History
Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas, as the tenth of thirteen children to George and Susan Coleman, who were of African American and possibly Native American heritage. It seems strange to me that a person might not know if they were partly Native American, but then those were different times. DNA information did not exist then, in fact no one remotely considered that such a thing was possible. Also, in those days, any connection to Native Americans was almost scandalous, probably because it was indicative of the kidnappings of the settlers that happened periodically…and the Indian “marriages” to some of the women they had kidnapped. Children were born of these “marriages” and sometimes the women didn’t or didn’t want to go back to the world from which they were kidnapped.
While she may not have been sure of her heritage, Bessie must have been told that she was part Native American, because that is how her life was listed in anything important. Bessie grew up working in the cotton fields, but she had a natural talent for academics, especially math, while attending a segregated one-room school in Waxahachie, Texas. At 18, she enrolled at Langston University in Oklahoma but had to leave after one term due to financial difficulties. In 1915, at 23 years old, Coleman moved to Chicago to live with her brothers. She worked as a manicurist and managed a restaurant, where hearing stories from World War I pilots sparked her interest in flying.
Of course, it would not be an easy road…this journey to becoming a pilot. Because of the times she lived in, Coleman faced both racial and gender discrimination, and it kept her out of American flight schools. Frustrated, she thought she might have to give up her dream, but she found encouragement from Robert S Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender, and with financial backing from Abbott and banker Jesse Binga she stumbled into a future chance to study abroad. Coleman learned French and, in November 1920, she traveled to Paris to attend the Caudron Brothers School of Aviation. Flying a Nieuport 564 biplane, she earned her international pilot’s license on June 15, 1921, becoming the first African American and Native American woman to do so…shattering barriers in early aviation and inspiring future generations. She later honed her skills with advanced training from French ace pilots and visited major aircraft manufacturers like Fokker.
Coleman returned to the US in 1922 and became a barnstorming pilot, dazzling crowds with aerial stunts like loops, figure eights, and daring low dives, often at airshows honoring African American regiments, but one thing the flatly refused to do was to perform at segregated events, thereby standing up for equality. Soon, she became known as “Queen Bess” and “Brave Bessie.” She was a celebrated figure in the Black press and inspired many aspiring African American and Native American pilots. Sadly, on April 30, 1926, during a rehearsal for an airshow in Jacksonville, Florida, her poorly maintained plane went into a spin, ejecting her from about 2,000 feet and killing her instantly. She was just 34 years old.
She died in the prime of her life, with her greatest aspiration as yet unfulfilled. Although Coleman never got the chance to open her flight school, her groundbreaking achievements inspired many, from the Tuskegee Airmen to NASA astronaut Mae Jemison, who brought Coleman’s photo on a Space Shuttle mission. In 1929, the Bessie 
Coleman Aero Club was founded in her honor to promote African American aviation. Her legacy lives on through commemorative stamps, monuments, and events that celebrate her as a trailblazer for women and minorities in aviation. Bessie Coleman’s life is a powerful example of courage, determination, and breaking barriers. She is a symbol of inspiration in American history and aviation.
It’s a strange phenomenon, the idea of a fine line between genius and insanity, but it seems that many geniuses also suffered from some form of mental illness, whether it be depression, Bi-Polar, Schizophrenia, insanity, or some other form of mental illness. It’s hard to say if their genius simply drove them “crazy” or contributed to an already present condition. Nevertheless, it seems that genius was also connected to mental illness.
Vincent van Gogh was an amazing artist. He poured his heart into every brushstroke, creating more than 2,000 pieces in just ten years. Saying he poured his heart out on the paintings, might also indicate that he would never settle for a painting that was not “perfect” in his eyes. Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, a mainly Catholic town in the province of North Brabant, Netherlands. He was the eldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh (1822–1885), a Dutch Reformed Church minister, and his wife, Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819–1907). He was named after his grandfather and a brother who had been stillborn exactly one year earlier.
