Recent comments in /f/history

rechlin t1_j144amm wrote

Reply to comment by Obiwan_Salami in When this bridge in Fort Benton, Montana, USA was built 1888 it was required to have a swing span to allow steamboats to navigate. It was considered the furthest navigable point on Earth, more than 2,700 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. by triviafrenzy

But that point was closer to the ocean than Montana. The point here is this was the farthest point away from the end of a river that the river was still navigable.

Of course, this was in the 1800s. That part of the Missouri has not been navigable since the 1950s when the USACE built a set of flood-control dams on the Missouri.

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peteroh9 t1_j141yy7 wrote

Reply to comment by Obiwan_Salami in When this bridge in Fort Benton, Montana, USA was built 1888 it was required to have a swing span to allow steamboats to navigate. It was considered the furthest navigable point on Earth, more than 2,700 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. by triviafrenzy

Do you not realize that they reversed it by connecting the rivers? How would the Chicago River have flowed into Lake Michigan and connected to a river that flows to the ocean?

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peteroh9 t1_j141juq wrote

Reply to comment by Obiwan_Salami in When this bridge in Fort Benton, Montana, USA was built 1888 it was required to have a swing span to allow steamboats to navigate. It was considered the furthest navigable point on Earth, more than 2,700 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. by triviafrenzy

Doesn't matter if it's navigable if you couldn't get to it from the Illinois river. It originally flowed into Lake Michigan because it wasn't connected to the Illinois River.

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MonsignorJabroni t1_j13yx2c wrote

Reply to comment by Initial_E in When this bridge in Fort Benton, Montana, USA was built 1888 it was required to have a swing span to allow steamboats to navigate. It was considered the furthest navigable point on Earth, more than 2,700 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. by triviafrenzy

The bridge isn't the very end of the navigable limit, it's just the last bridge that is needed to let boat traffic through on the navigable stretch. I assume the river becomes impassible not too far upstream from the bridge.

A canal is not natural and many of those we have today did not exist at the time referenced in this post. At the time this bridge was built, there was no point further from an ocean outlet that you could feasibly navigate a boat to without crossing land.

It's not true anymore since there's a shitload of canals elsewhere and there are dams on the Missouri river preventing moving further upstream.

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Due_Signature_5497 t1_j13y421 wrote

Reply to comment by Ironclad2nd in Why didn't the US adopt the STG-44 after WW2? by TurboTortois3

Only comment I might argue is “at it’s strongest” . I don’t think we heeded the warning that Eisenhower gave us about the military industrial complex when he left the presidency. The fact that the Iranian drones that have been shot down are made with 82% American provided parts, and we are essentially arming both sides in the Ukraine shows the power that they still have.

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Initial_E t1_j13xtmx wrote

Reply to comment by drunkenknight9 in When this bridge in Fort Benton, Montana, USA was built 1888 it was required to have a swing span to allow steamboats to navigate. It was considered the furthest navigable point on Earth, more than 2,700 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. by triviafrenzy

I still don’t get it. What makes a canal different from other bodies of water, and why would the furthest point you can go be a bridge that is already designed to let you go further?

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Ironclad2nd t1_j13xcvc wrote

Reply to comment by greennitit in Why didn't the US adopt the STG-44 after WW2? by TurboTortois3

Like I said: .280 had a higher penetration capability as well as muzzle velocity. I can’t remember the source but .308 was 4x slower than 5.56 and about 1.9x slower than the .280 thus less of the capabilities mentioned above. The only thing true was that the US did not want a foreign concept inducted into their military simply out of politics…. Nothing else.

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NoExplanation734 t1_j13wkhu wrote

Reply to comment by Vivid-Air7029 in When this bridge in Fort Benton, Montana, USA was built 1888 it was required to have a swing span to allow steamboats to navigate. It was considered the furthest navigable point on Earth, more than 2,700 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. by triviafrenzy

Before the invention of trains, it was much, much cheaper to ship by water than over land. Think about how long it would take and how arduous it would be to travel 2,700 miles by horse and cart with no roads, versus how easy and relatively quick it would be to just float down a river. There's a reason basically every major human settlement before the invention of the train was accessible by water.

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