A 52-year-old father and his 23-year-old daughter were found dead on Friday in Canyonlands National Park in Moab, Utah, according to National Park Service officials. The San Juan County Dispatch received a 911 text from someone at the Canyonlands National Park in the Island in the Sky district Friday afternoon, informing the police of the […]

The tomb shows never-before-seen depictions of daily life

News Terminator Zero Terminator Zero’s Teaser Trailer Is More Like Terminator Vague But will he be back? By Molly Templeton | Published on July 15, 2024 Screenshot: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Netflix Netflix’s upcoming anime series Terminator Zero has a grand cast and an in-demand writer, but its creators are sure keeping their cards close to the chest. The first teaser for the show has arrived, and it’s barely a minute of vague Terminator action, with a brief monologue from a non-robot character who’s all that stands between “you” and the killer robots. Or so she says. “This isn’t what you think it is,” the trailer begins, before acting like exactly what we think it is: Killer robot! Dark future! Here’s the synopsis: Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children. It’s a bit odd that this soldier, who seems to be a very important character, doesn’t rate a name. Even Tudum’s article about the teaser refrains from naming her, but presumably she’s Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno), described as “a resistance fighter sent back in time to stop Malcolm from launching Kokoro.” André Holland voices Malcom; Rosario Dawson is the AI system, Kokoro; and Timothy Olyphant is the Terminator himself. Terminator Zero is created by Mattson Tomlin (The Batman II). It arrives on Netflix on Judgment Day—August 29th, in case you forgot.[end-mark] The post <i>Terminator Zero</i>’s Teaser Trailer Is More Like Terminator Vague appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Grail” A man on a holy quest crosses paths with a cursed engineer, and a Na’ka’leen Feeder is loose on the station… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on July 15, 2024 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Grail”Written by Christy MarxDirected by Richard ComptonSeason 1, Episode 15Production episode 109Original air date: July 6, 1994 It was the dawn of the third age… Delenn and Lennier interrupt a meal Sinclair and Garibaldi are having, expressing surprise that they’re not preparing to meet the honored guest. Sinclair has no idea what they’re talking about, but he plays along, telling Garibaldi to throw together an honor guard. It turns out the honored guest is Aldous Gajic, who is on a quest to find the Holy Grail. He is part of a long line of people who have sought the grail, though that particular society currently numbers one. Gajic apologizes for not informing Sinclair of his arrival, but he didn’t think his arrival was of interest to anyone but himself and the ambassadors—his purpose in coming to B5 is to meet with the four non-human ambassadors to see if they have any knowledge of the grail. He doesn’t say the quiet part out loud, which is that he figures that the humans on B5 would think of him as a crackpot, but the expressions on Sinclair and Garibaldi’s faces handle that pretty well. Delenn expresses surprise at Sinclair’s skepticism regarding Gajic’s search. To the Minbari, such a true seeker is someone to be admired and respected. In downbelow, an engineer nicknamed Jinxo is approached by a criminal named Deuce. He wants Jinxo’s help, or he wants the money Jinxo owes Deuce. To show that he means business, Deuce brings Jinxo to a woman named Mirriam Runningdear, who is scheduled to testify against Deuce. A tentacle appears from behind a crate, attaches itself to Runningdear’s forehead, and then her face goes blank. The tentacle retreats into a Vorlon encounter suit, and Deuce thanks Ambassador Kosh for the help. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Sinclair is summoned to medlab, where Runningdear has been taken. According to Franklin, she’s been completely mind-wiped. This is the third such instance of this happening in downbelow. Garibaldi is ripshit to discover that Runningdeer is the latest victim, as she was the only witness against Deuce. We get a look at the court system on B5, specifically Ombuds Wellington’s court as he presides over a suit brought by a human against a Vree (a short gray alien with an outsized head and big black pupil-less eyes, ahem ahem) for kidnapping his ancestors. Jinxo tries to pick Gajic’s pocket, and Garibaldi catches him, bringing him to Wellington’s court, dragging Gajic along as a witness. Wellington sentences Jinxo to be exiled from the station, pointing out that his skills as a zero-g engineer means he can get work anywhere. Jinxo, however, is adamant that he not leave