The Willow Run bomber plant made aviation, industrial and social history—along with new B-24s by the hour.

By mid-1944, the Willow Run assembly plant was producing one B-24 per hour—accounting for half of all B-24s assembled that year.

Some 12,000 women worked at the Willow Run bomber plant, each paid the same 85 cents an hour as their male counterparts.

Architect Albert Kahn boasted that the Willow Run plant would be “the most enormous room in the history of man.”

Out of sheer necessity, Willow Run’s 42,500-member workforce became a model of diversity for future generations.

Skeptics scoffed at the idea that Ford Motor Co. could mass-produce heavy aircraft. “You can’t expect a blacksmith to make a watch overnight,” sniffed Dutch Kindelberger, president of North American Aviation.

General Motors produced the Chevrolet Corvair at the Willow Run plant from 1959 to 1969.

Sixty-seven feet long, the B-24 had 450,000 parts and 360,000 rivets in 550 sizes, and it weighed 18 tons.

President Roosevelt stunned millions of listeners when he announced during a May 26, 1940, fireside chat that government must “harness the efficient machinery of America’s manufacturers” to produce 50,000 combat aircraft over the next 12 months to confront the “approaching storm” of global war. FDR’s goal exceeded the total of all planes built in the U.S. since the Wright brothers’ 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, and he challenged the aviation industry to match that number in succeeding years. As he spoke, the country had fewer than 3,000 warplanes in its arsenal, most obsolete.

The president and his advisers were convinced that long-range, high-altitude heavy bombers would be the decisive weapon in a war dominated by air power and industrial muscle. Their shopping list included 12,000 of these aerial battleships to attack Germany’s heartland, hammering military installations, bridges, factories, rail yards, fuel storage tanks and communications centers. The “heavies” of choice were the B-17 Flying Fortress from Boeing Airplane Co. and the B-24 Liberator from Consolidated Aircraft.

The B-17 had a six-year history of design, development, testing and limited production. The twin-finned, high-winged B-24 with its dual bomb bays and tricycle landing gear debuted in 1939 as a repurposed land model of Consolidated’s bulky flying boats. Handcrafted versions were pressed into service in England, but the San Diego company lacked resources and methods for high-volume production of the largest, most complex airplane ever designed. Still, aviation industry leaders scoffed when the War Department chose Ford Motor Co. to mass-produce Liberators.

Automobiles of the era had 15,000 parts and weighed around 3,000 pounds. Sixty-seven feet long, the B-24 had 450,000 parts and 360,000 rivets in 550 sizes, and it weighed 18 tons. Skeptics dismissed mass production of a plane this enormous and advanced as a carmaker’s fantasy that would crash and burn when repeated design changes disrupted assembly lines and junked expensive tooling. “You can’t expect a blacksmith to make a watch overnight,” sniffed Dutch Kindelberger, president of North American Aviation.

Ford proved them wrong, not easily nor entirely, during a 2.5-year production run in a 3.5-million-square-foot factory built over Willow Run Creek near Ypsilanti, MI. The massive plant turned out 8,645 Liberators vs. 9,808 manufactured by four factories of Consolidated, Douglas Aircraft, and North American Aviation. Together they produced more of the slab-sided behemoths than any American warplane ever.

At peak production, B-24s sheathed in 4,200 square feet of bonded aluminum rolled out the door every hour. Four 1,200-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp engines assembled by Buick Motor Division shook the earth as the newly minted war machines cast aloft on test flights. The ungainly aircraft flew faster (300 mph) than the sleeker B-17, carried heavier payloads (four tons of bombs, later increased to six tons), and had greater range (3,000 miles).

Rugged and versatile, Liberators served in every theater of the war with 15 Allied air forces, stalking and destroying German U-boats in Atlantic shipping lanes, “flying The Hump” from India over the Himalayas to bring critical fuel and supplies to the besieged Chinese army, and dropping special agents into France and the Low Countries to organize sabotage operations against Nazi occupiers. Winston Churchill called his specially outfitted B-24 the Commando.

