| Jan. 30, 1790: The Lifeboat, an Idea Whose Time Has Come
1790: The first shore-based boat designed specifically for use as a lifeboat is tested on the River Tyne in northern England. Christened the Original, she was a 30-foot-long, double-ended, 10-oar longboat built by Henry Greathead of South Shields. She carried 7 hundredweight (784 pounds or 356 kilograms) of cork for added buoyancy and was designed to be self-righting. Although smaller craft had been pressed into service as lifeboats in the past, Original was the first boat built specifically for sea rescue. She was stationed at the mouth of the Tyne and launched from a shore station. In a career spanning 40 years, she was responsible for saving hundreds of lives. By 1839, there were 30 lifeboat shore stations operating in the British Isles. Original was built as the result of an incident in 1789, when a crew was lost after its ship ran aground in stormy seas off the mouth of the river.
Return to previous page
FLORENCE, ARIZ. - Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona. On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from a reporter, produced a birth certificate and after a U.S.
French toast tops in State Fair of Texas fried-on-a-stick contest
Things weren't as hot as you might have expected at the State Fair of Texas' fried-on-a-stick contest. Only 21 dishes were entered — compared with the 236 entries in Saturday's blockbuster pecan competition — and most were a little soggy on their sticks by the time they arrived at the fair Monday. The sticking point — because of concerns about discarding all that hot grease — was that contestants had to fry and skewer their dishes at home and bring them to the fair cold. "I had to take that into consideration when I was tasting," said Jake Depew, a local chef and one of the judges of the "Stick with Canola Oil — Fry It for the Fair" contest. "They aren't as crunchy and crisp as you might imagine they would be." But Kristina Gilbert's Fried French Toast on a Stick was crunchy enough to take home the blue ribbon, $200, an at-home deep fryer and apron.
Rubin: Nothing new at mansion -- or with the mayor
I saw five TV news trucks and two SUVs from radio stations. I saw a tradesman's van at a blond brick house with lavender doors across from the mansion, and I read the tradesman's slogan, which was "Shelving Solutions & More Since 1960." If you have any sort of solutions, I thought, you're in the wrong driveway. .
Iraqi Footballer Refused Work Permit
An Iraqi footballer has been refused a work permit to play in the Premier League. Manager Sven-Goran Eriksson had hoped to bring Nashat Akram, a star of Iraq's Asian Cup-winning team, to play for his Manchester City side. But it appears Akram, 24, cannot come to the UK because of a technicality of the immigration rules for footballers. To gain a work permit, a player's national side must be in the top 70 of the Fifa rankings and Iraq has only been ranked 71 and 72. It is a tragedy, say Akram's supporters, partly caused by the current violence which makes it impossible for Iraq to host international games. Manchester City has already lost an appeal against the Home Office decision, but hope remains after the Iraqi government took up his cause.
Slow cookers: Fast forward to dinner
Several manufacturers offer programmable slow cookers. When cooking time is up, the pots automatically shift into "warm" mode - the perfect solution to an eight-hour recipe and a 10-hour workday. "Auto-shift" pots cook at high for the first hour to lift the food's temperature out of the danger zone, then automatically shift to the low setting. Good-looking stoneware inserts go straight from the slow cooker to the table. And in addition to traditionally styled pots with twining vines and flowers, you'll find sophisticated stainless steel models. Slow cooking also has gotten a boost from new supermarket products aimed at streamlining prep time and cleanup. Slow Cooker Helper from Betty Crocker and frozen Crock-Pot Classics from Banquet eliminate the need to peel and chop vegetables.
|
