Jokes

Hi everyone:

 

I’m enjoying all you jokemeisters.

 

An American tourist walks into Westminster Abbey.  There in the vestibule is a huge gold telephone.  Attached is a sign that reads £2,500.  A few days later the same tourist walks into Salisbury Cathedral, and again – a beautiful, shiny gold phone, with the same sign - £2,500.  As the tourist makes the rounds of all the cathedrals in England - Canterbury, Coventry, Winchester, etc. it’s the same – same gilded phone, same sign - $2,500.  At Winchester, a vicar happens to be passing, so the tourist stops him and says, “Vicar, what’s with all these golden telephones in the cathedrals?  And why is it so expensive to make a call?”  The vicar replies that the phones are direct lines to heaven and ring right in to the throne of God Himself.  Nodding, the tourist continues the tour of cathedrals, which ends at York Minster.  He walks into the Minster, and there, as in all the other cathedrals, is the gold phone, but the sign attached reads, “FREE Calls to God.”  There is a line of people waiting to use the phone, so the tourist says to himself, “I didn’t come all the way to England to not talk to God on one of these gold phones.”  So he queues up, and as he does, a deacon walks by.  He stops the deacon, and says, “I’ve been to 8 other cathedrals in England and they all charge £2,500 to call heaven.  Why is it free here?”  The deacon smiles and says, “Son, you’re in Yorkshire now, and it’s a local call!”

 

Sorry, (those of you not from Yorkshire, Lyn), but I couldn’t resist.  The story is actually about Iowa, but I changed the details for this lovely website. 

Not a problem Ruth, I feel I'm in my little piece of heaven where I live anyway lol

Sweet Ruth!  I like that one.  I've been to York twice and I have to say that it is one of the loveliest places on earth.  I can't wait to go back.

If your photos are anything to go by, Lyn,  I would agree.  Yes, Diana, York is the BEST!  I can't wait to go back either.  I'd move there in a heartbeat if I could.

Thanks Ruth, its a bank holiday here and its dull and overcast and forecast of rain (the usual for a bank holiday lol)  Not a good day for taking photos, unless you like dreary ones lol

This is more of an amusing ancedote than a joke, but it has an England connection.  Some of you may have seen it - it was circulating around email a while back.  It's kind of long, so I'm cutting and pasting.

Does the statement, 'We've always done it like that' ring any bells?    The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.  That's an exceedingly odd number.    Why was that gauge used?  Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.
 
Why did the English build them like that?  Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.  Why did 'they' use that gauge then?  Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
 
Okay!   Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?  Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?  Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions.   The roads have been used ever since.
 
And the ruts in the roads?  Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

So…. the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's a** came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story…..
 
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.  The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the  SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.  The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains.  The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.  The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
 
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's *ss.
  - And -  
 You thought being a HORSE'S _ _ _ wasn't important!

 

Nice one Ruth. Did you know that the railway tracks are called, " The permanent way?". More permanent than than I thaught.

No, Peter, I didn't.  I'm glad they'e permanent, though.  The public transportation system over there is pretty amazing!  Thanks for the info. 

A cabbie picks up a nun. She gets into the cab, and the cab driver won't stop staring at her. She asks him why is he staring and he replies, "I have a question to ask you but I don't want to offend you.

She answers, 'My dear son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a nun a long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive."

"Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me."

She responds, "Well, let's see what we can do about that: first, you have to be single and second you must be Catholic."

The cab driver is very excited and says, "Yes, I am single and I'm Catholic too!"

The nun says "OK, pull into the next alley."

He does and the nun fulfills his fantasy. But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying. "My dear child, said the nun, why are you crying?"

"Forgive me sister, but I have sinned. I lied, I must confess, I'm married and I'm Jewish."

The nun says, "That's OK, my name is Kevin and I'm on my way to a Halloween party."

LOL