There’s been a lot of debate about the nature of Van Gogh’s illness and how it influenced his art, with many different diagnoses suggested over the years. Most agree he had an episodic condition with stretches of normal functioning. In 1947, Perry was the first to propose bipolar disorder, a view later supported by psychiatrists Hemphill and Blumer. Biochemist Wilfred Arnold argued instead for acute intermittent porphyria, pointing out that the often-cited link between bipolar disorder and creativity might be misleading. Others have suggested temporal lobe epilepsy accompanied by bouts of depression. Whatever the case, his health was probably made worse by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia, and alcohol.
His deep love for painting was intertwined with his lifelong struggle with mental illness, often leaving him in despair and isolation. The famous moment when Van Gogh cut off part of his own ear has come to represent the thin line between genius and madness. Yet, despite it all, his art stands as a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit. Nevertheless, on July 27, 1890, at the age of 37, Van Gogh’s mental illness caught up with him. He shot himself in the chest with a revolver. It may have happened in the wheat field where he had been painting or possibly in a local barn. The bullet struck a rib, passed through his chest, and didn’t seem to damage any internal organs, but was perhaps stopped by his spine. He managed to walk back to 
the Auberge Ravoux, where two doctors treated him. One, Dr Gachet, had been a war surgeon during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and was well-versed in treating gunshot wounds. Vincent may have been cared for through the night by Dr. Gachet’s son, Paul Louis Gachet, and the innkeeper, Arthur Ravoux. The next morning, Theo hurried to be with his brother, finding him in good spirits at first, but within hours Vincent’s health declined due to an infection from the wound. He died in the early hours of Tuesday, July 29. According to Theo, Vincent’s final words were: “The sadness will last forever.” He simply saw no way out of his mental illness and no reason to go on.
People who are afraid of death, feel like they weren’t done yet, or feel like their life was stolen…and of course, have a lot of money, might consider a way to somehow prolong or even restart their lives…years after their death, when a cure for their terminal condition can be found. I don’t mean to sound like a sceptic, but…well, I’m extremely skeptical on this one. I simply don’t believe that freezing a body for years and years and then “restarting” it, curing it, and putting it back out there to live again, is even remotely possible. I suppose I could be wrong, but I don’t think so, still, I guess cloning wasn’t possible either. The thing that really settles it for me, is that no one is going to live on this Earth forever, and that would be the next logical step in the Cryonic Preservation scenario.
James Hiram Bedford was an American psychology professor at the University of California and author of several books on occupational counseling. Bedford was born on April 20, 1893, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Hiram Johnson Bedford and Fanny L Bryant. Bedford was married twice. His first wife, Anna Chandler Rice, passed away in 1917, the same year they wed. In 1920, he married his second wife, Ruby McLagan, and together they had five children: Doris, Donald, Frances, Barbara, and Norman. James Bedford also had a passion for photography and loved to travel extensively. He became the first person to have his body cryopreserved after his legal death on January 12, 1967.
In June 1965, Evan Cooper, who’s contributions to cryonics were significant, as he was one of the first advocates of the concept and founded the Life Extension Society, the first cryonics organization in the world. His book, “Immortality: Physically, Scientifically, Now,” published in 1962, was a pivotal work that laid the groundwork for cryonics. Cooper, of course fully believed his theory, but as it has never been proven, we may never know. Cooper stepped away from the cryonics and life extension movement in 1969. His former wife, Mildred, said he left due to overload, burnout, and a feeling it wouldn’t be a viable option in his lifetime. In his later years, Cooper took to sailing, but in October 1982, he was lost at sea in the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1965, Life Extension Society (LES) offered to preserve one person free of charge, announcing that they had basic facilities for emergency short-term freezing and storage of humans. They promised to freeze, at no cost, the first person who wanted and needed cryonic suspension. Bedford didn’t take the offer then but later used his own money. He had kidney cancer that spread to his lungs, which was untreatable at the time. Bedford died in 1967 at the age of 73. In his will, he left $100,000 for cryonics research, and his wife and son spent even more in court defending both his will and his cryopreservation against challenges from other relatives.
