42 Page 10

  42 Lifeboats

  Occurrences occurred when the London-born ship’s captain, Henry Kendall, passed a landmark known as Pointe-au-Père on the St Lawrence River in Canada. The first notable event resulted in a synchronised climax of activity amongst the world’s headline writers when Captain Kendall’s ship, having crossed the Atlantic, neared Pointe-au-Père on a sunny Sunday morning in July 1910. Anyone on board watching their Captain might have seen that he seemed to be keeping a close watch on another passenger, a Mr Robinson, who was stood at the rail watching as four pilots boarded, having approached from the pilot’s station at Pointe-au-Père. The pilots were watching their footing as they ascended the side of the ship.

  Captain Kendall, his first officer, his Marconi radio operator, and the whole of the world’s newspaper-reading public knew what Mr Robinson didn’t: the four pilots were British and Canadian police officers in disguise and their leader was an Inspector Walter Dew of the London police. The Inspector spoke briefly with the Captain before sharing the secret with Mr Robinson. Dispensing with ‘Welcome to Canada’ and generic weather-based chit-chat Inspector Dew just said, ‘Crippen, I want you.’

  One of the most widely reported crimes of the century Dr Crippen poisoned his wife with scopolamine, hid her body, partly in the basement, and fled with his lover, correctly believing that the police suspected him. His plan was for them both to head back to his native USA as a Mr Robinson and a Master Robinson. Despite boarding in Antwerp, Captain Kendall had soon suspected them of matching a police description he had been given, seeing the ‘boy’ squeeze his father’s hand in a manner familiar rather than filial. Before losing contact with Marconi’s Cornish radio station at Poldhu, Captain Kendall sent an ‘ethergram’ alerting the police who promptly boarded a faster ship. This overtook the Montrose allowing them to await the Robinsons. The story of the anticipated arrest of the suspected London cellar murderer was front page headlines around the world. Dr Crippen was brought back to London, tried, and hung within four months.

  Captain Kendall’s triumph turned into tragedy of the worst kind in four years and just a few miles from Pointe-au-Père. A new command, the prestigious RMS Empress of Ireland, was a fast ship able to ferry mail, passengers and cargo between Quebec and Liverpool in six days. In the early hours of May 29th 1914, the Empress, having dropped off the pilot at Pointe-au-Père, needed to cross back over to the other side of the river. Captain Kendall saw the lights of a Norwegian coal-carrier, SS Storstad, approaching but believed it was safe to cross its path. Visibility was suddenly lost in a fog bank and he ordered the engines to stop. The reinforced ice-breaking bow of the SS Storstad then re-appeared 30 metres away to ram the Empress directly amidships.

  The collision was absolutely catastrophic. The Empress of Ireland immediately listed hard over to starboard submerging within 14 minutes. It was the worst disaster in Canadian maritime history; there had been 42 lifeboats on board but there hadn’t been time to launch any more than a handful. 1024 died including 840 passengers—eight more than had perished on the Titanic. Only 42 of the survivors were women, a much smaller proportion than had survived the Titanic. All except four of 138 children died. Of the 420 crew, 184 died and 236 survived. Shown by a white buoy, the wreck of the Empress of Ireland lies eight miles off Pointe-au-Père, in 42 metres of water.

  * In 1962, two years before the release of Bond film Goldfinger, Alderiso and Nicoletti were questioned by police while waiting in a car pimped with switches to independently control the head and tail lights—just conceivably advantageous if your battery was on the fritz—and a substantial secret cubby hole with racking sufficient for a minor arsenal. They said they were waiting for a friend.

  * Aficionados will know this was the song chosen by Douglas Adams to end the original radio series of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

  * The locomotive, numbered 40126, was infamous amongst rail crew, having had four serious incidents occurring in four succeeding years. As well as the Great Train Robbery, she had collided with another train a few months earlier, killing eighteen. In 1964 a crewman had been electrocuted while standing on her and the same year she had been diverted onto another line just in time when the brakes failed approaching the main station in Birmingham. Eventually scrapped in 1982, the National Railway Museum in Yorkshire had turned down the chance to preserve a phenomenal tourist attraction.

  The Universe

  A Long History of Telescopes

  Pursuing the finest possible telescope has been a predilection of astronomers for over 400 years, competition to have the best being a defining constant. Sagittarians (22 November—22 December) and Librans (24 September—23 October) are especially hot on ogling optics. A simple guide to the story can be constructed from four instruments linked by ten-fold leaps in the key measure of the diameter of the light-gathering power.

  Diameter Year Main Optic Telescope

  4.2 centimetres (nearly) 1620 Lens A very early model made soon after the first telescope. This one was one of Galileo’s Perspicilli. Easily portable

  42 centimetres (almost) 1847 One large lens Harvard University’s Harvard Great Refractor

  Making perfect large lenses was and still is technically a very tricky proposition indeed. This one was the largest telescope in the USA for 20 years. In Europe there were already considerably larger mirror-technology telescopes

  4.2 metres 1987 One quite big mirror UK-Netherlands William Herschel Telescope, Canary Islands

  42 metres Planned for 2018 Five big mirrors The European ELT—Extremely Large Telescope, Chile

  Boldly going beyond ‘very’ and ‘extremely’ in the telescope name one-upmanship game is a plan published by the European Space Organisation for a 100m diameter telescope very amusingly named OWL: the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.

