Tea at Trianon: The Baltimore Bridge Collapse

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Baltimore Bridge Collapse

From The Western Journal:

By now, most people have seen the shocking images of the devastating collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, that happened on Tuesday morning. Indeed, it would be hard to forget the sight of the cargo ship hitting the 1.6 mile bridge, with the bridge almost instantly crumbling on impact into the Patapsco River.

What caused the cargo ship to ram into the bridge or what was faulty in the construction of the bridge to make it collapse so readily has not yet been discovered. However, as many users on the social media platform X have noted, the ramifications of this disaster will be devastating for Baltimore’s infrastructure.

User Matt Bracken was among the first to point this out. Sharing a map of the port of Baltimore, circling the location of the bridge, as well as the other main highways, Bracken noted, “All of the shipping north of the bridge is now trapped in place. No other shipping can get in. The tunnel shown has height and hazardous cargo restrictions, it can’t take the heavy trucking traffic that used the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which took YEARS to build back in the 1970s.”

Considering that the Port of Baltimore is the main port for both Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this accident, as Bracken said, was a “MAJOR infrastructure hit.” (Read more.)