Mildly interesting
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Artie (Aardvark) is a male African savanna elephant born in the wilds of Zimbabwe in 1983. Before the age of one, Artie was orphaned due to a government-sponsored culling. He was captured and brought to the United States in 1984 with a group of 64 young elephants. Known as the “Nautilus Elephants,” this group was part of a plan by Arthur Jones, inventor of Nautilus exercise equipment, to create his own herd. The plan was soon abandoned, and the surviving elephants were sold. Artie was purchased by a private owner who trained elephants for circuses. Artie spent more than twenty years in performance and exhibition.
In October 2007, Artie and two female African elephants were transferred to the North Carolina Zoo to become a part of the zoo’s herd. In assessing his needs as an aging bull, North Carolina Zoo made the decision to transfer 40-year-old Artie to The Sanctuary to give him the best opportunities for lifetime care and continued socialization.
Artie arrived at The Elephant Sanctuary on January 31, 2023, becoming the 29th resident and The Sanctuary’s first permanent bull elephant. Artie (Aardvark) is a male African savanna elephant born in the wilds of Zimbabwe in 1983. Before the age of one, Artie was orphaned due to a government-sponsored culling. He was captured and brought to the United States in 1984 with a group of 64 young elephants. Known as the “Nautilus Elephants,” this group was part of a plan by Arthur Jones, inventor of Nautilus exercise equipment, to create his own herd. The plan was soon abandoned, and the surviving elephants were sold. Artie was purchased by a private owner who trained elephants for circuses. Artie spent more than twenty years in performance and exhibition.
In October 2007, Artie and two female African elephants were transferred to the North Carolina Zoo to become a part of the zoo’s herd. In assessing his needs as an aging bull, North Carolina Zoo made the decision to transfer 40-year-old Artie to The Sanctuary to give him the best opportunities for lifetime care and continued socialization.
Artie arrived at The Elephant Sanctuary on January 31, 2023, becoming the 29th resident and The Sanctuary’s first permanent bull elephant. Artie (Aardvark) is a male African savanna elephant born in the wilds of Zimbabwe in 1983. Before the age of one, Artie was orphaned due to a government-sponsored culling. He was captured and brought to the United States in 1984 with a group of 64 young elephants. Known as the “Nautilus Elephants,” this group was part of a plan by Arthur Jones, inventor of Nautilus exercise equipment, to create his own herd. The plan was soon abandoned, and the surviving elephants were sold. Artie was purchased by a private owner who trained elephants for circuses. Artie spent more than twenty years in performance and exhibition.
In October 2007, Artie and two female African elephants were transferred to the North Carolina Zoo to become a part of the zoo’s herd. In assessing his needs as an aging bull, North Carolina Zoo made the decision to transfer 40-year-old Artie to The Sanctuary to give him the best opportunities for lifetime care and continued socialization.
Artie arrived at The Elephant Sanctuary on January 31, 2023, becoming the 29th resident and The Sanctuary’s first permanent bull elephant.
For more, including a pic of this handsome guy: https://www.elephants.com/elephants/artie
(I intend to commence donating to an elephant sanctuary soon.)
Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace. – Mike Ditka
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@Catseye3 said in Mildly interesting:
Link to videoArtie arrived at The Elephant Sanctuary on January 31, 2023, becoming the 29th resident and The Sanctuary’s first permanent bull elephant.
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It seems like this claim originated from Cash himself, in his 1997 autobiography (quoted here):
The Air Force taught me the things every military service imparts to its enlisted men … plus one skill that’s pretty unusual: if you ever need to know what one Russian is signaling to another in Morse code, I’m your man. I had such a talent for that particular line of work and such a good left ear, that in Landsberg, where the United States Air Force Security Service ran radio intercept operations worldwide, I was the ace. I was who they called when the hardest jobs came up. I copied the first news of Stalin’s death. I located the signal when the first Soviet jet bomber made its first flight from Moscow to Smolensk; we all knew what to listen for, but I was the one who heard it. I couldn’t believe that Russian operator. He was sending at thirty-five words a minute by hand, a rate so fast I thought it was a machine transmitting until I heard him screw up. He was truly exceptional, but most of his comrades were fast enough to make the best Americans sound like amateurs, sloppy and slow. It didn’t matter, though.
A later biography of Cash writes however:
While he was, in fact, at Landsberg on March 5, 1953, the day Joseph Stalin died, his comment in Cash: The Autobiography that "I was who they called when the hardest jobs came up. I copied the first news of Stalin's death" brings a wry smile to the faces of those who worked with him. "That's nonsense," says one. "He didn't understand Russian, and if it came in code we wouldn't have been able to decipher it anyway. It created a certain aura about his skill that in my view was directly related to his celebrity."
So: True or not? -
There were units stationed in Bremerhaven who did this for real.
My dad aced the entrance tests when he joined the AF. They gave him the choice between pilot school and language school. He didn’t want to be dogfighting the Chinese over Korea so he went to language school.
The DoD contracted with the University of Syracuse to teach these smart lads Russian. It was their job, all day, 6 days a week, to learn Russian. Six months later they shipped him out to Bremerhaven and he spent 8hr shifts listening to Russian radio and transcribing.
All of this is googlable except the presence of my Dad.
Cash was talking shit. That’s ok. It happens.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
