Liberty ship Jeremiah OBrien, engines running Finn John 2012-10-16 | We spent our last spring vacation in San Francisco. I'd forgotten the Jeremiah O'Brien was docked there -- it's one of two surviving Liberty Ships, out of more than 4,000 that were cranked out of U.S. shipyards during World War II. Turned out we'd totally hit the jackpot. It was an engine-room day. The ship's 2500-horsepower triple-expansion steam power plant was ticking over about 30 rpm the whole time we were exploring the ship.These things are 441 feet long and 56 feet wide. It's hard to believe they were busting a fresh bottle of champagne over a new one of these EVERY THREE DAYS at the Portland, Ore., shipyard alone. Awesome.
Spectacular fire claimed worlds biggest log cabin | Offbeat Oregon History Finn John 2012-08-31 | History article/slideshow: Ancient electrical wiring ignited Portland's legendary Forestry Building, a structure made of massive, flawless old-growth logs that had been built for the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905. Offbeat Oregon History is a weekly newspaper column that runs in about a dozen small community papers and on its web site at http://offbeatoregon.com -- this is the column that ran on June 17, 2012. It's read by the author (that's me!) and set to accompany a slideshow of images from the story.By the way, this is new stuff to me, so apologies if it's a bit crude. They'll get better.