  Seeing the World In A Grape

  Smart thinking doesn’t only happen on ergonomically-borne buttocks in a status corner office with a designer desk and hot PA. At the outbreak of the First World War the physicist and professor Karl Schwarzchild immediately stepped up to enlist in the German Army and fight for his country. In 1915 as Einstein published the paper containing his general theory of relativity Schwarzchild was on the Russian front, a place of horrendous conflict, but within weeks he was first to divine the exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity.

  His work included identifying the eponymous Schwarzchild radius. This predicted the possibility of black holes—any object with mass becoming smaller than its Schwarzchild radius will continue collapsing under its own gravity. This applies to the Earth. The size at which we would all be living inside our own personal black hole occurs the instant the Earth’s diameter drops to less than 18 millimetres—a planet the size of a svelte grape.

  Not long after this triumph Karl Schwarzchild developed a quite horrible autoimmune skin condition which, pre-antibiotics, commonly lead to serious secondary infections. Having solved Einstein’s field equations on the battlefield, he died there, aged 42.

  Expanding Universe Scientists

  Belonging to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider is a 27 kilometre tube capable of making small bits of things very dizzy, crashing them, and seeing what flew off. The idea is to try and understand more about life, the universe and everything. When the expanding number of LHC scientists acquired more office accommodation recently they named their new complex Building 42.

  Multiple experiments use the LHC. One of these is FP420 looking at the feasibility of additional detectors placed 420m away from the main collision area. A spokesman on this project was the erudite Lancastrian and TV presenter, Professor Brian Cox, who was ‘chuffed’ to be given an OBE at 42 in the Queen’s 2010 Birthday Honours.

  Astronomy Precinct

  Astronomy Precinct, beside the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii, is probably the finest star-gazing real estate in the world. At 4,200m the elevation puts you effortlessly (Steve, a personable Iowan
with a driving licence drove our micro-coach) above some 42% of the earth’s atmosphere. Regularly clear skies and the smooth, cool wind means that the ‘astronomical seeing’ is expressed as around 0.42 arcseconds or…twinkless, twinkless little stars.

  The superior seeing has made Astronomy Precinct home to the world’s finest collection of a kind of time machine—telescopes detecting scintilla of light that started their trip to Astronomy Precinct billions of years earlier. The dozen fantastic instruments include the giant Pair of Kecks, funded by well-trousered philanthropist W.M. Keck; Japan’s massive Subaru the largest single mirror telescope in the world (not named as I supposed after the automobile manufacturer but more romantically for the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, star cluster, which you may make out even in daylight by standing in front of any Subaru); and the James Clerk Maxwell, notable to lovers of anoraks for both possessing the world’s largest piece of Gore-Tex®, and for making the first earthly observation of the afterglow of GRB 090423, a massive explosion indicating the formation of a black hole. It is the most distant and hence oldest object ever seen having occurred when the universe was 630 million years old, a nudge over 4.2% of the present age.

  Escape Velocity

  A speed of 42 kilometres per second is needed to escape from the phenomenon known as the sun’s gravity if starting from somewhere on earth.

  This is 35 times faster than the fastest rifle bullet—yet supermacho quantum physicists think of gravity as such a weakling force they are quite happy to ignore it.

  They Could be Twins

  Name on passport M42 M42

  Known to her

  mates as… Périphérique de

  Birmingham The Orion Nebula

  In a nutshell for

  Guardian readers,

  what is it? Popular six lane

  cut-through

  between Catshill in

  Worcestershire

  (population 4428)

  and Appleby

  Magna in

  Leicestershire

  (population 1050).

  Carries 120,000

  vehicles a day A lot of dust (think

  bag-less vacuum

  cleaner) plus brown

  dwarfs plus protoplanets.

  So vast, its

  own gravity makes

  new stars. Currently

  our nearest spot to go

  and see new stars

  being made

  And ‘M’ must be

  code for something

  interesting or

  mysterious? An IJD (ironic joke

  device) left by the

  retreating Romans.

  M comes from a

  latin verb, Moto,

  that used to mean

  setting in motion The 18th century

  French astronomer

  Charles Messier

  numbered 110

  distractions interfering

  with the serious

  business of comet-hunting.

  His

  distractions are some of

  the most spectacular

  sights in the universe

  I’m warming to

  this, where should

  I be looking? South of

  Birmingham, east of

  Solihull. Can’t miss

  it mate Look for a fuzzy star in

  Orion’s sword. NB If

  you are reading this by

  torchlight in Australia or

  New Zealand, remember,

  our Orion is your

  Shopping Trolley. Hey,

  if you’re keen, why not

  join a Messier marathon

  and try to see all 110 in

  one wild night?

  Where can I go to

  have a pee, ask if

  you’ve seen the

  astronomical price

  of meals in here,

  flock around with

  others in the

  manner favoured

  by decapitated

  poultry, and then

  buy a Ginsters? Tamworth or

  Hopton Park Subject to planning

  consent and the

  formation of a suitable

  star and planet the

  42nd branch of

  Milliways, Douglas

  Adams’ growing

  restaurant chain-cum-service

  station at the

  end of the universe.

