Five Bullets 2.16.24
The Underground Home, Moon Dust, King Tut & more
Good Morning & Happy Friday Everyone!
Welcome back to Circles In Space for this week’s edition of Five Bullet Friday.
It’s a cold and blustery day here in New York City. We had our first snowstorm this week and the forecast for tomorrow says we might get more snow tomorrow.
Thanks to a reader, I learned about an exciting and interesting piece of local history this week - that the World’s Fair Underground Home exhibit may still be buried beneath Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, NY. More on that below.
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Here’s this week’s Five Bullets:
History: On February 16, 1923 Howard Carter opens King Tut’s tomb. More on that from last year’s newsletter.
Movies: This week I had a chance to see Casablanca in theaters (Happy Belated Valentine’s Day!). I’ve seen this classic several times but it was my first time seeing it on the big screen. It’s a heartbreaking love story set in a small corner of the world during a tumultuous time in history. The movie is a classic for a reason: the plot is tight, the dialogue simple, and Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are impeccable. There’s something magical about seeing a classic movie from Hollywood’s golden age on film, with it’s spots, cue marks, and audio ranging from a whisper to blaring.
Notes: I’ve read that Eminem carries a notebook with him everywhere, constantly jotting down lyric ideas. Thanks to Noted post Eminem’s Boxes of Notes for giving us a peek inside the rapper’s notebooks.
NYC: For the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park brothers Jay and Kenneth Swayze exhibited their Underground World Home to fair-goers. Visitors entered the pavilion then descended to the fully-furnished three bedroom home below which doubled as a bomb shelter. There’s a mystery when it comes to finding out what happened to the underground home. The Gothamist’s investigation revealed documents which state that the home was ‘demolished’ but isn’t clear whether that means the home was simply filled in or completely destroyed. Either way, it’s possible that remnants of the home are still buried under the park.
Space: The Incredible Case of NASA’s Missing Moon Dust. This article (only free link I could find!) takes a look how some Apollo moon mission ephemera and moon samples have gone missing. TLDR: It’s an archival nightmare!