El chascarrillo del viernes

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England and English expatriatesdesigned the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built thepre-railroad tramways and that was the gauge they used.
Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools thatthey had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break onsome of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacingof the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (includingEngland) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to matchfor fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike inthe matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroadgauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications foran Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever!
The next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. ImperialRoman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear endsof two war horses. (Two horses' butts.)
Now - the twist to the story: a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad hastwo big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. Theseare solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factoryin Utah.
Engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bitfatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to thelaunch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through atunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.
The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track,as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's mostadvanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago bythe width of a horse's ass!
And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!
Ancient horse's asses control almost everything!!