The cargo ship Highflyer, which had been moored near the Grandcamp, caught fire the morning after the explosion. When the fire seemed to be getting out of control, tugs were called to tow the ship out of the port, lest its own cargo of fertilizer explode, too. Unfortunately, the force of the Grandcamp explosion had locked the Highflyer into a deadly embrace with another ship, the Wilson B. Keene, and the Highflyer wouldn't budge. The tugs gave up. The Highflyer blew up, also demolishing the Keene, and raining death and fire anew on Texas City. The shockwave and new fires killed hundreds more.
The fires were not put out until April 18. Bodies and parts of bodies were strewn all over town. The state government ultimately listed 405 identified and 63 unidentified dead. Another 100 or perhaps 200 were counted as missing. Injuries may have reached 3,500. That's 4,000 casualties in a town of 16,000.
More than 1,500 houses – a third of the town's housing – were destroyed. Two thousand of the survivors were rendered homeless. Property damage reached at least $600 million (almost $6 billion in today's money).
An official report on the disaster recommended improved containers, labeling and special handling of ammonium nitrate fertilizer; prohibiting smoking in all piers and docks at all times; and worst-case-scenario community disaster plans to coordinate relief agencies, police and fire departments, hospitals, doctors and nurses, civil officials and military authorities.
Today, the unknown dead rest in a special cemetery. Monuments in Texas City include the propeller of the Highflyer and an anchor from the Grandcamp.
Texas City, Texas
Texas City is a city in Chambers and Galveston counties in southeastern Texas. The 2010 Census showed over 45,000 people living there. This city was officially incorporated in 1911.
Dead reckoning
Dead Reckoning (or DR) is a method of estimating a position. It is an important part of navigation. It uses the last known point (a fix), and speed and direction the vehicle or person has moved since it was at the fix, to make a good guess where the current position is.
It is used to track where a ship or airplane or sometimes where a vehicle on land is at. Now, Global Positioning System (GPS) is used and dead reckoning is not as important. But it is still used in areas where GPS is not available or for short periods of time if a GPS update is missed. It is also good to know in case the GPS satellites are damaged by a solar flare, or equipment is lost or broken, so it is still taught to sailors and pilots.
Dead Reckoning is how the sailors mapped the world after Christopher Columbus came to the New World. Using the stars, they could find their latitude (distance between the equator and the poles). But before accurate clocks were created, they could not tell their longitude (how far east or west they were) unless they saw land that they knew. So to cross the oceans they used dead reckoning. This is also how Richard Byrd became the first person to fly to the North Pole in 1926. He was able to fly for 16 hours and come back to the place he had left, with only ice fields beneath him.
Dead reckoning starts from a known point (the fix). Then the speed of the vehicle needs to be known. In old times, ships would throw a log over the side (tied to a rope) and count how long it took to pass this log (or to pull a rope with knots and count how many knots get pulled out in a certain amount of time). This would give the speed of the ship. Knowing the direction from a compass would give the direction. From these two numbers an estimate (a good guess) could be made about the current location of the vehicle. However, a wind pushes the vehicle to one side (called "drift") so this needs to be measured as well. Also there are currents in the water, even in the middle of the ocean. Over time this could make errors as well, so charts were made to correct for currents.
Airplanes can measure their windspeed easily (how fast they are going through the air), but not how fast they are moving over the land (called "ground speed"). A head wind, tail wind, or cross wind changes the ground speed. If the altitude of the plane is known, then the ground speed can be found by timing how fast the plane goes past an object on the ground. (The higher you are, the slower the ground seems to move). A window on the floor of the airplane can be used to find the ground speed and the drift of the airplane.
A vehicle on ground can also use dead reckoning. Usually they do not need to worry about drift from the wind, and there are no currents on land, so this reckoning is easier.
Yum! Brands
Yum! Brands, Inc., or Yum, are an American based corporation which licenses KFC, Pizza Hut and the Taco Bell restaurants. Before 2011, they also owned the Long John Silver's franchise. The company is based in Louisville, Kentucky. It started on October 7, 1997 as the Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc., which in turn was an independent company and spinoff of PepsiCo. Because of its previous relationship with PepsiCo, this company has a lifetime contract to Pepsi.
Iltur, South Australia
Iltur is the name of a remote Pitjantjatjara homeland in the Great Victoria Desert of South Australia. It is also known as Ilturnga or Coffin Hill after the rocky outcrop where it is located. It is located at the southern end of the Birksgate Range, and is one of the most southerly locations on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands. It was visited by the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition in 1981, led by the explorer David Lindsay.
Many of the families who had lived in this region historically were forced to leave the area due to nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga. They were moved to Fregon in the north and to Yalata, very far to the south. Not all of them left, however, and some still living around Iltur reported that they were affected by the fallout of the tests. In 1976, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs offered AU$10,000 for the establishment of an outstation community at Iltur. An outstation was built, but is not always occupied.
Honeypot ant
Honeypot ants, or repletes, are sterile worker ants which are used as food stores. They develop swelled abdomens, filled with food by other worker ants. They are living storage containers. There are five genera of honepot ants.
Ant species often have polymorphs: different forms of the same type. The soldier ants which defend colonies are genetically the same as the normal workers. The way they develop is different. This is done by changes in food, or by pheromones.
Young honeypot ants are more or less force-fed until their gasters (=stomachs) are swelled up. Then they act as living food storage vessels. These food storage workers are called "repletes".
These replete workers develop in the North American honeypot ant "Myrmecocystus mexicanus". Rissing found that usually the largest workers in the colony develop into repletes; and, if repletes are removed from the colony, other workers become repletes. This shows the flexibility of this polymorphism.
Honey ants use their own bodies as living storage, but they have more function than just storing food. Some store liquids, body fat, and water brought to them by worker ants. They can later serve as a food source for their fellow ants when food is otherwise scarce. When the liquid stored inside a honeypot ant is needed, the worker ants stroke the antennae of the honeypot ant, causing the honeypot ant to regurgitate the stored liquid.
In certain places, such as the Australian outback, honeypot ants are eaten by people as sweets and are considered a delicacy.
Makiri, South Australia