 

The Whole Plane or Nothing

Ford production chief Charles Sorensen, driving force behind the B-24 program, possessed a crusader’s faith and fervor in the primacy and benefits of mass production, and had the bona fides to back it up. A rough-hewn, hard-charging martinet, “Cast Iron Charlie” played a principal role in conceiving and designing the world’s first moving assembly line at Ford’s Highland Park plant bordering Detroit. He went on to oversee operations at the company’s River Rouge complex where 100,000 workers could produce 10,000 cars a day, from raw materials to finished products. The 60-year-old production czar viewed mass production of B-24s as the crowning achievement of his career.

During a January 1941 inspection tour of the Consolidated San Diego plant with Edsel Ford, gentlemanly 45-year-old company president and son of cantankerous autocrat Henry Ford, Sorensen belittled the operation’s deliberate, labor-intensive procedures. “There was no sequence or orderly flow of materials, no sense of forward motion, no reliance on machined parts,” he said. “They were producing a custom-made plane put together as a tailor would cut and fit a suit of clothes. No two were alike.”

Sorensen stayed up all night formulating a B-24 assembly process on the backs of Coronado Hotel placemats. His sketches embraced the two fundamentals of mass production: standardized, interchangeable parts and continuous, orderly flow punctuated by stops at assembly stations where workers and machines performed repetitive tasks.

By 4 a.m. he had configured floor space and time requirements for sequential assembly of the plane’s principal sections, each fabricated in choreographed progression through separate, self-contained cells. Sections included center wing, outer wings and wing tips, fuselage, nacelles, flight deck, nose and tail. Overhead cranes would hoist completed sections onto the final assembly line for joining into a finished aircraft, the same way cars were put together, but on a grand scale in a massive new plant.

Sorensen reviewed his concept at breakfast with Edsel, who responded enthusiastically to its vision and boldness and initialed it on the spot, as did Henry II and Benson, his two sons accompanying him on the trip. They presented the plan to Consolidated President Reuben Fleet and George Mead, procurement director for the Advisory Council for National Defense, who countered with an offer to produce a thousand sets of wings. “We’ll build the whole plane or nothing,” Sorensen barked, accompanied by the audacious claim that Ford would assemble new B-24s every hour.

The whole plane it would be, with the agreement that Ford would truck B-24 parts and finished sections called knockdowns to Consolidated plants in San Diego and Fort Worth and to Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa. Consolidated maintained control over design changes and so did the Army Air Corps (retitled U.S. Army Air Force in June 1941). Ford had no say in the matter; production chaos ensued.

For the next six months, Sorensen shuttled 70-man teams of engineers and draftsmen back and forth on 2,300-mile trips from Ford headquarters to the Consolidated works in San Diego to immerse themselves in B-24 design, engineering, parts and components. To their dismay they discovered that engineering drawings for the big bomber were useless—incomplete and filled with discrepancies and unfamiliar signs and symbols. An unknown number dwelt in the memories of plant foremen.

Cast Iron Charlie had two Liberators flown to Dearborn where they were dismantled piece by piece. A thousand-member tool design group worked around the clock seven days a week for almost a year to create three-dimensional schematics of the plane’s 30,000 separate components, generating five million square feet of blueprints in the process. Their work guided custom designs of 1,600 machine tools and 11,000 fixtures, some 60 feet tall, that would stamp, mill, drill, broach and grind parts to thousandths-of-an-inch tolerances, each with repeatable precision.

 

The Most Enormous Room in History

While this was unfolding, Sorensen retained renowned industrial architect Albert Kahn to design a factory that would adapt Ford’s automotive assembly techniques to mass production of a giant aircraft. The worksite Sorensen chose was a 1,875-acre Ford-owned tract that had been a farm camp for boys whose fathers were killed or disabled in World War I. Kahn had designed the Rouge and hundreds of other manufacturing facilities over a long and storied career. Not given to understatement, he proclaimed that the one-level superstructure would be “the most enormous room in the history of man.”

He may have been right. More than 3,200 feet long and 1,279 feet across at its widest point, the plant’s 80-acre interior exceeded the Empire State Building’s floor space by 20 percent. One pundit referred to it as “a sprawling mass of industrial ambition.” Folklore has it that Henry Ford decreed that the eastern perimeter of the windowless, L-shaped edifice not spill over into Wayne County, home to Detroit and all those rascally Democrats and union organizers.