  See you instore

  But practically—

  what if the Earth

  were the size of a

  grain of sand on

  Blackpool Beach? If the Earth were a

  grain of sand the

  M42 wouldn’t quite

  get you all the way

  across a red blood

  cell If the Earth were a

  grain of sand the Orion

  Nebula would be the

  size of the Earth, pre-shrinkage

  obviously

  Speed cameras? Yes No

  Hollywood Signs

  Mr Simpson’s Dark Secret

  Mr Homer Simpson is not 42. Fox made an episode called ‘Summer of 4 Ft. 2’ being a parody of the coming-of-age film Summer of ’42 but that is not relevant. The Family Simpson enjoy a ‘floating timeline’—a euphemism used to avoid the distress and all-round unpleasantness involved in having to break the news that they stay the same age while the audience gets old and dies. Mr Simpson’s age has been stationed in a zone between 35 and 40. But…two birthdates have been seen. An episode first aired in 1990 shows an insurance form in which Mr Simpson’s birthdate is shown as May 10th 1955, the exact same day as John Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman. This may of course have been a complete coincidence.

  This would have made Mr Simpson’s 42nd birthday May 10th 1997, the same day as Mark Chapman obviously, when Mr Simpson was something over a year younger than his creator Matt Groening, who was forty-three at the time. The second birth date to appear was on a driving licence seen in 1993 that showed a birthdate of May 12th 1956 with Mr Simpson sharing a first day on Earth with Kix Brooks the country music singer and songwriter, which may of course be a complete coincidence. The Yankees-Indians baseball playoff prevented Mr Simpson’s 42nd birthday—counting from his first birth—being the first airdate for the episode ‘The Simpson’s Spin-off Showcase’ which was held over to the following day. This episode happens to have the production code 4F20 so that, I think, is a wrap.

  P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney

  Contending for the most famous 42 in the world is part of the name and address read by Dory on a mislaid diver’s mask in Disney’s Finding Nemo. ‘P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney’ is a catchphrase in the film and the title of a song in the soundtrack. Finding Nemo won the animated film Oscar in 2003 and has been reported as the all-time best-selling DVD and has the highest gross sales for a g-rated—children’s—film.

  Quad Wranglers

  A classic film scene is the climax of Chariots of Fire that features an attempt to race around the central quad of Cambridge’s Trinity College before the clock chimes twenty-four times—at noon. The scene is based on the real Great Court Run which has only been done successfully twice; firstly in 1927 by Lord Burghley, and then in 2007 by Sam Dobin in a faster time of 42.77 seconds.

  Timewarping—Again and Again and Again

  Always to hand on my desk is the one book I don’t keep in the toilet; Phil Farrand’s The Nitpicker’s Guide for Classic Trekkers. She’s getting a little battered now but will always repay close study. For example, if you turn to page 171 it shows that the 42nd episode of Star Trek was called Obsession and was first aired on earthdate December 15th 1967, stardate 3620.7. Now, thumb through to page 179 and you see that the 42nd episode to be filmed was The Trouble With Tribbles which went out two weeks later on earthdate December 29th 1967 or stardate 4523.3. But thinking logically, i.e. as seen from the bridge of the USS Enterprise, the real 42nd episode was the 42nd episode in stardate order,
which is Mirror, Mirror (stardate circa 3585.5, and aired on October 6th 1967). The 42nd episode of Star Trek: so good they made it a mind-warping three times. Thankfully all stardates in the second series of Star Trek The Next Generation start with 42.

  I am unable to leave this most fascinating of subjects without telling you about the world’s only monument to something that won’t happen in the future. If you walk behind the barber’s shop in the very small Iowan town of Riverside (population 928, motto ‘Where the trek begins’), there is a plaque marking the official location of Captain Kirk’s future birth on the March 22nd 2228. If you are following the 42nd parallel trail, it is a short but eminently worthwhile 36-mile hike to the south.

  ‘10’

  Blake Edwards’ 1979 film ‘10’ starring Dudley Moore, Bo Derek, beaded corn row hair, Julie Andrews, Ravel’s Bolero, and sex, begins with Dudley Moore’s character, a music writer called George Webber, celebrating his 42nd birthday.

  Gung Ho

  The phrase gung ho entered Western vocabulary after the 1942 marine raid on the Japanese soldiers holding Makin Island (now Butariti). Gung ho’s meaning as originally intended by Evans Carlson, the raid leader, was to be working for the other fellow knowing that help would be received in turn. The raid on Makin Island was the first ever to land a force of Marine Raiders from a submarine and the raid featured in a 1943 morale-lifting war film Gung Ho!. A modern 41,000 ton amphibious assault craft, the USS Makin Island, is currently named for the Marine Raiders who landed on the atoll. Few people knew until long after that nine marines had accidentally been left stranded on Makin Island and were beheaded by the Japanese. The fate of the nine marines was written about by Tripp Wiles in his 2007 book, Forgotten Raiders of ’42.