It turns out that if you keep a plastic bottle of water in your car, you need to be very mindful of where you leave it. Anyone who has watched a survival reality show knows that water in a clear plastic bottle can work in the same way as a magnifying glass, focusing the sun's light onto one spot. That means if the sun hits a bottle in your automobile just the right way, it could actually start a fire in your car.
Idaho Power uploaded a video to show just how it can happen.
... with the right circumstances it is very possible, and if there are papers, clothes or trash in a car, it could ignite, so stay hydrated this summer, but be careful where you leave your bottles.
The Western Lakes Fire District of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, shared an explosive photograph Thursday as a warning to all you motorists trying to be hyper-vigilant about the coronavirus this summer.
Leave your hand sanitizer in a hot car and your vehicle’s interior could end up a fire scene.
“By its nature, most hand sanitizer is alcohol-based and therefore flammable,” the fire officials wrote on Facebook May 21, alongside a photo of a driver-side door interior that had been mangled and melted by hand sanitizer.
“Keeping it in your car during hot weather, exposing it to sun causing magnification of light through the bottle — and particularly being next to open flame while smoking in vehicles or grilling while enjoying this weekend — can lead to disaster,” they explained.
The first responders, who use their social-media presence to educate their community on common fire hazards, added that clear water bottles also pose an explosion risk. They included a link to the National Fire Protection Association’s YouTube video with more warnings on hand sanitizer combustion.
Early in 1964, as Beatlemania swept the world, newspaper headlines announced that The Beatles would be travelling to South America later that year. Millions awaited their arrival with bated breath – and in July, when four young moptops descended into Buenos Aires Airport, it seemed that teenage dreams were about to come true.
The Beatles were actually nowhere near Argentina at the time. The British group – who split 50 years ago this month – were back home in London, on a rare rest stop between concerts and recording. But with or without their knowledge, four young guys from Florida named Tom, Vic, Bill and Dave had taken their place.
There had been a terrible mix-up.
Previously a bar band called The Ardells, the quartet were now 'The American Beetles', or sometimes just 'The Beetles' for short. "When The Beatles got to be famous," their manager Bob Yorey recalls in The Day The Beatles Came To Argentina, a 2017 documentary directed by Fernando Pérez, "I said, 'You know what? They’re the English Beatles. I’m gonna make up a group…'
"I got these four guys and I said, 'Listen. Grow your hair and we’re gonna call you ‘The American Beetles'.’" They duly obliged. "We wore our hair the same, we dressed the same, we wore suits. It was pretty good", Bill Ande, their lead guitarist, tells BBC Culture, over the phone. Both a joke and a timely cash-grab, the group’s rebrand had won them big crowds and fresh attention from promoters back home.
An impresario named Rudy Duclós spotted them in a Miami club. He was from Argentina, he explained, and he was keen to book them on a tour of South America. Yet in selling the group to promoters and venues, Duclós hadn’t quite mentioned the 'American Beetles' part. He’d pitched them as the real thing. Contracts were signed, the press was primed, and teenagers anxiously awaited their arrival. The Beatles were coming.
'They have hair in their vocal cords! They sing bad, but they act worse!' went one headline. 'The Beetles showed that all the talent they have is in their hair!' screamed another. Crónica called the tour 'a farce far greater than their disputed male presence', and devoted column inches throughout the month to their attacks. The American Beetles were 'antimelodic', 'howling songwriters', and drew comparisons to los pelucones, the wig-wearing conservatives of 19th-Century Chile. As for their singing, reporters claimed bluntly, '…they are awful'.
“Success is overrated. We all crave it despite daily evidence that our real genius lies in exactly the opposite direction. Incompetence is what we are good at. It is what marks us off from the animals. We should learn to revere it. All successful people are the same. You know, drive, will to win, determination … it is just too dull to contemplate, whereas everyone who messes up big time does so in a completely individual way. Doing something badly requires skill, panache, genius, exquisite timing and real style.”
THE LEAST SUCCESSFUL SECURITY OPERATION
Worried that ground staff were stealing miniature bottles of whisky from a Pan-Am aircraft, security guards set a trap.