the station. Gajic offers to take him into his custody. Wellington accepts that offer. Garibaldi then has to explain to Wellington that the only witness against Deuce is no longer usable as a witness, forcing Wellington to dismiss the charges. Jinxo joins Gajic in his cabin and explains why he can’t leave B5. He was an engineer on the first Babylon station—it wasn’t numbered at the time. It was sabotaged and destroyed right after Jinxo took leave. The company still had his contract, so he worked on the second station, and it too was sabotaged right when he took leave, as was Babylon 3. For Babylon 4, he was determined to take no leave whatsoever and see it all through—which he did, but then right when he left the completed station for his next job, B4 disappeared mysteriously. Jinxo is absolutely determined to never leave B5, firmly believing in his curse (which is also why he has the nickname Jinxo). Credit: Warner Bros. Television For his part, Gajic tells Jinxo how he came to be a grail-seeker. He’d been an accountant, but his wife and children were killed in an accident on Mars. He was grieving and despondent, then he met a dying man who was seeking the grail. Gajic took up his quest when he died. Ivanova and Franklin have a theory as to what’s causing the mind-wipes: a Na’ka’leen Feeder, a creature from Centauri-controlled space that’s supposed to be under quarantine. Mollari confirms this, and is petrified at the thought of one loose on the station. He locks himself in his quarters. Accompanied by Jinxo, Gajic visits Delenn, who regretfully says there has been nothing reported that they can find about the holy grail in Minbari space, but they promise to let him know if that changes. Next they meet with Mollari, who has just finished yelling at a Centauri official for letting the Na’ka’leen quarantine lapse. Mollari tries to work an angle to extort money from Gajic for a search of Centauri records to find this grail, but Vir has been a little too efficient and already checked the records and not found anything. Deuce’s people try to jump Jinxo, but Gajic fights them off. Then they meet with Kosh, but at the sight of him, Jinxo panics, having seen him mind-wipe Runningdear. Deuce’s people again jump them, and this time they capture Gajic, though Jinxo escapes. Wellington has also been kidnapped. Jinxo, in a panic, explains to Sinclair that Deuce is in cahoots with Kosh to mind-wipe people. Jinxo brings Sinclair to downbelow, where Wellington is about to have his mind eaten by the Na’ka’leen. However, Gajic is able to keep the Feeder at bay, er, somehow. A firefight ensues when Sinclair and Garibaldi arrive, with the Feeder exposed as not being Kosh and Wellington saved, but with Gajic being shot and killed saving Jinxo’s life. Gajic’s body is sent back to Earth, seen off by Sinclair and Delenn, and also Jinxo, who plans to continue the grail search—and also insists on being called by his real name of Thomas Jordan now. Credit: Warner Bros. Television At CnC, Sinclair, Ivanova, and Garibaldi watch Jordan’s ship leave, reassuring them that the curse is nonsense, as the station—for the first time—does not explode or disappear when Jordan leaves. Nothing’s the same anymore. Delenn says that Sinclair is also a true seeker like Gajic. She doesn’t specify in what way, though his ongoing search to fill the hole in his mind (“The Gathering,” “And the Sky Full of Stars,” “Signs and Portents”) might qualify. Which, given that Delenn is in charge of making sure he doesn’t succeed in that quest, makes it kind of hilarious that she’s the one who brought it up. Ivanova is God. When Sinclair and Garibaldi express relief that there’s no boom when Jinxo departs the station, it’s up to Ivanova to, as she puts it, have perspective, and point out that even if there’s no boom today, there’s always a boom tomorrow… The household god of frustration. Garibaldi desperately wants to do a complete purge of downbelow. Sinclair refuses to allow it, as most of the people there are just down-on-their-luck people with nowhere to go. Garibaldi is not impressed by this argument… If you value your lives, be somewhere else. We get the first mention of different Minbari castes, with Delenn and Lennier explaining that the Minbari Federation consists of the Religious Caste and the Warrior Caste. (The Worker Caste will be established later, and the fact that the workers aren’t mentioned by a pair of politicians is, well, not surprising…) Credit: Warner Bros. Television In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Not a great day for Mollari, as he finds out that the latest symptom of the fading Centauri Republic is letting the quarantine on a dangerous creature lapse, and then Vir screws up his attempt to extort a ton of money out of Gajic. The Shadowy Vorlons. Kosh’s response when told that Deuce disguised