Construction began April 18, 1941. Thirty-eight tons of structural steel, five million bricks, and six months later, the $65-million colossus began churning out parts while equipment was still being installed and roof and walls remained unfinished. The first section of an 850-acre airfield adjoining the plant opened three days prior to Pearl Harbor, signaling the Liberator’s primary war mission: long-range flights over Pacific waters to bomb networks of enemy-held islands stretching from Australia and Guadalcanal to the Japanese mainland some 3,000 miles distant.

Media coverage hyped by Ford and military publicists wove extravagant tales of a mammoth industrial citadel where 100,000 dedicated workers would produce hundreds of Liberators each week to roar across the oceans and obliterate enemy sources and seats of power. Before the first employee was hired, the factory stood as a national symbol of America’s fearsome production prowess.

 

Willit Run

Reality proved otherwise. No B-24s were mass-assembled until the final weeks of 1942, more than a year after the plant opened, when 56 came off the line. Deemed unfit for combat, they were assigned to training bases, reconnaissance patrols and transport duties. Expectations were crushed and the sarcastic appellation Willit Run gained wide circulation. Sorensen blamed delays on doing business with the government, treading through a maze of conflicting priorities and regulations, rancorous labor relations and wildcat strikes, housing shortages and erratic delivery of essential materials.

All true, but he didn’t mention the hard steel dies he authorized, the same types used to slam auto parts into shape, damaged and defaced the softer aluminum, a metal comprising 85 percent of B-24 content. Dies and machine tools were tossed out and redesigned, wasting precious time and millions of dollars.

The housing shortage Sorensen complained about arose from his choice of a sparsely populated rural setting 30 miles west of Detroit’s labor pool—“an island in Michigan mud,” as one writer viewed it. Every available room within miles was rented, including those with eight-hour shifts called hot beds. Long car rides from Detroit over lumpy roads and in overcrowded buses discouraged thousands of employees who left for jobs closer to home. Many fled after their first day, traumatized by the smell, constant clanging and motion of machinery, and overpowering size of the place. Those who stayed hunkered down in tarpaper shacks, tents, garages, and beat-up trailers and jalopies.

Using lumber from hundreds of trees cut down to clear the site, contractors built temporary dormitories for single men and women, trailer parks, and prefabricated flat-top housing for families that, by the end of 1943, could house 15,000 employees. The War Department pitched in with funds for the Detroit Industrial Expressway, linking the city to the plant. Years later, that stretch would become a section of I-94.

Few new hires had ever been in a factory, so Ford built the Aircraft Apprentice School on the grounds to familiarize these industrial novices with tools and techniques of high-precision aeronautical manufacturing. Up to 8,000 students per week completed training and reported for work. Among them were farmhands, secretaries, housewives, schoolteachers and grocery clerks.

New housing, better roads and professional training alleviated Willow Run’s employee retention dilemma, but didn’t solve it. A typical month saw as many workers quit as were hired, and 8,200 more were drafted into military service.

Twelve thousand women stepped in to fill the void, each paid the same 85 cents an hour as their male counterparts for nine-hour morning or afternoon shifts. Blacks and other minorities were welcomed and so were immigrants. High school graduates worked the line next to 70-year-olds. Dwarfs, whose physical stature had limited prewar employment opportunities, toiled inside wings, fuel cells and other confined spaces. Out of sheer necessity, Willow Run’s 42,500-member workforce became a model of diversity for future generations.

Rivet gun operator Rosemary Will from Pulaski County, KY, appeared in a Ford promotional film, personifying thousands of women in the nation’s defense industry, collectively known as Rosie the Riveter. Rosemary was among 200,000 southerners who flocked to southeastern Michigan for factory jobs, including 9,500 employed at Willow Run. Hundreds bought their first pair of shoes upon arrival.

