Shipping Manure

[warthog5]

SHIPPING MANURE

Exciting Historical information you need to know about shipping Manure:
In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship. It
was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large shipments of
manure were common. It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less
than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but
the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas.
As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and
did) happen. Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone
came below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM!

Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it wa s determined just
what was happening. After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with
the term "Ship High In Transit" on them which meant for the sailors to stow it
high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold
would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane. Thus
evolved the term "S.H.I.T," which has come down through the centuries and is in
use to this very day.

You probably did not know the true history of this word.

Neither did I.

I always thought it was a golf term. ( HAHHAH)
:D

[R.I.Singer30]

That's quite a piece of..er trivia :D .What else will I learn here.How can I back this up if I get into a bar bet? :D

[Donn]

It's all over the web, and it's been on the forum many times, including just recently in a thread about nautical terms...however:

"Comments: Well, clever as that all is, etymologists everywhere must be holding their noses right about now. According to my dictionary, the word ****** is much older than the 1800s, appearing in its earliest form — before 1,000 A.D. — as the Old English verb scitan. That's confirmed by lexicographer Hugh Rawson in his bawdily informative book, "Wicked Words" (New York: Crown, 1989), where it is further noted that the expletive is a distant relative of words like science, schedule and shield. They all derive from the Indo-European root skei-, meaning "to cut" or "to split." For most of its history ****** was spelled "shite" (and sometimes still is, euphemistically), but the modern spelling of the word can be found in texts dating as far back as the mid-1700s. It most certainly did not originate as an acronym.

Apropos that false premise, Rawson observes that ****** has long been the subject of naughty wordplay, quite often based on made-up acronyms. For example:

In the Army, officers who did not go to West Point have been known to disparage the military academy as the South Hudson Institute of Technology.... And if an angelic six-year-old asks, "Would you like to have some Sugar Honey Iced Tea?", the safest course is to pretend that you have suddenly gone stone deaf.
And, finally, the "S.H.I.T." tale is reminiscent of another popular specimen of folk etymology claiming that the F-word (another good, old-fashioned, all-purpose, four-letter expletive) originated as an acronym of "Fornication Under Consent of the King," or, in another variant, "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge." Needless to say, it's all C.R.A.P. "

urban legends (http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/bl-s-word.htm)

[R.I.Singer30]

There goes my free drink :D

[TomRobb]

Amazing, the shit you can learn here.

[Ken Hutchins]

How did I manage to live 59 years without knowing that? :eek: Gosh all the time I've spent on the pooter (not to be confused with shipping poo) has been worth while after all. :D Thanks for the info. :cool:
Now for an additional bit to all this if the word sham means imitation, phoney, etc, Why do we call the stuff we use to wash our hair shampoo? :confused:

[Donn]

The word shampoo derives From a Hindi word meaning to press.

[NormMessinger]

Anyway, would the fermentation bacteria live in salt water?

[Donn]

Oh yeah. You should see how stuff stuff rots in salt water. The Eelgrass that packs my canal starts to ferment after 2 days in the sun. The only thing that keeps fish carcasses from rotting is crabs...when they can't get to it, it rots. Pull up a crab trap baited with cod heads sometime, and tell me that the heads aren't 'fermenting.' :eek:

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

In the nineteenth century, London was full of horses - carriage horses, cab horses, dray horses - and a celebrated Report by a Royal Commission on Transport in London, in the 1870's, urged the rapid construction of underground railways because otherwise the capital would find its streets three feet deep in horse manure in a hundred years' time.

Some 3,000 Thames Barges served London, connecting it with the coastline of Kent, Essex and Suffolk.

Many of these barges were owned by farmers; others were chartered by them - they sailed for London with a haystack built in the hold and on deck, and returned with the holds full of horse manure for use as fertiliser. It was, as a matter of historical fact, referred to in all shipping documents as "London Muck".

[ 07-30-2003, 08:01 PM: Message edited by: Andrew Craig-Bennett ]

[Bob Adams]

In my place of employment, it stands for Special High Intensity Training, They give us all the S.H.I.T. we can handle :D

[Tom Galyen]

Gentlemen,

With all this **** being mentioned I should tell you that last January with all the "Bowl Games" on I channel surfed to fast and missed the "Toilet Bowl" game between those two staunch rivals The Sam Huston Institute of Technology and the Pittsburg Institute of Social Sciences. tongue.gif

Tom G.

[bud]

Sheesh! I had to read that just as I'm about to go out to lunch - at the Free Union Country Kitchen! :eek: