E. Lynn Grayson

Savvy Environmental Lawyer-Past CBA President #proudmom #ERA #PlannedParenthood #RollTide #SMULaw

[Niagara Parks @NiagaraParks]

Tonight, Niagara Falls will be illuminated green at the top of every hour in celebration of World Environment Day! 🌍 Every day at Niagara Parks, we are committed to protecting the planet and our parkland.

[Alabama Crimson Tide | AL.com @aldotcomTide]

“If you had the biggest, baddest Ferrari that you could ever have, and it was going 150 miles an hour toward the Grand Canyon, somebody needs to tap the brakes.” Nick Saban on the biggest issues facing college sports from his U.S. Senate testimony.

[Architecture Hub @archpng]

Those red lines are not random repairs — they are the ghost routes of old chimneys.

On many older Paris buildings, fireplaces and stoves were connected to vertical terracotta or brick flues built into the walls. When a neighboring building is demolished or a side wall is exposed, these hidden channels can appear like reddish veins climbing toward the roof.

Each track marks where smoke once traveled from rooms on different floors to the chimney pots above.

[Ryan C. Fowler @RyanCFowler]

Saban has the college football world turned upside down today. I guess some of the bitterness still comes from all the butt-kickings he handed out over the years.

It took me the first few years of his Alabama tenure to realize that he genuinely cares about the game and that his words weren’t just talking points.

Some of you are criticizing him because he beat your team instead of focusing on what he actually said today in Washington, D.C.

I know it makes for a good story and generates clicks during a slow period in college football, but answer me this:

Why would a retired person of his status—someone with more money than he could ever spend—want to go to Washington and open himself up to criticism?

Maybe it’s because he truly cares about the future of college athletics.

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Inspired by piping plover enthusiasts, a Lockport couple protects killdeer eggs at construction site https://t.co/mM7WG6R6Oc

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Editorial: Sluggish LaSalle Street revitalization is lagging New York, Miami https://t.co/dcw0bnNSJW

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

As plastics clog the Great Lakes, industry presses to make more and downplays dangers, Tribune analysis finds https://t.co/RNfUDILjtp

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

Voltaire passed away today in 1778.

There are two quotes of his I always come back to:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

and

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Source: Fortune https://t.co/31SlMd5Xuq

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Source: Los Angeles Times https://t.co/xJpKbkRTZo

[Classic Rock In Pics @crockpics]

Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker) and Alice Cooper, 1973. This shot was taken backstage at A Shakespeare Cabaret at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, where Alice performed a track from his Schools Out album.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

That water clarity is an engineering decision, and the math behind it is wilder than the video.

Roman aqueducts ran on gravity alone. No pumps, no pressure systems. Engineers carved channels with a gradient so shallow it borders on absurd. The Pont du Gard in southern France drops 2.5 centimeters over 275 meters. That's roughly the thickness of a coin over the length of three football fields. They surveyed that accuracy with plumb lines and wooden leveling instruments.

The clarity you're seeing is a direct product of flow velocity. Too steep and the water erodes the channel walls, picks up sediment, turns brown. Too flat and it stagnates. Roman engineers targeted a slope of about 20 centimeters per kilometer, which kept the water moving fast enough to stay fresh but slow enough to stay clear. Before the water reached the city, it passed through multi-chamber settling tanks where velocity dropped near zero. Suspended particles sank. Clean water flowed out the top into the next chamber. Repeat three or four times.

Pliny specified the minimum slope in writing. Vitruvius published the exact mortar ratio for hydraulic cement: one part lime to two parts volcanic ash for underwater work. The pozzolana from Pozzuoli reacted with water to form a calcium-aluminum-silicate compound that actually gets stronger the longer it sits submerged. Modern concrete degrades in water. Roman concrete bonds with it.

