A Study In American History

The teacher said, 

"Let's begin by reviewing some 

American History.  

 Who Said 'Give me Liberty , 

or give me Death'?"

She saw a sea of blank faces, 

except for Little Johnny a bright 

foreign Exchange student from 

Japan, who had his hand up: 

'Patrick Henry,   1775' he said.

'Very good!'

Who said, 'Government of the People, 

by the People, for the People, 
Shall not perish from the Earth?'

Again, no response except from 

Little Johnny,  'Abraham Lincoln, 1863'.

'Excellent!', said the teacher continuing, 

'let's try one a bit more Difficult...'

Who said, 'Ask not what your country 

can do for you, but what you can do 
For your country?'

Once again, Johnny's was the only 

hand in the air and he said;  

'John F. Kennedy, 1961'. 

The teacher snapped at the class,  

'Class, you should be ashamed of 
Yourselves, Little Johnny isn't from 

this country and he knows more 
About our history than you do.'

She heard a loud whisper:  

'F#*k the Japs,' 

'Who said that? I want to know right now!' 

she angrily demanded.

Little Johnny put his hand up, 

'General MacArthur, 1945.' 

At that point, a student in the 

back said,  'I'm gonna puke.' 

The teacher glares around and asks,  

'All right!!!  Now who said that!?'

Again, Little Johnny says, 

'George Bush to the Japanese 

Prime Minister, 1991.'

Now furious, another student yells, 

'Oh yeah? S#*k this!'

Little Johnny jumps out of his chair 

waving his hand and shouts to the 
Teacher , 

'Bill Clinton, to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!'

Now with almost mob hysteria 

someone said, 'You little s*+t. 

If you say Anything else, I'll kill you.'

Little Johnny frantically yells at the 

top of his voice, 

'Michael Jackson to the child witnesses 

testifying against him, 2004.'

The teacher fainted. 

As the class gathered around the 

teacher on the floor, someone said, 

 'Oh S+*t, We're screwed!'

Little Johnny said quietly, 

'the American people, November 4, 2008.'

The Rest Of THe Story

Railroad tracks.

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?
Because that's the way they built them in England,
and English expatriates designed the US railroads.

Why did the English 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 had used for building wagons,
which used that 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 on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because
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 the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else
had to match for fear 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 Rest Of 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 fatter, 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' behinds.

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 almost everything...
and CURRENT Horses Asses in Washington
are controlling everything else