Pre-flight rituals before space travel

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-russian-astronauts-pee-on-a-bus-tire-before-launching-into-space-and-other-preflight-rituals

According to the ESA, Gagarin was on his way to the launch pad in 1961 when he realized he needed to urinate one last time. The bus was stopped, and Gagarin got off, headed to the back-right tire, and relieved himself. As a tribute, each bus trip to the Baikonur launch pad now incorporates a stop, during which crew members pee on the back-right bus tire.
There are quite a few "rituals" cosmonauts have to do.  The tree planting, the door signing, the Russian Orthodox blessing...

Cost of war

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/26/425904134/cost-of-war-veterans-remember-uss-indianapolis-shark-attacks



A Japanese submarine surfaced not far away, saw the silhouette of the ship on the horizon and began tracking it.

Torpedoes were fired and the ship sank in just 12 minutes.

There hadn't been time to get enough life boats into the water, so the survivors clung to life jackets, makeshift rafts and debris, thinking they'd be rescued within a few hours. But after two and a half days in the water, they realized help wasn't coming.

And then things got even worse. Hundreds of sharks had been feeding on those killed in the explosion. But now they turned their attention to the survivors. Thelen saw people get taken by the sharks.

About 900 men survived the torpedo attack after the ship sank. By the time of the rescue only 321 survivors were pulled from the water.

"Years ago, I wouldn't be talking about it to you or anybody else. I wouldn't talk about it for years," Thelen says.

Captain McVay, Captain of the Indianapolis, never got over losing all his men.  Feeling sorry about how the Navy was treating the submarine captain after the war, McVay gave his wife $100 and had her take him shopping for food and presents for his family back in Japan.  Years later McVay committed suicide with his service pistol, with a little plastic sailor clutched in his hand.

The Navy, humiliated by this fiasco, tried to indict the submarine captain for a war crime!  On the stand, the captain said that the U.S. Navy plowed the sea as if they were on streets.  The captain said he simply positioned his sub athwart one and just waited.  Didn't have to wait too long.  Sure enough, there came the Indianapolis.

The Japanese had the very best submarines and absolutely one of the great weapons of WWII...the Long Lance torpedo.  Far superior to anything we, or even the Germans, had.  Why the Japanese used their huge subs mostly for cargo and evacuation and not more offensively is a mystery.

The longer the Japanese captain was on the stand, the more embarrassed the Navy became.  They absolved him of a war crime (just doing his job!) and kicked him out.  That is when McVay gave his wife the $100 to spend on the captain's shopping spree, a man for whom he bore no ill will whatsoever.  He knew the captain faced poverty and hardship back home, his profession dissolved.  From one professional to another.  That would be much more than $1500 today, and surely had to have made a difference to the captain's family in the lean year of 1946.  

McVay, deep down, somehow blamed himself; never the captain.

See also Quint's Indianapolis speech from the movie Jaws:

The world's most charismatic mathematician

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world

It was at this juncture, having found his namesake group, that Conway made what he called “The Vow”, promising himself: “Thou shalt stop worrying and feeling guilty; thou shalt do whatever thou pleasest.” He no longer worried that he was eroding his mathematical soul when he indulged his curiosity and followed wherever it went, whether towards recreation or research, or somewhere altogether nonmathematical, such as his longing to learn the etymology of words. Conway’s fate now was to do all the stuff that he had formerly feared his fellow mathematicians might floccinaucinihilipilificate. “Floccinaucinihilipilification” is his favourite word. He reckons it’s the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary (it is certainly in the top three), and without prompting he gives an account of its etymology: it is a Latin-based word, invented circa 1730 at Eton as a schoolboy’s joke. And, Conway recites nearly verbatim the OED’s definition: “the action or habit of estimating as worthless.”