The International Cessna^® 170 Association

An acquaintance told this recently...thought I'd share it:

"I was working in a scrap yard during summer vacation at engineering university. I used to work repairing construction equipment. One afternoon, I was taking apart a piling hammer that had some very large bolts holding it together. One of the nuts had corroded on to the bolt; to free it I started heating the nut with an oxy-acetylene torch. As I was doing this, one of the dimmest apprentices I have ever known came along. He asked me what I was doing. I patiently explained that if I heated the nut it would grow larger and release its grip on the bolt so I could then remove it.

"So things get larger when they get hot, do they?" he asked.

Suddenly, an idea flashed into my mind. "Yes," I said, "that's why days are longer in summer and shorter in winter."

There was a long pause, then his face cleared. "You know, I always wondered about that," he said.

True story:

Many years ago, I worked at McDonnell Aircraft at Long Beach. I worked with one guy who was the nicest guy you could ever meet, but man-o-man was he gullible. He would believe anything.

Well, one evening we were sitting around on break, and the subject of the USofA going Metric came up. Well, said Joe, he had heard that going Metric would be the end of civilization as we know it.

We just couldn't let it go, so we had Joe convinced that "you know, of course, that if we we do go Metric, you're going to have to get new clocks and a new watch and all new calanders" "really, why?" "Well, we will be going to Metric time. You know, 10 hour days, each hour having 100 minutes, and ten months in a year" "Really!!!????" "Oh, yea" says us "It's going to be great!"