View from my perch

ORD & ETC

ORD is the three letter identifier for Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. The identifier derives from the name Orchard Place Airport / Douglas Field, the "D" coming from "Douglas", not from the trailing letter of "Orchard", as I had supposed. The original airfield was constructed between 1942 and 1943 as a manufacturing plant for Douglas C-54 aircraft for World War II. Douglas Aircraft manufactured 515 C-54s in Santa Monica, and 655 were manufactured in Chicago.

As a former employee of McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company -- a component of McDonnell Douglas Corporation, and hence heir to part of the Douglas Aircraft Company legacy -- I was aware of Santa Monica as one of the early manufacturing site, but I had no idea C-54s were produced at Chicago as well.

For more about airport identification codes, see: Airport ABCs: An Explanation of Airport Identifier Codes.

Farrier

I purchased a cutting plier today at Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH). It's made in the USA at Meadville, Pennsylvania by Channellock, Inc.. The company website includes a page on their interesting history. In 1886, the founder of the company,  blacksmith George B. DeArmant, began hand-forging farriers' tools.

I had no clue what a "farrier" was, but Merriam-Webster's soon supplied the answer: it is a person who shoes horses. Not surprisingly, the original root for the word is the same as many iron-related words, the Latin ferrum. Of course. If my Latin weren't so rusty I wouldn't have had to look it up.

San Jose Mercury

Cinnabar, or mercury sulfide (HgS), is the chief commercial source of mercury, the curious silvery liquid metal. Cinnabar deposits were discovered just south of San Jose in 1845 by a Mexican cavalry captain, Don Andres Castillero. He recognized the red powder used by local Ohlone Indians to decorate the chapel at Mission Santa Clara as cinnabar. Mining operations began in 1847, just in time for the Gold Rush (mercury was used to help separate gold from ore).

Housed inside an 1854 San Jose hotel known as La Casa Grande, the New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum traces the rise and fall of quicksilver mining in the once-flourishing town of New Almaden. The New Almaden Mines became the largest producer of mercury in North America at the time.

New Almaden was named for Almaden in Spain, the location of the oldest and largest mercury (cinnabar) mine in the world. See this link for more information on that mine. 

The San Jose newspaper the "San Jose Mercury News" claims that its name refers to the importance of the mercury industry during the California Gold Rush, although the name Mercury is commonly used for newspapers without the quicksilver association.

There is much more to be learned about mercury, its properties, and the history of its use and mining. Then of course there is mercury poisoning and the connection with the expression "Mad as a Hatter".