In the summer of 1978 they wired up a cuckoo clock inside the drinks cabinet, so arranged that it would stop whenever the door was opened. This, they said, would reveal the exact time of the theft.
They omitted, however, to tell the plane's crew, with the result that a stewardess, Miss Susan Becker, assumed it was a bomb.
She alerted the pilot of the Boeing 727, who made an emergency landing at Berlin where eighty passengers left in a hurry through fire exits.
A Pan-Am spokesman said afterwards that the miniature bottles of whisky on the plane cost 17 pence each.
The cost of the emergency landing was £6,500.
THE VET WHO SURPRISED A COW
In the course of his duties in August 1977, a Dutch veterinary surgeon was required to treat an ailing cow. To investigate its internal gases he inserted a tube into that end of the animal not capable of facial expression, and struck a match. The jet of flame set fire first to some bales of hay and then to the whole farm, causing damage estimated at £45,000. The vet was later fined £140 for starting a fire in a manner surprising to the magistrates. The cow escaped with shock.
THE WORST CANAL CLEARANCE
In 1978 workers were sent to dredge a murky stretch of the Chesterfield-Stockwith canal. Their task was to remove all the rubbish and leave the canal clear. They were soon disturbed during their tea break by a policeman who said he was investigating a giant whirlpool in the canal. When they got back, however, the whirlpool had gone, and so had a one and a half mile stretch of the canal. In its place was a seamless stretch of mud thickly punctuated with old prams, bedsteads and rusting bicycle accessories. In addition to this the workmen found a flotilla of holidaymakers stranded on their boats in a brown sludge.
Among the first pieces of junk they hauled out had been the 200-year-old plug that alone ensured the canal's continuing existence. "We didn't know there was a plug," said one workman, explaining that all the records had been lost in a fire during the war. "Anything can happen on the canal," a spokesman for the British Waterways Board said afterwards.
THE FASTEST FAILURE OF A DRIVING TEST
In the early 1970s Mrs Helen Ireland of Auburn in California failed her driving test in the first second.
She got into the car, said "Good morning" to the tester and started the engine. However, she mistook the accelerator for the clutch and shot straight through the wall of the Driving Test Center.
(In 1969 an accelerator/clutch confusion enabled Mrs Beatrice Park to drive into the River Wrey at Guildford during her fifth test. She and her examiner climbed onto the roof and waited to be rescued. The examiner was later sent home in a state of shock, still clutching his clipboard. When Mrs Park asked if she had passed her test, she was told: "We cannot say until we have seen the examiner's report.")
THE WORST PRISON GUARDS
The highest number of convicts ever to escape simultaneously from a maximum security prison is 124. This record is held by Alcoente Prison, near Lisbon in Portugal.
During the weeks leading up to the escape in July 1978 the prison warders had noticed that attendances had fallen at film shows which included 'The Great Escape', and also that 220 knives and a huge quantity of electric cable had disappeared. A guard explained, "Yes, we were planning to look for them, but never got around to it." The warders had not, however, noticed the gaping holes in the wall because they were "covered with posters". Nor did they detect any of the spades, chisels, water hoses and electric drills amassed by the inmates in large quantities. The night before the breakout one guard had noticed that of the 36 prisoners in his block, only 13 were present. He said this was "normal" because inmates sometimes missed roll-call or hid, but usually came back the next morning.
"We only found out about the escape at 6.30 the next morning when one of the prisoners told us," a warder said later. The searchlights were described as "our worst enemy" because they had been directed at the warders' faces, dazzled them and made it impossible to see anything around the prison walls. When they eventually checked, the prison guards found that exactly half the jail's population was missing. By way of explanation the Justice Minister, Dr Santos Pais, claimed that the escape was "normal" and part of the "legitimate desire of the prisoner to regain his liberty."
Airbus has developed a removable cover for A350 integrated control panels, designed to protect vital systems from inadvertent liquid spills in the cockpit, after two incidents which preceded uncommanded engine shutdown.
The cover – which protects engine master levers, thumbwheels and rotary knobs – needs to be removed during critical flight phases, including take-off, approach and landing.
But outside of these, such as during the cruise, the cover must be fitted, according to a directive from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
Things That Go Squish in the Night
One of the advantages of living in the country is the quietness.
