.
The researcher's data show that the sharks sometimes stay at those depths for weeks or even months at a time.
"In doing so, they have completely avoided detection by humans for millennia," Skomal said in the report.
Posted May 10, 2009 4:49 PM | Link here
. . .a 300-foot concrete statue that's about to fall over:
One of Russia's most important war memorials, a huge statue towering over the southern city of Volgograd, is in danger of collapsing, an official says.From the BBC.The Motherland statue is leaning at such a precarious angle that many people are scared of going near it.
Rising water levels are causing the foundations of the memorial to subside. . .
When it was completed in the late 1960s, the Motherland statue was the largest in the world.
Made of concrete, it stands 85 metres (300 ft) high and weighs around 8,000 tons.
Posted May 8, 2009 3:25 PM | Link here
A huge ocean wave has been filmed from beneath the surface, revealing features never before captured on camera.From the BBC -- can't wait to see the full program.The remarkable video, which will be shown as part of the BBC Natural History Unit's new series South Pacific, was filmed in super slow motion using a high-definition camera. . .
The spectacular results show the wave barrel closing over Australian big wave surfer Dylan Longbottom, who rode the wave to illustrate the scale and power of the water.
Posted May 7, 2009 4:46 PM | Link here
Cephalopod crochet inspiration here, spotted via the inimitable Pharyngula -- a great clearinghouse for all things cephalopod.
Appears that the outfit was from a collection by Romance Was Born, though I can't find it on their website. Whoops -- here are a couple of writeups, a slideshow (see #18) and video.
An older Pharyngula post worth noting:
Amazingly well-preserved octopod fossils from the Cretaceous.
Posted May 7, 2009 9:51 AM | Link here
It's a sad time for Bern: Pedro is dead. And with him has gone a slice of Bern's history.But Bern will not be bearless:Pedro was the last bear in the capital's famous bear pit. At the grand old age of 28 he had to be put down on Thursday.
He will not be replaced in the pit: his successors, currently living in Bern's zoo, will stay where they are until the new bear park - much bigger and bear-friendlier than the pit - opens later this year.Symbols of the city, the bears have historically been treated rather unsentimentally:
In 1891 the pit kindly provided a bear for the city fathers' feast marking the 600th anniversary of the foundation of Switzerland.From Swissinfo.In 1913 the number of bears reached a record 24. No fewer than eight of them were killed and stuffed and arranged like the carousel of bears on Bern's Zytglogge clock for display at the national exhibition in 1914.
Posted May 3, 2009 5:58 PM | Link here
Rome's underground Christian, Jewish and pagan burial sites, the Catacombs, date back to the 2nd Century AD.From the BBC, with video. The article does note, however, that the current project is restricted to the one catacomb -- but it is to be hoped that it will spur efforts to record more. In many cases the conditions underground are parlous, making this one of the most timely and appropriate digitization projects imaginable.There are more than 40 of them stretching over 170km (105 miles).
But, until now, they have never been fully documented, their vast scale only recorded with handmade maps.
That is now changing, following a three-year project to create the first fully comprehensive three-dimensional image using laser scanners.
A team of 10 Austrian and Italian archaeologists, architects and computer scientists have started with the largest catacomb, Saint Domitilla, just outside the Italian capital.
Posted May 3, 2009 10:24 AM | Link here
I'm not sure why the CDC is sending out such equivocal messages about the utility of face masks for flu prevention. Yes, it's better to use higher-quality masks, and it's important that they fit well (not like the cheap cloth mask with gaps all around shown at the top of this MSNBC article). But even a mask that does nothing against airborne infection still has considerable utility, drastically reducing the often-unconscious touching of mouth and nose that seems to be a constant of human behavior. Kids are terrible in this respect, but a lot of adults are not much better.
The argument that masks give the public a false sense of security is specious. Mexico City is, by all reports, all but shut down -- no sense of security from all the masks in evidence there, false or otherwise. The real risk is not that masks will change the behavior of ordinary people, but that government officials might use the adoption of masks as an excuse to avoid other essential public health measures, such as school closures, quarantines, and the like. In practice, however, this hasn't been playing out as an either-or situation; the wearing of masks becomes a powerful and everpresent reminder that things are not normal, more likely to heighten alertness than to breed complacency.