the Feeder as him is, “Why?” When Sinclair reminds him that nobody knows hardly anything about Kosh, making this kind of deception easy to pull off, Kosh’s response is, “Good.” Looking ahead. Jinxo’s description of the disappearance of Babylon 4 will be seen in “Babylon Squared.” Welcome aboard. Tom Booker plays Jinxo. The great character actor William Sanderson makes the first of two appearances as Deuce; he’ll be back in the movie Thirdspace. Jim Norton makes the first of two appearances as Wellington; he’ll be back in “The Quality of Mercy,” and he’ll also appear as other characters in “Confessions and Lamentations” and “Dust to Dust.” Linda Lodge plays Runningdear, while recurring regular Ardwight Chamberlain is back from “Signs and Portents” for his final first-season appearance as Kosh; he’ll return in season two’s “The Coming of Shadows.” But the big guest is the late great David Warner, one of the finest character actors, as Gajic. Known in genre circles for his roles in Star Trek (The Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country, The Next Generation’s “Chain of Command”), Tron (which also featured fellow B5 folk Bruce Boxleitner and Peter Jurasik), Doctor Who (“Cold War”), Batman: The Animated Series (where he voiced Ra’s al-Ghul), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (in which he danced incredibly badly…), and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (where he played Superman’s father Jor-El), among many others. He passed away in 2022. Trivial matters. Writer Christy Marx named Gajic after Mira Furlan’s husband, Goran Gajic. Gajic will later direct the fifth-season episode “And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder.” This is the only time the term “cycle” as a unit of time is used. It was the original plan for a time unit on the station, but by the time they decided against it, this episode was already in the can. The Feeder is the show’s first completely CGI alien. The transport Jinxo takes off the station is the Marie Celeste, which is the name of a ship found adrift with the crew (and a lifeboat) missing in 1872. This is rather like a ship deciding to name itself the Titanic, but whatever… The echoes of all of our conversations. “I’d say you have the wrong nickname. They should have called you ‘Lucky’.” “How do you figure?” “To have escaped the worst each time—that’s a blessing. You’re a very lucky man. Perhaps, each time, you were exactly where you were meant to be.” “I never thought of it like that.” “We never do.” —Gajic giving Jinxo some perspective. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “No boom today, boom tomorrow—there’s always a boom tomorrow.” So many times in this rewatch, I have seen some truly horrific guest casting ruin, or at least damage, an episode. It is, therefore, a genuine pleasure to watch “Grail” and see greats David Warner and William Sanderson ply their trade magnificently. Plus there are strong turns here by Tom Booker and Jim Norton. What they’re acting in is a nifty little science fiction story by Christy Marx (who, full disclosure, is a friend of your humble rewatcher) that plays the what-if game in a fun way, to wit, if you’re trying to find something, and you’ve looked all over the Earth, and you have space travel and contact with other species, why not look elsewhere? After all, if God is supposed to infinite, why shouldn’t the chalice used by his kid at a millennia-old seder wind up somewhere other than Earth? I also found the concept of Jinxo to be charming, both that the notion of his curse had grown roots to the point that everyone seemed to believe it to an extent, but also that it proved to be nonsense when he finally did leave in the end. It’s a little disappointing that we didn’t see G’Kar’s reaction to the grail quest, but that’s mostly because an episode with Andreas Katsulas is better than one without him. Mollari’s attempt to get some extra gamblin’ money out of Gajic is amusing and in character, ditto Vir’s circumventing that with his ultra-efficiency. The Deuce part of the plot is mostly fine, especially his using Kosh’s mysteriousness for his own purposes. It’s good to see the court system on the station (and the guy suing a Gray Alien for kidnapping his ancestors was cute), but the storyline lost me when Deuce kidnapped Wellington for no compellingly good reason. Seriously, what purpose did that serve? The ombuds had already let him go! And mind-wiping a station official is going to get you way more attention from Garibaldi and the gang than random nobodies in downbelow… Finally, I love that Delenn commands sufficient respect that Sinclair drops everything and throws together an honor guard just on her say-so—even if it is for a crackpot… Next week: “Eyes.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Grail” appeared first on Reactor.