Bedford’s body was frozen in hopes of one day being revived, with Alcor’s Mike Darwin saying it happened about two hours after he died from cardiorespiratory arrest caused by metastasized kidney cancer. Preservation was carried out by Robert Prehoda, author of the 1969 book Suspended Animation, along with physician and biophysicist Dante Brunol and Robert Nelson, president of the Cryonics Society of California. Nelson later wrote “We Froze the First Man” about the event. Compared to today’s use of cryoprotectants, the methods were rudimentary…Bedford was injected with a mix of 15% dimethyl sulfoxide and 85% Ringer’s solution, which was once thought to be effective for long-term cryogenics but likely didn’t protect his brain. Vitrification wasn’t 
available yet, further lowering any chance of recovery. Initially kept at Edward Hope’s Cryo-Care facility in Phoenix for two years, he was moved in 1969 to the Galiso facility in California, then in 1973 to Trans Time near Berkeley until 1977, before being stored by his son for many years. Today, Bedford’s body is still preserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, even though I don’t think anyone believes he can be revived. Nevertheless, because his body was “technically” preserved or stored in suspended animation first, I guess they have that claim to fame…for whatever value it may have.
The Civil War’s Battle of Shiloh left 23,000 casualties. It was a horrible battle, but something was about to happen with the wounded men…something no one expected and something they had no way to explain…at the time anyway. While in the hospital, some wounded soldiers began emitting a faint greenish-blue glow. Can you just imagine the thoughts going through the heads of those doctors? Then, something even more strange started happening. While the cause of the glow was unknown at the time, doctors observed that those with the mysterious glow tended to heal more quickly. That earned the greenish-blue glow the name of “Angel’s Glow” and the name stuck. I’m sure the doctors soon started praying for every wounded soldier to receive the strange glow.
“Angel’s Glow” would remain a mystery for nearly 140 years. Finally, the mystery behind this weird fact from history was solved. In 2001, a high school student named Bill Martin and his microbiologist mother, Phyllis, investigated the phenomenon and found it was likely caused by a bacterium called Photorhabdus Luminescens. This glowing bacterium may have even helped the soldiers recover by consuming other harmful bacteria or pathogens they encountered on the battlefield. Photorhabdus luminescens, formerly known as Xenorhabdus luminescens, is a Gammaproteobacterium in the Morganellaceae family and a deadly pathogen to insects.
There are no contemporary accounts of this phenomenon, meaning that it may be “a myth or that conditions including low temperatures, low lighting, abundance of blood, time on battlefield, presence of specific vegetation, presence of rain and humidity, and the time to organize medical evacuation would prevent the phenomenon from recurring in current conditions. Photorhabdus Luminescens’ genome has been sequenced. It contains a MACPF protein, however, this molecule appears non-lytic. It also contains the gcvB RNA gene which 
encodes a small non-coding RNA involved in the regulation of a number of amino acid transport systems as well as amino acid biosynthetic genes. A deletion of the hfq gene causes loss of secondary metabolite production.” That doesn’t seem so odd when you consider that many records, especially those that seemed inconsequential or maybe too farfetched to be believable, might have been overlooked or hidden. Still, I would think that the doctors might have talked to other doctors to see if they had ever heard of such a thing. Or maybe they didn’t, because they didn’t want to look like they had some kind of “battle fatigue” or PTSD as we know it today. Whatever the case may be, the phenomenon was not well publicized, yet somehow the story did survive the Civil War. I guess there were a few people who talked.
During the Cold War, the city of Beijing was home to underground bunkers designed to protect the occupant from nuclear bombs and the fallout from them. After the Cold War, I’m sure most people assumed all those old bunkers were abandoned, but in Beijing, that wasn’t the case. Beneath Beijing over a million people currently live in a vast network of underground bunkers…the same bunkers originally built during the Cold War. Today, the area is known as the Underground City or “Dixia Cheng.”