One of the disadvantages is having to fool with the water system.
I used to complain, when we had our house in the subdivision, about the cost and taste of Florida water. But now, after having moved out into the country—and becoming an expert on wells, pumps, aerators, pressure tanks and water softeners—I’m not so sure I wasn’t better off when all I did was turn on the faucet and pay the bill.
Our particular system works from a deep, constantly flowing well. The same well serves the house, sprinkling system and air conditioning/heating units. After flowing through all the contraptions in a pump house in the back yard, the water finally arrives at where we live. The majority of this is drunk, flushed, spilled or used for washing. The rest is piped through the heating units and out through a drainpipe into a pond in the pasture.
To give the system a certain romance, the mad plumber installed a number of secret valves. If these are not opened and closed at critical times the water overflows into the yard, or backs up into the bathrooms, where it does exciting things.
One of these secret valves is connected to the drainpipe going from the heating units to the pond. It is located in the back yard at the edge of the pasture under the barbed wire fence. In case I want to divert this ever-running stream, and use it to wash the car, I only have to turn the valve and open a spigot.
There is one major problem. The cut-off valve which diverts the water from pond to spigot is located in a concrete block which is sunk about ten inches in the ground. To turn the valve, you have to stick your hand down that hole.
The other night, after having told my fourteen-year-old daughter to hurry up and get her shower, I went to bed. Jackie was already asleep when I heard this strange gurgling in the heating unit at the end of the hall. I suddenly remembered I had forgotten to reopen the valve after I washed the car that afternoon. That meant the water was either getting ready to overflow out of the heating units into the house, or it was flooding the back yard. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my flashlight, and raced down the stairs to the back door.
The back yard was flooded. Sloshing through the icy water in my bare feet, getting my pajamas wet up to my knees, I dashed to the pump house where I cut off all water to the house. Then I headed out across the pitch black yard, feeling my way between the pines and palmetto patches, to the edge of the pasture where the underground valve is located.
Kneeling in the cold mud beside the sunken valve, I foolishly forgot to look down the hole with my flashlight before putting my hand in there. When I put my hand in the hole I felt something move. Something slimy.
I withdrew my hand at great speed and, at the same time, leaped high off the ground from my kneeling position. Unfortunately, I had forgotten I was directly beneath the barbed wire fence. The result was disastrous.
When I became a Christian, I lost most of my old vocabulary. This robs me of the necessary safety valve to handle such emergencies. So, instead of cursing, I threw my flashlight. Unfortunately, it landed in the middle of the pond—leaving me in total darkness.
Ripping myself loose from the barbed wire, I staggered backwards away from the fence. In the process, I stepped in doggie-do. Hopping around in the high grass, I ran a thorny briar between my big toe and the toe right next door—in a place where nothing harsher than a washcloth had been in thirty years.
That which I lost I suddenly found—and a torrent of expletives issued forth, waking everyone in the house. Lights were flashing on all over the place as I went crashing through the shrubs, my pajamas ripped half-off, my back and neck bleeding, roaring back to the house in order to blame someone.
I had stopped to wash my foot off in the flooded back yard when I heard my daughter shouting from upstairs, “Hey, I’m all soaped up and there’s no water in the shower.”
Although I was back in control with the choice of words, I didn’t seem to be able to control the volume. Thus I informed her, with a roar which could have been heard a mile away, that there was plenty of water down where I was and if she was unhappy she ought to join me.
Jackie finally came down the stairs in her bathrobe and we got the valve shut and the water turned back on. We never did find out what that slithery thing was in the hole.
For years I have been teaching that while the American church applauds accomplishment as the mark of success, God is more interested in what we become along the way than whether we arrive.
I am not sure what I became that night. But one thing is certain. I have not yet arrived.
Not only am I out a brand new three-battery flashlight, but I ruined a perfectly good pair of pajamas and had to undergo three weeks of laughing, humiliating ridicule from my children who couldn’t let me forget it was mom who had to come down and twist all the valves and then lead me back up the stairs to the safety of my bed.
Fortunately, no one else knows. You see, we live in the country where things are quiet.
