Salt Tidbits & Trivia

The location of an 1849 shipwreck in Lake Ontario made the news this week, reminding us of the sacrifice of more than 30,000 lost hands in 6,000 Great Lakes sinkings over the years. Only four years old, the Milan was shipping 1,000 barrels of salt from Oswego, NY (east of Rochester) to Cleveland. (Today, the trip would be in reverse as Cleveland has its own salt mine). Fortunately for the Milan, its problems were with the ship itself, not the weather; all nine crew of the 94-foot schooner were rescued.

The news brought to mind the 1975 sinking of the taconite-bearing S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, memorialized in song by Gordon Lightfoot. It's Detroit-based crew of 29 perished in Lake Huron shy of Whitefish Point, MI. The date was November 10, 1975; November is the "month of storms" on the Great Lakes.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 09:36 PM | Permalink

The beautiful and unique sounds of the Stradivarius and Guarneri violins have always been the subject of musical and mathematical mystery and the controversy. Was it the wood? Was it the glue? Was it simply the craftsmanship of the maker? These questions have been asked over and over again.

In a recent article entitled Lord of the Strings, in the December 2 edition of New Scientist, the latest analysis indicates that treating wood with salt water results in a violin that has many of the same qualities as a Stradivarius. This appears to be application number fourteen thousand and.....

Posted by Mort Satin at 02:41 PM | Permalink