In 1969, under Chairman Mao Zedong’s orders and amid rising tensions with the Soviet Union, construction began on the Underground City. The goal was to create bomb shelters that could protect Beijing’s residents from potential nuclear attacks. Over the next decade, roughly 300,000 workers built an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers, designed to house the city’s entire population if necessary. At the time, Beijing was home to about six million people. I doubt if the builders had any idea of what the future would hold for the underground city. The strange fact is that today, the Underground City still houses about a million people, mostly low-income workers, students, and migrants who can’t afford the steep rents above ground. Dubbed the “rat tribe,” they inhabit cramped, crowded quarters in tunnels that stretch across a little over 30 square miles.
As you can imaging, life in these bunkers isn’t easy. The units there have the essentials, like electricity, plumbing, and sewage systems. Still, the poor ventilation in the place leaves the air stale and moldy. It’s crowded so, people often share cramped rooms, kitchens, and bathrooms, which can make things tight and unhygienic. Nevertheless, the rent was much cheaper than above ground, so living here remains a practical choice for many, and almost mandatory for others. It’s an odd arrangement, almost like people living in an old coal mine in years gone by, except for the coal dust, of course.
Technically, living in these old bunkers has been illegal since a 2010 ruling by Beijing authorities, citing safety concerns. Still, many people remain in the bunkers, facing an uncertain future as the government has largely 
turned a blind eye by allowing them to stay despite the risks. This underground city is a hidden yet significant part of Beijing’s urban fabric, reflecting the city’s challenges with housing shortages and economic inequality. In short, these bunkers provide shelter for those unable to find affordable housing above ground, underscoring the complexities of life in one of the world’s most crowded cities. While not ideal, the city’s poor have to have a place to live. It is the sad reality of an uncertain economy.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis were systematically killing Jews just because they were Jewish. Sometimes the non-Jewish population tried to help their neighbors…to their detriment if they were caught. Some people his Jews, some smuggled them out of the country, as a few, like Dr Eugene Lazowski, born Eugeniusz Slawomir Lazowski, a Polish doctor saved thousands of lives during World War II. He was one of two physicians who staged a fake epidemic to exploit the German fear of poor hygiene. Lazowski became well-known after an article mistakenly claimed the lives saved were all Polish Jews, though he did help many Jews by secretly giving them medicine, an act that was banned and punishable by death.
Eugeniusz Lazowski was born in Czestochowa, Poland, to a Catholic family. He earned his medical degree from Jozef Pilsudski University in Warsaw just before World War II began. During the war, he served as a medic and Second Lieutenant in the Polish Army. Captured by the Soviets, he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp but managed to escape. He later worked as a doctor on a Red Cross train and then as a military physician for the Polish resistance Home Army.
After the German occupation of Poland, Lazowski settled in the small southeastern village of Rozwadow (now part of Stalowa Wola) with his wife. It was there that their daughter Alexandra was born. In addition to running his medical practice, he also treated travelers passing through a nearby train station. It was this role that gave him the ability to really save lives. While treating travelers, he secretly hid his medicine supply and provided it to Jews in the local ghetto, which bordered his home. In doing so, Lazowski risked the death penalty imposed on Poles who aided Jews during the Holocaust.
He ran his medical practice with Dr Stanislaw Matulewicz, a friend from their days in medical school. Like Lazowski, Matulewicz had worked with the Red Cross. He discovered that healthy people could be injected with the bacterium OX 19, a strain of Proteus, which would make them test positive for typhus without actually contracting the illness. Together, the two doctors staged a fake typhus outbreak in 1941–1942 in and around Rozwadow, leading the Germans to quarantine the area. The doctor’s fake epidemic was believed to have saved around 8,000 people from being sent to German concentration camps, though his memoir and the English translation by his daughter dispute the idea that most of those saved were Jewish. The reality is, however, that non-Jewish people would not have needed saving, for the most part, anyway. The journalist who wrote the article that sparked the legend admitted to a documentarian that the main details weren’t verified, partly excusing this by saying he didn’t know Polish. So, I suppose the story could be disputed, but it has never really been denied either, so I believe it’s true.