I'd also like to see our medical authorities come right out and recommend mask use in certain settings, even at times when there's no elevated risk of a flu pandemic. When I'm stuck in a plane right in front of someone sniffling and sneezing, it should be the sneezer who is treated like a pariah for not wearing a mask -- not me for wearing one.
Posted April 29, 2009 8:52 AM | Link here
Time to catch up on all things cephalopod!
A three-metre giant squid specimen washed up on a beach on Wellington's South Coast yesterday (2nd April).Full article here.In comparison with our colossal squid it's a bit small, but because it's small it's interesting! . . .
The squid was found in shallow water by Alana Spragg and her daughter Bella who managed to drag it onto the beach. At just 3m long the squid is one of the smallest we've seen: this means that it is either a rarely seen male, or an even more rarely seen juvenile.
Posted April 28, 2009 9:25 PM | Link here
Should restaurants charge for bread and butter? Check out the discussion here.
I'm keeping an open mind on this myself. After all, I've managed to come to terms with Asian restaurants charging for plain white rice, which rubbed me the wrong way for years after leaving the California free-rice bubble.
Posted April 28, 2009 3:59 PM | Link here
"What could they have been thinking?", indeed.
And why didn't they just do it with Photoshop, anyway?
ADDENDUM: If you want the inside scoop on the whole mess, one of the best sources I've found is here. Be sure to scroll down for the additional notes and links.
Posted April 28, 2009 9:05 AM | Link here
No honor among cephalopods. . .
Posted April 28, 2009 8:22 AM | Link here
Many of us have been wondering why higher education has become so expensive, even though faculty duties have changed little and compensation has remained flat or worse when adjusted for inflation. Here is some hard data:
Over the last two decades, colleges and universities doubled their full-time support staff while enrollment increased only 40 percent, according to a new analysis of government data by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a nonprofit research center.There has been a dramatic shift from full-time to part-time hires among the instructors, however, which is noted later in the article.During the same period, the staff of full-time instructors, or equivalent personnel, rose about 50 percent, while the number of managers increased slightly more than 50 percent.
The data, based on United States Department of Education filings from more than 2,782 colleges, come from 1987 to 2007, before the current recession prompted many colleges to freeze their hiring.The line between "managers" and "support staff" may not be the most conceptually useful distinction here; a lot of the "support" positions would clearly fall into the administrative bloat category:
The growth in support staff included some jobs that did not exist 20 years ago, like environmental sustainability officers and a broad array of information technology workers. The support staff category includes many different jobs, like residential-life staff, admissions and recruitment officers, fund-raisers, loan counselors and all the back-office staff positions responsible for complying with the new regulations and reporting requirements college face.From the NY Times. Big question for me is if there might be room for a counter-trend of back-to-basics in higher education. What if one were to found (or re-found) a college without all the 2009 bells and whistles, turning back the clock thirty years or so in terms of both administrative structure and tuition rates?
Posted April 24, 2009 10:01 AM | Link here
A photo from 1945, recently given to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The photograph is a jarring image that shows Nazi Party members, shovels in hand, digging up graves of American soldiers held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.Two of the Berga commanders were tried and sentenced to death, but had their sentences commuted in 1948 and were released in the 1950s. A third the Soviets got; he, of course, was promptly tried and hanged. Full article here.While the men dig up the site, U.S. soldiers investigating war crimes stand over them. Two crosses with helmets placed atop them -- the sign of a fallen soldier -- are visible. Two Germans are knee deep in mud. Another, with a handlebar mustache, has the look of a defeated man. The bodies of 22 American soldiers were found in at least seven graves, according to the photographer.
On the back of the photo is written, "Nazi Party members digging up American bodies at Berga."
Posted April 23, 2009 2:52 PM | Link here
A raging fire of suspicious origin Wednesday afternoon destroyed the old carriage house of the former Gorham silver manufacturing plant off Elmwood Avenue that was being converted into a firefighters’ museum.From the Providence Journal.The carriage house, the last standing building of the industrial complex that once stretched over a 37-acre area between Mashapaug Pond and Adelaide Avenue in the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood, was being restored by Providence firefighters to turn it into the Providence Fire Museum. . .
The Providence Fire Department Historical Society had planned to fill the museum with memorabilia and fire apparatus going back more than a century including antique trucks that were used in the late 1880s.
Posted April 20, 2009 5:17 PM | Link here
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