I received my final documents from NASA under a Freedom of Information Act request that I sent in October 2021 as part of my Masters Thesis dealing with the Space Shuttle Challenger. One of my focuses in the paper was to address whether the statement that “the Challenger tragedy on January 28, 1986 was caused…
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Having submitted my Master of History thesis on the Space Shuttle Challenger (we have three theses in this program, so don’t get excited), I decided to join the ultimate challenge for either an attorney or a historian; brevity. I need to condense my 74 pages down to a one page slide supported by a three…
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Ship breaking (scrapping) is a classic situation of developed countries (in World Systems terminology, “core states”) sucking up the good parts of technology, production, capital, and profits, while exporting the bad parts to lesser developed areas of the world (“periphery states”) willing to accept what the core countries allow, in exchange for taking risks otherwise…
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I am beginning my book project dealing with asbestos exposures arising from ship building, seafaring, and ship breaking (scrapping) that will be my focus for at least a couple of years. Fingers crossed on the detailed research and pulling it off informatively and with an interested readership. Right now, ship breaking is likely the most…
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I didn’t know much about 1825, so I looked it up. On February 9, 1825, John Quincy Adams was elected President of the United States without getting the majority of the electoral vote, the popular vote, or any shots being fired. Hand it to Henry Clay for doing the honorable thing. A great deal is…
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We went live with this website and blog one year ago as I was morphing from an attorney to a student of history. I could not be happier with the transition in regards to what I do on a day to day basis and the new friends and professionals with whom I get to hang…
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I was playing around on eBay the other day and came across for sale a copy of Ellis Island, The Coal Mines, to the Asbestos Capital of the World which I described in my January 22, 2021 blog at https://theasbestosblog.com/?paged=5&page_id=147. This is quite a book and I never expected to see a second copy on…
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We are now into 1901 for our history review through the Minerals Yearbook. The scientists finally have capitulated to market forces that two distinct minerals will be mined and sold using the name “asbestos:” amphiboles and chrysotile. So, it is no longer “asbestos” versus “chrysotile” but, rather, it is “amphiboles” versus “chrysotile,” both of which…
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The year was 1896 (or 1897) and the scientists employed by the United States Geological Survey at the Secretary of the Interior decided to expand their annual (almost annual) discussion on asbestos. One area on which they focused during this 1896-1897 edition was the ever broadening uses of asbestos in society during that time frame.…
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As you may remember from my post last week, the 1892 Minerals Report for Asbestos discussed why Chrysotile fibers were not asbestos, although they appeared similar. See the first five sentences from the first page of that report. By 1895, the scientists threw up their hands and just refer to both asbestos and Chrysotile as…
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