In 1958, Lazowski moved to the US with his wife Maria and their daughter Alexandra on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship. Alexandra had been born in 1942 in Rozwadow. The family settled in Chicago, Illinois, where Lazowski went on to become a professor of pediatrics at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1984. Over his career, he authored more than a hundred scientific dissertations. Though he may have eased his 
medical practice in the 1980s, he didn’t fully retire until 2004. During his semi-retirement, he wrote a memoir, Prywatna wojna: wspomnienia lekarza-zolnierza, Private War: Memoirs of a Medical Soldier, 1933-1944 was published in Polish in 1993 and later translated into English by Dr Lazowski’s daughter, Alexandra. He passed away in 2006 in Chicago, having lived in Eugene, Oregon, with his daughter. His legacy of great kindness, however, will live on.
When a mistake is made, it’s usually no big deal. We correct it and move on, but when that mistake involved to trains in the same place and the same time, you can’t just correct it and move on. Lives are lost, and property is destroyed. There is no real fix for this. On January 4, 1990, two trains collided in Sangi, Pakistan, killing between 200 and 300 people and injuring an estimated 700 others. This was the worst rail accident to date in Pakistan.
The Zakaria Bahauddin train, named after a holy man in Pakistani tradition, could carry 1,400 passengers and regularly made the 500-mile trip between Multan and Karachi. On January 4th, however, with 16 cars in tow, it was making the overnight journey. Packed with 2,000 passengers, it was overcrowded by some 600 people…a situation which was not that uncommon in Pakistan back then.
As the train neared the village of Sangi in Sindh province, it was unexpectedly diverted onto a side track. Without the Zakaria’s knowledge, a 67-car freight train had been parked there overnight, and the Zakaria slammed into its rear at 35 miles per hour. The impact derailed the locomotive along with the first three passenger cars, leaving nearly everyone in those cars seriously injured or killed. Around 200 to 300 people lost their lives, and about 700 were treated at local hospitals. Some of the injured had to be airlifted to Karachi for urgent care. The train’s engineer survived and later revealed that an inattentive signalman had mistakenly directed the train onto a side track. The signalman was later jailed for manslaughter.
Pakistan’s rail network carries over 65 million passengers every year, yet accidents remain a tragic reality. The crash in Sangi was sadly not an isolated incident…less than a year and a half later, a similar disaster in Ghotki claimed more than 100 lives. It would seem to me that some training would be necessary for these signalmen, as well as anyone else involved with the movement of trains in the network. In addition, workers need to be more alert and far less careless. For the unfortunate victims of the Zakaria Bahauddin train, it’s all too little too late. Maybe with better training some of the future trainwrecks count be avoided.
I think we all know that there is far more to the JFK assassination than most people will ever know, although the event never really seems to die, does it? It seems like we find out more and more about it every year. Of course, those behind the assassination continued to fight to hide the truth until the day they themselves died…and it didn’t matter anymore…at least not to them. Nevertheless, there are people, historians and those who are just curious enough to wonder, who simply don’t buy the crazy story that was presented to the world. I’m not sure many people remember or know about the JFK assassination these days. The older crowd does, of course, but how many bought the lie we were told, and how many believe differently, whether we can ever prove it or not.
