Is That The Chattanooga Wreckage?

A professor at the university of Tennessee (Chattanooga) believes he found the wreckage of the USS Chattanooga at the bottom of the Tennessee River. I realize stories like these aren’t interesting to a lot of people, but I find it fascinating.

Morgan Smith, assistant professor in the UTC Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and his students are 90 percent sure they found the wreckage of the U.S.S. Chattanooga, a steamship that brought supplies to the starving army of U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant outside Chattanooga in 1863. According to historical records, supplies had dwindled until there was only one loaf of bread left for Union soldiers.

After the war, the ship sat on the northern side of the Tennessee River across from what is now the Tennessee Aquarium and Riverfront. Eventually, it fell apart and sank.

On April 14, Smith and students in his “Underwater Anthropology” course are pretty sure they found pieces of it sitting on the muddy river bottom.

The sonar photos definitely found something, and Smith believes it’s the Chattanooga.

While the kids are leaning toward Alabama, I still really love Tennessee for its history and beauty. It’s still on my retirement list, and stories like these get my blood pumping.

Coffee, Tea, Or Lil’ Help?

A flight attendant created a TikTok video – for the record, TikTok is owned by the ChiComs – explaining why she and her fellow coworkers greet passengers at the door.

Apparently, it’s not because they’re super friendly. (Although I’m sure many are.)

Those flight attendants who greet you while you board a plane aren’t just being friendly. Flight attendant Kat Kamalani recently posted a TikTik video explaining what crew members are actually doing while they welcome passengers onboard a plane.

“Have you ever walked on a plane and saw the flight attendants standing right here greeting you?” Kamalani, who is from Salt Lake City, says at the beginning of the clip. “Or the flight attendants walking up and down the aisle. Well, I’m about to tell you what we’re really doing.”

According to Kamalani, those are the moments that flight attendants are sizing up the passengers and looking for people who can help in cases of emergency.

As a law enforcement professional who is in decent shape, I’d be happy to help… for a few extra bags of peanuts and a rum and coke. Preferably on the house.

Headed To Baltic Avenue

A Reddit fan claims his in-laws were remodeling their home when they found a giant Monopoly board painted on the floor under the existing carpet.

Gamer Yamaha234 shared on Reddit a surprising discovery that his in-laws made underneath the carpet of a room in their home. The couple had been tearing out the carpet when a giant Monopoly board that was pained directly onto the floorboards began peeking through. While tearing up their carpet, my in-laws found a giant monopoly board.

According to one commenter, the practice of painting board games onto basement floors wasn’t all that uncommon, particularly in the mid-20th century.

Showed this to my wife, and she reminded me that there’s a whole neighborhood near us, built in the mid-50s, that has game boards painted or tiled onto their basement floors. Seems to have been a selling point or something.

You can see the board below the fold. It’s trippy.

Three Cheers For Florida!

Lord knows I poke fun of Florida and some of their less-than-reputable residents, and sometimes it’s warranted, sometimes not. Today, however, I plan to praise Florida; specifically the sunbathers at Panama City Beach.

Briana Stelmachers and her family were lounging outside the Emerald Isle Resort in Panama City Beach on Wednesday when they heard a woman screaming for help.

A little girl had gotten pulled out in the tide, and a woman had successfully swum out to save her, but a second woman involved in the rescue effort had herself gotten stuck. That’s when Ryan, Briana’s husband, took a raft and tried to rescue the woman, but the surf was too rough and he struggled to reach her.

The safe return was thanks to dozens of people coming together across the beach to form a human chain and reach out into the water.

Damn fine work, Floridians! You did yourselves proud.

Belfies Before Selfies

It’s been a long time since I was single and on the prowl for fabulous babes, which is probably a good thing, because I don’t understand how and why people do what they do.

Apparently, the hot new move is to send a suitor a butt pic, rather than a selfie. Um, okay?

It’s time to address the ultimate online dating question: do people actually enjoy your selfies, or are belfies – selfies of your bottom – more effective in building a lasting romantic spark? Dating.com, part of the Dating Group and the company behind numerous online dating sites, announces today the results of its latest member survey, revealing that belfies have taken precedence among today’s most eligible singles. The online dating giant also shares its tips for perfecting the art of the belfie for those new to the process.

“Belfies are a fun and effective way to keep the spark alive online,” says Maria Sullivan, Vice President of Dating.com. “While selfies definitely serve their purpose as an introductory form of attraction, belfies are what takes connections to the next level. What stood out most about these findings is that many are using belfies as a confidence booster – an unexpected but definitely understandable finding. Getting comfortable with your own body is vital to any relationship.”

Yawn. You’ll have my attention when the new fad is women sending boob pics.

Israel Cripples Iran’s Nuclear Facility

The state of Israel is apparently confirming they were behind the cyber attack launched on Iran’s nuclear facility, which was shut down by the Israeli attack immediately after Iran started spinning centrifuges. God bless those brilliant men and women.

Israel appeared to confirm claims that it was behind a cyber-attack on Iran’s main nuclear facility on Sunday, which Tehran’s nuclear energy chief described as an act of terrorism that warranted a response against its perpetrators.

