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 built 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 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 (and England) for their legions. The 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 find a specification/procedure/process and
> wonder
> 'What horse's ass came up with it?', you may be exactly right.
> Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to
> accommodate
> the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horse's asses.) Now, the twist to
> 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 SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their
> factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRB's would have
> preferred
> to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's 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 SRB's 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 are controlling everything else.

Now isn't that so very true?!?

It goes with the conclusion that tradition is no more than fossilised pragmatism.

Love it Dave...

I've often wondered how the hell they come up with these weird sizes and then all the differing sizes in between the states with rail way lines why not a simple and easy "4 feet" or "5 feet" why all these inter denominational sizes I recieved this email as a "package" from some freinds in the good old U.S. of A. and I didnt believe it at first until I did some checking up and it turns out to be acually true just shows to go ya that truth is sometimes a lot stranger than fiction