On November 22, 1963, John F Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. As the story goes, one man, Lee Harvey Oswald manage to do the impossible. Per the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory, one bullet caused Kennedy’s nonfatal wound and Connally’s wounds. Conspiracy theorists, neglecting that Kennedy was not directly behind Connally, claim that the trajectory required a “magic bullet.” Secret Service agent Clint Hill was on the running board of the car right behind Kennedy’s limousine. He told the Warren Commission he heard a shot, jumped into the street, and ran to reach the limousine to protect Kennedy. As he got to the Lincoln, he said that he heard the fatal headshot which incredibly came about five seconds after the first shot. Right after that, Mrs Kennedy started climbing onto the trunk, but later she didn’t remember doing it. Hill thought she might have been trying to retrieve a piece of Kennedy’s skull. It’s hard to say. He leapt onto the limousine’s bumper and held on as it sped out of Dealey Plaza toward Parkland Memorial Hospital. Once Mrs Kennedy returned to her seat, Governor and Mrs Connally heard her repeating: “They have killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand.” It was said that Oswald fired three shots and the third shot was the fatal one. meaning that he fired a rifle three times in five second. I just don’t buy that story.
I never could figure out why Jack Ruby decided to kill Oswald. I’ve not found any information that indicated that he was a particularly huge fan of JFK, but maybe he was. Still, even given his volatile temper, killing Oswald wasn’t really in his character. Many people thought he knew that he had Cancer, and the killing was a job to leave something for his family. It’s hard to say. Ruby was convicted for the murder and sentenced to death. Due to some “technicalities” the case was appealed, and then, while waiting for a new trial which was set for February 1967 in Wichita Falls, Texas, Ruby was hospitalized at Parkland on December 9, 1966, with pneumonia and was soon diagnosed with cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain. His health quickly worsened. An armed guard stood outside his room, though family and friends could visit. On December 16, Earl Ruby, with one of his brother’s lawyers, smuggled a tape recorder in a briefcase into Jack’s room to capture an interview about Oswald’s murder. Ruby insisted he entered the basement via the ramp, killed Oswald out of grief over the assassination, and had never met him before. According to an Associated Press source, Ruby made a final statement from his hospital bed on December 19, 1967, claiming he acted alone: “There is nothing to hide; 
there was no one else.” Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism on January 3, 1967, at Parkland Hospital. He was buried beside his parents in the Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois. I could be wrong, but given so much conspiracy, I think it Ruby could have been poisoned, because of the speed with which everything happened. It reminds me of the person who commits suicide by shooting himself in the head…twice. A little far-fetched. You, of course, are welcome to believe what you like. This is my opinion.
Not every strike is legal, although these days most are. Nevertheless, in 1936, the type of strike known as a sit-down strike, or maybe a sit-in, was not legal. On the evening of December 30th at 8pm, in one of the first sit-down strikes in US history, autoworkers took over General Motors’ Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan. They were demanding that the United Auto Workers (UAW) be recognized as the sole bargaining representative for GM employees, an end to the practice of sending work to non-union plants, a fair minimum wage, a grievance system, and safety measures to protect assembly-line workers from injury. The strike went on for a total of 44 days.
The fact is that the Flint sit-down strike wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment move. It had been carefully planned. UAW leaders, inspired by similar actions in Europe, had been organizing it for months. It actually kicked off in smaller plants…Fisher Body in Atlanta on November 16th, GM in Kansas City on December 16th, and a Fisher stamping plant in Cleveland on December 28th. While the other plants were important, it was the Flint plant that was the real prize. The Flint plant housed one of only two sets of body dies that GM used to stamp out nearly all its 1937 cars. Taking over the Flint plant meant workers could bring the company to a near standstill.
On the evening of December 30th, the Flint Plant’s night shift stopped working, locking themselves in, and sitting down. “She’s ours!” one worker shouted. In retaliation, GM claimed the strikers were trespassing and got a court order for their removal, but the union members refused to leave. When GM cut the heat, the strikers bundled up in coats and blankets and held their ground. On January 11th, police tried to block their food supply, sparking the “Battle of the Running Bulls,” which left 16 workers and 11 policemen injured, and led the UAW to seize the nearby Fisher Two plant. By February 1st, the UAW had also taken control of the massive Chevrolet Number 4 engine factory, slashing GM’s production from 50,000 cars in December to just 125 in February. It seemed that no matter what management and police tried, the workers and the union were determined, and they were winning.