The next president needs to eliminate the federal government’s administrative state, entrepreneur and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Monday at The Heritage Foundation’s Policy Fest at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “We don’t want to replace a left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state,” Ramaswamy said. “We want to dismantle that nanny state altogether.” The result, he said, would be “a modern revival of 1776.” Ramaswamy’s remarks kicked off Heritage’s Policy Fest on the first day of the RNC, which will run Monday through Thursday, when Donald Trump is scheduled to accept the party’s nomination for president a third time just days after an attempt on his life. “Our enemy is not the Democrats,” Ramaswamy said. “Our enemy is an ideology. And our task ahead is, how do we defeat that poisonous ideology while still viewing our fellow citizens as … our neighbors, who deserve to be liberated from that ideology?” Being a Republican in 2024 means upholding the ideals of the Founders, he said: We’re not going to be reactionaries defining ourselves in response to what the other side puts up. We’re going to define ourselves based on the ideals this country was founded on, ideals like free speech, that you get to speak your mind openly, as long as I get to in return. Ideals like merit, that you do get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character and your contributions. That we, the people, create a government that is accountable to us, not the other way around, that the people who we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government, not a shadow government sitting in the deep state that runs the show today. America has a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to use the Supreme Court’s June 28 overturning of the Chevron doctrine to dismantle the deep state, he said. The Chevron doctrine required courts to defer to the legal interpretations of unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state rather than to Congress. “What we need is a president armed with a policy agenda to go in there and actually get the job done,” Ramaswamy said. “And if we do, that’s a modern revival of 1776, itself a modern Declaration of Independence that we first fought [for] 250 years ago.” Eliminating the bureaucracy will “revive our constitutional republic,” he said. “This is not a left-wing idea or a right-wing idea, but the idea that we the people create a government that is accountable to us, that the people who we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government.” The post ‘REVIVAL OF 1776’: Dismantling Administrative State Will Be ‘Modern Declaration of Independence,’ Ramaswamy Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.

MILWAUKEE—Vivek Ramaswamy believes the United States may have fallen into a “civil war” if former President Donald Trump had been more seriously injured or died. Speaking to the press after his speech at The Heritage Foundation’s Policy Fest at the Republican National Convention, the former Republican presidential candidate discussed the Saturday shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The nation came within a hair’s breadth of, God forbid, a second kind of civil war in this country. And we missed it. … I think that God gave us that opportunity and now it’s up to us to step up and seize it,” the entrepreneur told reporters. Ramaswamy also said he believed that there was a divine intervention. “I personally believe that God did intervene. … That’s my own faith, that God puts each of us here for a purpose and he has a higher plan,” he said. “But even if you just look at it, even if you’re not a person of faith, something extraordinary happened for somebody to have aimed in a way that got that close and still missed.” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness,” he added. The post Ramaswamy Says US Could Have Had ‘Civil War’ If Trump Killed, Seriously Injured appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Elon Musk has suggested that the European Union attempted to coerce him with an underhanded deal to secretly implement censorship within his platform. Musk further added that EU-designed negotiations were accepted by other online platforms. However, he outrightly rejected the concealed deal. On Friday, the EU made strides in evidencing the potency of its fresh Digital Services Act (DSA) by launching an attack on X, which is owned by Musk. The group accused X of being in violation of specific EU regulations and threatened the platform with punitive fines. In response to this, Musk was quick to counter-attack by criticizing the DSA as a “canned misinformation” source. He further revealed that the EU had solicited a clandestine deal with him for entering into censorship pertaining to the EU’s directives. In his revelation, Musk stated, “The European Commission offered [X] an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us.” He assured his stance by saying, “The other platforms accepted that deal,” however, he did not agree to participate. He also expressed his anticipations for the future, saying, “We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.” The European Union criticized X for its lack of transparency and pointed out that social media platforms are obligated to counteract “illegal content” as well as “risks to public security” as per its regulations. Furthermore, the EU claimed that it was discontent with the X’s blue check system, deeming it incompatible with the “industry practice.” In case of non-compliance with EU’s stipulations, X could face repercussions, including a potential fine equivalent to six percent of its total global revenue. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Elon Musk Exposes EU’s Censorship Demands appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Carrie Wolinetz, past Chief of Staff of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), asserted in no uncertain terms last Thursday that there was no suppression of the lab leak theory throughout the Covid-19 drama. This denial, made during the Senate Homeland Security hearing, came in response to queries from Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, regarding her potential role in suppressing the theory – suggesting that the virus was inadvertently released from a lab in China – across internet platforms. Hawley sought to ascertain if Wolinetz had any regrets about not resisting supposed censorship attempts orchestrated by her then-superior, NIH’s previous Director Francis Collins, or Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hawley asked Wolinetz directly, putting forth, “Do you regret your role in helping censor millions of Americans who were kicked off social media, who were disciplined at work for saying ‘maybe a lab was involved?’” Her response was firm, maintaining that she never played the role he suggested. When posed with the question of whether she regretted not standing against such censorship, Wolinetz adamantly reiterated, “I don’t believe censorship took place, sir.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/HawleyMO-rtn-534.mp4 In light of her insistence that no such suppression efforts had been carried out, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky responded by revealing Wolinetz would not be considered for a role in a proposed board – introduced by himself and aimed at overseeing federal funding for high-priority life sciences research and assuring agency accountability – under the Executive Branch. Despite Wolinetz’s denial, evidence and instances that hint at a strict censorship regime have surfaced. One significant account of such censorship involves Facebook labeling and suppressing stories relating to the controversial lab leak theory a “false.” The Biden Administration even called for curbing “misinformation,” an action that included requests to Facebook to limit private conversations on WhatsApp, as revealed by emails from 2023 under the lawsuit: Missouri v. Biden, (later Murthy v. Missouri) revolving around freedom of speech. The release of the Twitter Files further unveiled Twitter’s broadened practice of handling content moderation requests from various federal and state agencies, the State Department, and the intelligence community during the pandemic. This collaboration between the government and social media magnates reportedly involved restricting the Hunter Biden laptop story, blacklisting prominent conservative figures, and subtly restricting conservative content. Records obtained by the House Republicans expose another probable suppression effort wherein Fauci’s advisor David Morens toned down the lab leak hypothesis at Fauci’s directive as per the instructions documented in the files. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Former NIH Chief of Staff Denies Suppressing Lab Leak Theory Amid Pandemic Censorship Allegations appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898) was an MP and social reformer, later known for his role as a maritime safety campaigner. Although born 200 years ago, his work to improve safety at sea remains relevant. His namesake ‘Plimsoll Line’ is found midship on both the port and starboard hulls of cargo vessels and is still used worldwide by the shipping industry to help save lives at sea. Here we explore the safety issues in 19th century shipping that Plimsoll wanted to address, his campaigning on maritime safety alongside Lloyd’s Register, and its ongoing impact.  A plimsoll line – load line mark and lines on the hull of a shipImage Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Flickr by Brinki / cc-by-sa-2.0 ‘Coffin ships’ Enormous growth in world trade meant 19th century merchant shipping became increasingly competitive. Despite the ‘Lloyd’s Rule’ that had come into effect in 1835 stipulating that classed vessels should have a distance from the waterline to the weather deck of 3 inches of freeboard for every foot of depth in the hold, many transatlantic ships were still overloaded by their unscrupulous owners in order to maximise profits, as the rule was only optional. Often overinsured, many of these overloaded wooden sailing ships were also often unseaworthy, worth more to their owners sunk than afloat. Usually old and riddled with wood-rot, woodworm and shipworm, many were repainted, renamed and falsely stated to be new ships.  The subsequent risks to crew members lives led to such ships being nicknamed ‘coffin ships’. Indeed at the time there had been over 2,000 cases of sailors who had signed on as crew being tried in court for refusing to board a ship upon seeing its condition, and in 1855 a group of sailors had even written to Queen Victoria complaining of being found guilty of desertion for complaining about going to sea in dangerous ships. Samuel Plimsoll’s campaign After leaving school early, Samuel Plimsoll became a clerk and later manager at Rawson’s Brewery. Yet having failed in his attempt to become a London coal merchant, Plimsoll was reduced to destitution in 1853 – an experience that helped him sympathise with the struggles of the poor. When his life picked up, he resolved to devote his time to improving their condition. After becoming a Liberal MP for Derby in 1867, Plimsoll investigated ship safety and was shocked upon discovering the scale of life lost at sea.  Aware of growing widespread concerns about the unsafe loading of ships and the many thousands of lives and ships being lost, together with his wife Eliza Plimsoll (an equal partner in the cause), Samuel led a decades-long legal, social, and political battle for justice against ‘coffin ships’. He campaigned to pass a bill for the introduction of a mandatory safe load line on ships. Left: Samuel Plimsoll. Right: Portrait of Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898), painted by Reginald Henry CampbellImage Credit: Left: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain. Right: Wikimedia Commons / Reginald Henry Campbell / Royal Museums Greenwich / Public Domain Plimsoll was unsuccessful due to opposition from merchants and the number of powerful ship-owning MPs in Parliament. Undeterred, he published a book in 1872 called Our Seamen which detailed evidence of reckless overloading, the poor condition of boat hulls and equipment, undermanning, filthy crew accommodation, the prevalence of over-insurance and the deliberate sinking of unsound and unprofitable ‘coffin ships’.  