Weekend Open Thread

… when snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food? (How, for heaven’s sake???)

… a quirk in the rules of baseball allows four outs in an inning? Here’s the scenario: the team at bat has runners on first and third, and there’s one out. The batter hits a fly ball, and both runners take off on the hit. The ball is caught (two outs) and the runner from first is thrown out on appeal (three outs). The runner from third crosses the plate without going back to third base before the third out is made. However, if the defensive team does not also appeal that runner from third, the run will count. An appeal play would rule that runner out as well (four outs).

… a family photo is on the Moon? During the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, astronaut Charles Duke (born 1935) left behind a photograph of himself, his wife, and his two sons on the surface of the Moon. The photo is there to this day, though most likely bleached white by more than 50 years of unfiltered sunlight. (Imagine if the Little Green Men found it. “Why’s there a blank piece of paper here?”)

… octopuses don’t have tentacles? Simmer down, and I’ll explain. The eight arms of an octopus have suckers down their entire lengths. Tentacles, however, are defined by scientists who study cephalopods as limbs with suckers only at the end. So they have eight arms (or legs, if you prefer, or some combination of both) but they’re not actually tentacles. (Call ‘em whatever you like, I suppose.)

… commercial airline flights have not always followed pre-set routes? Until 1956, commercial flights were allowed to fly any course to their destinations, and in most cases pilots used the flight to show passengers points of interest. However, in 1956, two sightseeing airplanes collided in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the practice was ended. (Well, that would do it.)

… the oldest person ever to go into space is best known for his acting role of a spaceship captain? On October 13, 2021, actor William Shatner (born 1931) made a suborbital space flight aboard the Blue Origins New Shepard spacecraft along with three other people. Shatner, who was 90 years old at the time of the flight, is best known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk of the starship USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek. The 11-minute ballistic flight crossed the Kármán line, the internationally-accepted boundary between the atmosphere of Earth and space, making Shatner the only member of the Star Trek cast to go into space and return to tell about it. (Boldly going, indeed!)

Now … you know!