The 1936 Sit-Down Strike, known as “the strike heard round the world,” rocked the auto industry when over 136,000 GM workers in Flint, Michigan took part. Despite GM’s massive influence, Michigan Governor Frank Murphy refused to use force to end the strike. While the sit-ins were “technically” illegal, Murphy believed 
sending in the National Guard would be a huge mistake. Murphy worried that using the National Guard could lead to many deaths. Instead, he announced that state authorities would remain neutral, focusing only on keeping the peace. Finally, the problem landed on the desk of President Roosevelt, who then pushed GM to acknowledge the union so the plants could get back to work. Sometimes a problem has to be taken clear to the top to get resolver. By mid-February, the automaker reached a deal with the UAW, granting workers a 5 percent raise and the freedom to chat in the lunchroom. While that battle was over, the sit-down strike had also opened the door for the right to protest peacefully.
It seems like with every weather report, it is just as likely that the weather reporter will get it wrong as often as they get it right…maybe more often. It’s not that we think that they are lying or careless. Most of us just think that it’s impossible to really predict the weather accurately. Nevertheless, there are lots of times that they get the weather report pretty close to right on.
When we really understand all that goes into predicting the weather, we might find it easier to forgive the little errors. For example, a one-day weather forecast requires about 10 billion math calculations. Yes, a one-day weather forecast takes around 10 billion math calculations to produce. And that’s just for one day. So, tomorrow the same process repeats itself again. This huge number comes from the complex algorithms and data analysis meteorologists use to predict weather patterns with accuracy. The process involves millions of data points, like temperature, humidity, air pressure, and wind speed, all crunched by powerful supercomputers to create the forecast. Without those supercomputers, we would have hurricanes and tornadoes showing up with little warning, unless we knew very well how to read the sky. The weather reporter often gets it wrong because the atmosphere is complex and constantly changing. Meteorologists use advanced tools and models to predict the weather, but things like temperature changes, shifts in air pressure, and varying moisture levels can throw off their forecasts. Even with satellites, radar, and computer models, the ever-changing nature of the atmosphere makes long-term predictions less reliable.
For those who love a good laugh, plenty of videos and channels poke fun at the weather reporter’s blunders. They often showcase the humor in meteorologists trying to predict the unpredictable, offering a playful twist on the science of forecasting. Still, maybe we’re a bit too hard on them. While it’s easy to gripe when our weather app gets it wrong, forecasting has come a long way in recent decades. Today’s five-day forecasts are about as accurate as three-day forecasts were in the 1990s…little comfort when you’re caught in a surprise storm. The lingering stereotype of unreliable forecasts comes partly from the fact that accuracy varies. Five-day predictions are right roughly 90% of the time, but 10-day forecast accuracy drops to about 50%, and anything beyond that is basically a shot in the dark.
So, why is nailing the weather still so tricky? Well, meteorologists rely on those very sophisticated computer models that use data from satellites and other sources. These models work fairly well for short-term forecasts, especially for predicting temperature. Nevertheless, when it comes to pinpointing exactly when or where it will rain, it’s anyone’s guess. Accuracy drops for longer-term forecasts, because there isn’t enough data and the atmosphere is too unpredictable for the models to keep up. Right now, billions are being invested to improve weather predictions. One startup is using artificial intelligence to boost model accuracy. While AI seems to be a 
source of intelligence, we have also seen where it can be manipulated, so do we believe it or not. Another information source is sending sailboat drones to gather critical data from remote ocean areas. Something like that might be more plausible, but until these technologies improve, those 90-day forecasts are best taken with a grain of salt…and maybe a good sense of humor too, for those little weather mishaps.