The apparent attack took place hours after officials at the Natanz reactor restarted spinning advanced centrifuges that could speed up the production of enriched uranium, in what had been billed as a pivotal moment in the country’s nuclear programme.

This wouldn’t be happening if the Democrats hadn’t cheated President Trump out of a second term. Now there’s a pro-Iran, anti-Israel illegitimate president at the helm of this country, and Israel knows they have no serious allies anymore.

As Iranian authorities scrambled to deal with a large-scale blackout at Natanz, which the country’s Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged had damaged the electricity grid at the site, the Israeli defence chief, Aviv Kochavi, said the country’s “operations in the Middle East are not hidden from the eyes of the enemy”.

Israel imposed no censorship restrictions on coverage as it had often done after similar previous incidents and the apparent attack was widely covered by Israeli media.

Amazing. Israel knows they’re on their own, so they figure they might as well take credit for the cyber attack. They’re fighting for their lives, their country, and their way of life.

Mario And Luigi Can Now Retire

My youngest son Kevin is, without hyperbole, a genius. When he gets his hands into something, he doesn’t let go until he knows everything about the subject. Especially when he is talking video games. He goes on the web and finds every nook and cranny about a game, and reads everything he can about it.

Ironically, he told me about this impending story a few weeks ago.

An unopened copy of the oldest sealed hangtab Super Mario Bros. smashed the previous record (a pathetic $114,000) for the most ever paid for a video game when it sold at auction last Friday for $660,000.

The classic Nintendo video game was purchased in late 1986 as a Christmas gift, but ended up being placed inside a desk drawer, where it remained untouched for 35 years, before being discovered earlier this year.

“It stayed in the bottom of my office desk this whole time since the day I bought it,” said the seller, who asked not to be identified. “I never thought anything about it.”

$660,000 for an unopened – and I assume, working – Super Mario Bros. game. Wow, I really need to start buying things and burying them in my backyard.

Hasselhoff Makes A Boatload Of Money

Would like to make it to the big time in Hollywood? Well, ignore Tinseltown, and head for the sun and the surf. Los Angeles lifeguards make nearly $300,000 a year by staring at bikini babes and sunning themselves.

The highest-paid Los Angeles lifeguards earn up to $392,000 annually — and dozens of others rake in more than $200,000 a year, according to an investigation by Forbes.

Seven LA County lifeguards earned more than $300,000 in taxpayer dough by tapping into overtime pay in 2019, the latest year available.

Meanwhile, 82 of the sun-soaked public employees made more than $200,000 during the same year, according to the outlet, which cited data obtained by its own auditors.

LA’s best-paid lifeguard was “acting chief lifeguard” Fernando Boiteux, who made $391,971 with salary ($205,619), perks ($60,452) and benefits ($125,900) in 2019.

I mean, I’m not knocking their profession, but I wonder how many rescues they actually make in a year. I cannot imagine they’re super busy, but they sure get paid very well.

The Truth Is Out There

If you live near the Northwest US-Canadian border, you may have seen a pretty impressive light show, as a SpaceX rocket was in the middle of an uncontrolled reentry Thursday evening.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched almost a month ago made an uncontrolled re-entry last night and a bunch of people got footage of it. Normally the rocket’s second stage relights and pushes it down so that it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere into the Pacific Ocean. However, there wasn’t enough propellant after this launch, leaving the second stage orbiting for three weeks until it was pulled into Earth’s upper atmosphere.

This was, however, simply the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage–which weighs about four metric tons unfueled–breaking apart in the atmosphere and burning up. It is likely that the second stage completely broke apart over the Rocky Mountains near the United States and Canadian border.

I have been told Agents Mulder and Scully were dispatched to the scene.

The Feel-Good Story Of The Day

CNN has lost 45 percent of their primetime viewers in the past five weeks. Apparently the scumbags at CNN lived solely on OrangeManBad, and now that he’s out of office, CNN has nothing worthwhile to broadcast.

Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, and Don Lemon each saw declines in the neighborhood of 30 percent or more over that period, greater than any primetime shows at Fox or MSNBC.

After a record-setting January, traffic to the nation’s most popular mainstream news sites, including The Washington Post, plummeted in February, according to the audience tracking firm ComScore. The top sites were also generally doing worse than in February of last year, when the pandemic became a major international news story…

The most deeply affected network is CNN. After surpassing rivals Fox News and MSNBC in January, the network has lost 45 percent of its prime-time audience in the past five weeks, according to Nielsen Media Research. MSNBC’s audience has dropped 26 percent in the same period. Fox News — the most Trump-friendly of the three networks in its prime-time opinion shows — has essentially regained its leading position by standing still; its ratings have fallen just 6 percent since the first weeks of the year. The cable networks declined to discuss their ratings outlook for this article.

That’s surprising, because Fredo Cuomo and Don Lemon always have something to say. I guess their declining ratings have given them lockjaw. Oh well, nothing would make me happier than CNN going out of business.