Scale the whole system and it gets harder to process. Eleven aqueducts fed Rome at its peak. Combined output: roughly 1 million cubic meters of water per day. That works out to about 250 gallons per person for a city of one million. Modern New York delivers about 125 gallons per person per day. Ancient Rome had access to double the per capita water supply of the largest city in the United States, running entirely on slope and stone.

The Trevi Fountain in Rome is still fed by one of them. Two thousand years, same source, same gravity, same water.

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

In 1868, a bankrupt Louisiana banker with a ruined plantation and no income took some pepper seeds of unknown origin, mixed the mash with salt mined from underneath his own property, aged it in barrels, and bottled it in cologne bottles because manufacturing specialty glass after the Civil War was impossible.

That bottle shape has not changed in 156 years...

Edmund McIlhenny had lost almost everything in the Civil War. His banking career was gone. The Avery Island plantation he had married into was destroyed. When his family returned in 1865 they found the fields in ruin and allegedly a few volunteer chile plants still surviving in the wreckage. Nobody knows exactly how McIlhenny obtained the Capsicum frutescens pepper seeds that became the foundation of his sauce.

What is documented is that he crushed the ripened peppers into a mash with rock salt mined from the natural salt dome underneath Avery Island, aged the mash in barrels, blended it with French white wine vinegar, strained it through cloth and bottled it in small cologne-type bottles with sprinkler fitments, sealed in green wax. Workers on the plantation used small red sticks called le petit bâton rouge to identify peppers at exactly the right stage of ripeness. In 1869 he sent exactly 658 bottles to grocers along the Gulf Coast at one dollar apiece. He secured a patent in 1870, and the sauce sold out immediately.

Manufacturing specialised glass was essentially impossible in the post-Civil War South so McIlhenny used what was available. The sprinkler fitment on a cologne bottle turned out to be the perfect delivery mechanism for a concentrated pepper sauce best applied in dashes rather than poured. That practical wartime improvisation became one of the most recognisable pieces of packaging in the world. The original recipe, Tabasco peppers, Avery Island salt and vinegar, has not changed in 156 years. The salt still comes from underneath the same island. Every pepper seed used in production worldwide still originates from Avery Island.

A bankrupt banker's post-Civil War improvisation, bottled in repurposed cologne bottles, became one of the most globally distributed food products in history.

© Eats History

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

A “Butt Load” is an actual unit of measurement that equals 128 gallons...

Despite how it sounds today, a butt load was once a perfectly respectable and widely used unit of measurement.

The term comes from the medieval English word butt, which referred to a large wooden barrel used to store and transport liquids such as wine, ale, beer, and occasionally oil or vinegar. A standard butt held 128 gallons, making it one of the largest liquid measures in common use.

The unit traces back to trade practices in Europe, especially the wine trade. Barrels were sized deliberately to match shipping explanations, taxation rules, and storage needs. A butt was equal to 2 hogsheads, 4 kilderkins, or 8 barrels. These measurements mattered deeply in an era when commerce depended on physical containers rather than abstract volume markings.

Over time, the phrase drifted out of formal use but survived in everyday language, where its meaning became humorous rather than practical. What was once a technical term slowly transformed into slang, losing its connection to shipping ledgers and dockside warehouses.

Images like this show how literal the phrase once was. A butt load was not exaggeration. It was a specific amount, counted, taxed, and transported with precision in a world built around wood, iron hoops, and handwritten records.

In modern terms, 128 gallons is roughly 485 liters, meaning a single butt could weigh over 1,000 pounds when filled with wine, which required specialized handling and reinforced cellar floors.

#archaeohistories

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

Today in 1762, the Trevi Fountain was officially completed in Rome!

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

New water research confirms microplastics in Illinois surface waters. https://t.co/jBKV1EMzek

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Source: Secret Chicago https://t.co/htHby4aihC

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Source: WPR https://t.co/TpzRNJtshX

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Source: WPR https://t.co/ppyKAoHQEr

[E. Lynn Grayson @EPALAW]

Source: WorldAtlas https://t.co/mEQOahYxOV