My $500 million Mars Rover mistake: A failure story
From Chris Lewicki: "Some mistakes feel worse than death. A February evening in 2003 started out routine at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. I gowned up in cleanroom garb and passed into the High Bay 1 airlock in Building 179 where nearly all of NASA’s historic interplanetary spacecraft have been built since the Moon-bound Ranger series in the 1960s. After years of work by thousands of engineers, technicians, and scientists, there were only two weeks remaining before the Spirit Mars Rover would be transported to Cape Canaveral in Florida for launch ahead of its sibling, Opportunity."
Literary fight club: What started the great poets brawl of 1968
From Nick Ripatrizone for Literary Hub: "One Saturday evening in 1968, the poets battled on Long Island. Drinks spilled into the grass. Punches were flung; some landed. Chilean and French poets stood on a porch and laughed while the Americans brawled. A glass table shattered. Bloody-nosed poets staggered into the coming darkness. Allen Ginsberg fell to his knees and prayed. The World Poetry Conference at Stony Brook University was almost over. At the center of it all was Jim Harrison, a self-described “nasty item,” a prominent, if obnoxious, student in comparative literature. He had no business graduating."
Pour one out for the "alewives," who ran the brewing business until the 1400s
From Akanksha Singh for JSTOR Daily: "Until the fourteenth century, women dominated the field of beer brewing. And the alewife, as she was known, was responsible for a high proportion of ale sales in Europe. Ale was virtually the sole liquid consumed by medieval peasants, since water was considered to be unhealthy. Ale production was time-consuming, and the drink soured within days. The grain needed to make it, usually barley, had to be soaked for several days, then drained of excess water and carefully germinated to create malt. The malt was dried and ground, and then added to hot water for fermentation, following which the liquid was drained off and “herbs or yeast could be added as a final touch.”
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