Beagle Boys' grandfather

Wilmer Rivers rivers at seismo.CSS.GOV
Mon Aug 29 20:17:56 CEST 1994


If Blackheart Beagle from LO$ # 2 is in fact "Grandpa Beagle" in Barks's
"The Money Well", then he would be not only over 100 years old - he
would have to be about 120!  Since the group of Beagle brothers in LO$
# 2 was born around 1855 - 1860 (their mother must have had her hands
full!), then Blackheart must have been born around 1835, which would
make him too old to be "Grandpa Beagle", assuming "The Money Well" takes
place about 1955.  On the other hand, the brothers would be between 90
and 95 years old then, and that's why I assumed that one of them, not
their father, was Grandpa Beagle.  In other words, I figured that the
Beagle brothers in LO$ # 2 were two generations removed from the 1955
gang, not just one generation.

As for the Columbus story about the eclipse, I had heard that too, but
I always assumed that it was just a legend taken from Mark Twain's use
of the same gimmick in his time-travel fantasy, "A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur's Court."  I assumed this for 2 reasons: (1) given how
infrequently solar eclipses occur on any given part of the earth (even
partial eclipses), it would be one heck of a coincidence that one was
due there on the next day, when he "needed" one; and (2) since the size
of the earth and the latitude and longitude of the newly discovered  
lands were so poorly known when Columbus was making his voyages (as
can be seen from the weird shape of the Americas on early 16th Century
maps), it would seem impossible that an eclipse over that portion of
the earth could have been predicted at all accurately.  Still, maybe
it's true.  If you **really** want to find out, you could write to the
Naval Observatory in Washington and ask whether any solar eclipses
would have occurred in that area while Columbus was shipwrecked there.
The astronomers in the Nautical Almanac Office are on the Government
payroll, so they're supposed to answer queries from taxpayers about
eclipses, meteor showers, cometary collisions, lunar skunk cabbage, etc.
(As shown in the typical Hollywood cliche' where the defense attourney
pulls out the Almanac, turns toward the witness box, and shouts, "It
says here that the moon HAD NOT YET RISEN on that night at the hour
when you claim you saw my client in the moonlight, running away from
the scene of the crime...")

Wilmer Rivers



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