The Brains

History with SnowBrains: How Bananas Led to the First Chairlift in the World

The world’s first chairlift was built in Sun Valley, Idaho in the fall of 1936. The first two lifts were located on Sun Valley’s Dollar and Proctor mountains. The design of this new machine was patterned after conveyor belts which were used to load bananas on cargo ships in Central America. James Curran designed the first plans for the ski lift. He was a bridge engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad Company. Curran’s previous work making conveyor systems that ran at a continuos flow and loaded bananas on ships in Honduras inspired his design for a machine that could carry humans uphill and drop them off on top of a […]
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Did You Know That 500,000,000 Gallons of Water Evaporate from Lake Tahoe Daily? | Here’s a List of Tahoe ‘Fun Facts’

Fun fact: the daily evaporation from Lake Tahoe is about half a billion gallons of water. This amount would meet the daily water needs of 5 million Americans, or enough to support the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles. More facts about Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Basin (courtesy of Tahoe Environmental Research Center)  Q. How deep is Lake […]
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USA Night Sky Calendar – August 2022 | Comet PanSTARRS Visible All Month, Moon Rising near Jupiter, and the Brightest Meteor Shower of the Year

This is the monthly SnowBrains stargazing guide—something new we’re experimenting with in order to increase your awareness of all the fantastic things going on up above this off-season. The guide is meant to give you knowledge of the night sky and contribute to your experience when you’re camping out under the stars and just plain enjoying nature. We’ll be sharing […]
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On July 8, 99% of the Earth’s Population will be in Sunlight Simultaneously

Timeanddate.com originally published this article by Konstantin Bikos on July 4, 2022. Reprinted on EarthSky with permission. You might have seen this fascinating tidbit circulating the internet: For a moment each year, on July 8, 99% of the world’s population gets sunlight. Is it true? Konstantin Bikos, lead editor at Timeanddate.com, fact-checks this claim. Same moment of sunlight for 99% of the […]
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