Plimsoll’s book became nationally well-known, prompting a campaign that led to the appointment of a Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships in 1873, to assess evidence and recommend changes. While associated with Plimsoll, load lines had been used dating back to the 12th century in Venice, but it wasn’t until the 19th century that their use became more widespread. In 1874 Lloyd’s Register made it a condition of their classification that a load line was painted on newly built awning deck steamers. This original load line was a diamond with a centre line and the letters L R next to it, and aimed to show how low a ship could safely rest in water without the risk of sinking. However, this only applied to ships inspected by Lloyd’s Register, and other ships could do as they pleased.  In 1875 a government bill was introduced to address the problem, and although Plimsoll regarded it inadequate, resolved to accept it. However, after Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli later announced the bill would be dropped, Plimsoll called members of the House “villains” and shook his fist in the Speaker’s face. Disraeli called for him to be reprimanded, but after the matter was adjourned for a week, Plimsoll apologised. Nevertheless, many people shared Plimsoll’s view that the bill had been stifled by the pressure of the shipowners. Ultimately, the power of public feeling forced the government to pass the Unseaworthy Ships Bill, eventually resulting in the The Merchant Shipping Act 1876. The ‘Plimsoll line’ The Merchant Shipping Act 1876 required all foreign-going British vessels, coasting vessels over 80 tons and foreign ships using British ports to have compulsory deck lines and load lines marked on their hull to indicate the maximum depth to which the ship may be safely immersed when loaded with cargo. (This depth varies depending on the ship’s dimensions, cargo type, time of year, and water saltiness and densities it would encounter while at port and at sea. Once these factors have been accounted for, a ship’s captain can determine the appropriate ‘Plimsoll line’ needed for the voyage.) Stringent powers of inspection were given to the Board of Trade to enforce this rule, however fierce opposition meant the act was misused by many as it was left to ship owners to decide where a load line was to be painted and to paint the lines themselves (with some even painting these on the ship’s funnel). To overcome this, data on vessels’ strength and construction was gathered by Lloyd’s Register surveyors, and used to draw up the UK’s Board of Trade Load Line Tables in 1886 to ensure the fixing of the position of the Load Line on all ships by law in 1890 – this line became known as the ‘Plimsoll Line’ in Britain.  Despite being re-elected at 1880 general election by a great majority, Samuel Plimsoll gave up his seat to William Vernon Harcourt, believing that Harcourt, as Home Secretary, could advance sailors’ interests more effectively. Having then been offered a seat by 30 constituencies, Plimsoll unsuccessfully stood in Sheffield Central in 1885, but later became estranged from the Liberal leaders, regarding them as having neglected the question of shipping reform. Nevertheless, thanks to Plimsoll’s campaigning, countless lives and ships have since been saved. International solutions By the early 1900s, many countries had adopted their own loading regulations, yet in 1906, foreign ships were required to carry a load line if they visited British ports. In 1930, the first International Convention on Load Lines established an international solution. Later, in 1966, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a UN agency responsible for ship safety, adopted a new Convention ensuring ships had enough reserve buoyancy and covering, allowing freeboard for a ship in different climate zones and seasons via a load line zone map:  Load line and Freeboard conference from the Lloyd’s Register publication, 100A1, 100A1, 1959Image Credit: Lloyd’s Register Foundation The original ‘Plimsoll line’ was a circle with a horizontal line through it to show the maximum draft of a ship. Additional marks have been added over the years, allowing for different water densities and expected sea conditions. Letters may also appear to the sides of the mark indicating the classification society that surveyed the vessel’s load line. Load Line Mark and Lines and Timber Load Line Mark and Lines for power driven merchant vessels. (TF – Tropical Fresh Water, F – Fresh Water, T – Tropical Seawater, S – Summer Temperate Seawater (NB – The ‘Plimsoll Line’ and the ‘Summer Line’ are the same thing – all the other lines take their positions from there), W – Winter Temperate Seawater, WNA – Winter North Atlantic Prefix, L – Lumber, L ⦵ R – Lloyd’s Register)Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Now, when a ship is commissioned, the exact location of the load line is calculated by a classification society, its position on the hull is verified and a load line certificate is issued. Calculations take into account the route the ship will take, and the seasons and sea temperature conditions of the geographic locations the ship will pass through en-route to its destination to ensure its adequate stability. The basic symbol, of a circle with a horizontal line passing through its centre, is now recognised worldwide.

Secret Service: No, We're Not Increasing Trump's Security