i found an article in my personal archives that would be of interest. i
don't have a scanner available so below is the transcribed script. the
article appeared in the wall street journal on 30 december 1999. i never
heard if the event went on as planned.
bob beckett
hollis, nh usa
Navy's Y2K Trick: Span Globe and Years While Standing Still
New Year's revelers: Try to top this.
Tomorrow night, the nuclear submarine USS Topeka plans to be under the
ocean's surface at precisely 00 degrees latitude, 180 degrees longitude.
Cognoscenti will recognize those coordinates as the intersection of the
equator and the International date line, a point in the Pacific Ocean
roughly half-way between Hawaii and Australia. At midnight local time - 7
a.m. on the East Coast - the 360 foot long sub wiull be straddling the two
lines.
That means that when the clock strikes 12, different parts of the vessel
will be in different hours, days, months, years, centuries, millenia,
seasons, and hemispheres simulataneously.
Purists, of course, argue that the new millenia doesn't start until 2001.
But that isn't stopping the U.S. Navy, which facing the challenges of
recruiting sailors in a robust economy, arranged the drill as a publicity
stunt. In May, the crew of the Hawkbill, another submarine, got to play
football at the North Pole.
"We have travel benefits that not many organizations can match," says Lt.
Cmdr. Dave Werner of the public affairs office at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
where the Topeka is based.
Crew members will collect vials of water as the keepsakes and shoot videos
of their station, lest anyone doubt their whereabouts. The 130 men on board,
won't be breaking out the bubbly. Like all Navy ships, nuclear subs are dry.
by Lee Gomes
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bjbutler@... [mailto:bjbutler@...]
> Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 11:08 AM
> To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: Really Abitrary Points
>
>
> I just checked the "Confluence web site" at
> http://www.confluence.org/index.php Wow! That is exactly the idea I
> was thinking about. The only problem I have is that there are so
> many of these points, making each one seem less important. And I am
> afraid to start visiting these for fear I will become obsessed, with
> very little hope of ever reaching a significant fraction of them!
>
> BJB
>
>
> --- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "Harry ten Veen" <h.ten.veen@t...> wrote:
> > That is indeed an interesting thought Brian!
> >
> > There are already some people active! see:
> > http://www.confluence.org/index.php
> >
> > Btw. In the city of Utrecht (the Netherlands) in the
> Volkssterrenwacht
> > Sonnenborgh the so-called
> > Utrecht-meridiaan is marked. It is on 5 deg. 7 min. east.
> > At this point the Utrecht-standard-time was calculated and measured
> using a
> > large telescope. In the 1920's they abandoned Utrecht-time.
> >
> > gl
> > Harry ten Veen
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: <bjbutler@b...>
> > To: <BoundaryPoint@y...>
> > Sent: donderdag 21 juni 2001 14:24
> > Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Really Abitrary Points
> >
> >
> > > Jack's recent mention of the Greenwich meridian reminded me of an
> > > idea I had a while back for another class of points -
> intersections
> > > of important lines of latitude and longitude. For example, where
> the
> > > Greenwich meridian crosses the equator, the arctic circle, or the
> > > antarctic circle. Ditto for the international date line. Then,
> of
> > > course, there are all of the intermediate meridians and
> latitudes, 30
> > > degrees, 45 degrees, 60 degrees, etc. This could be combined with
> > > some trigonometry and a good clock to produce some interesting
> > > coincidences. Just another way to pin yourself in space and
> time, I
> > > guess.
> > >
> > > BJB
>
>
>
>
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