 

Plane Per Hour Pinnacle

The Air Force dictated more performance and safety upgrades for B-24s than any other American warplane. Modifications resulted from lessons learned in fighting fronts and from the need to modify the plane for its multiple roles. Changeovers required onerous delays and costly retooling. Sorensen protested that Willow Run could not function under these strictures. Mass production of B-24s must rely on continuous assembly flow, or they couldn’t be built at all.

The two sides reached an accommodation during the first quarter of 1943. Willow Run stepped up outsourcing of parts production and subassemblies to almost 1,000 Ford factories and independent suppliers while focusing on building B-24s in more predictable designs that minimized shutdowns. Completed planes flew off to field modification centers for fixes, upgrades and customizing. Fifty variants of the aircraft were dispatched to allies throughout the world from these sites.

Production steadily increased, reaching the magical plane-per-hour pinnacle in mid-1944 while accounting for half of all B-24s assembled that year. Manufacturing costs were slashed as man-hours per plane plummeted. It was an historic but ephemeral achievement. Overstocked with B-24s, the Air Force already had canceled contracts with Douglas Aircraft and North American Aviation and would terminate Consolidated Fort Worth by year’s end.

When Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, only 7,400 employees remained on the Willow Run payroll. The plant closed June 28, ending the Liberator’s brief but epic run, along with Ford’s presence in the aircraft industry. The company resumed automobile production within a week.

A technological marvel for a new age of aerial warfare, the B-24 was now obsolete. Some 2,500 were parked in an Arizona desert awaiting the day when their aluminum skin and innards would be smelted into ingots for production of coffee percolators, toasters, pots and pans, and myriad other consumer and industrial products to satisfy the ravenous maw of America’s peacetime economy.

Kaiser-Frazer moved into Willow Run and built civilian-style Jeeps, Henry J sedans, and C-119 cargo planes until going under in 1953. General Motors took over and produced transmissions until 2010, when the company declared bankruptcy and moved out. GM’s Chevrolet Division assembled rear-engine Corvairs in a converted warehouse on the grounds during a 10-year run beginning in 1959.

Willow Run Airport became a Midwest destination for passenger airlines until the late 1950s. Warren Avis, a decorated B-24 pilot in the 376th Bombardment Group, opened the nation’s first airport rental car service in the terminal and grew it into Avis Rent A Car Systems. The airport is now home to cargo airlines, charter flights and corporate jets.

A ghostly, decaying reminder of the industrial and military history echoing within its cavernous expanse, Willow Run was demolished in 2014. A 175,000-square-foot section, where B-24s were gassed up and towed out the door, was spared for the future home of the National Museum of Aviation and Technology. In the meantime, visitors to the Yankee Air Museum at the airport can see how the “blacksmith made a watch” and helped win a war.

Transportation history for an electronic age is underway at Willow Run at the American Center for Mobility, where carmakers, suppliers and high-technology companies have banded together to research, develop and test driverless cars that communicate with one another and with traffic signals to avoid accidents and adjust traffic flow. The center includes a proving ground where smart cars react instantly to all manner of potentially dangerous and problematic situations. Unlike menacing B-24 Liberators that took off from the same spot, these silent vehicles are on a mission to save lives and prevent destruction.

When Has A Little Girl’s Kiss Ever Represented So Much Appreciation?

The above photograph was taken on February 14, 1945. I discovered it on Facebook and reposted it. The accompanying text declared

This photo, taken on February 14, 1945, near Aboncourt, France, shows Sergeant Elvin Harley (Kalamazoo, Michigan) being kissed by a little French girl. This proud member of the 3rd Armored Division survived the rest of the war and returned to Michigan.

A Thank-You Kiss

Tec. 4 Elvin Harley of Kalamazoo, Michigan, of the 3rd Armored Division, gets a peck on the cheek from a little French girl while listening to the 9th Armored Division Band near Aboncourt in northeastern France near the Belgium border on February 14, 1945. Fighting in France was over at that point and the Battle of the Bulge had ended several weeks earlier, but the Rhine River and most of Germany lay ahead.

On this, the 77^th anniversary of D-Day, we need to recall with awe and gratitude the massive effort the Allies undertook to liberate France from Nazi tyranny on June 6, 1944, eight months before the above image was captured on film. This little girl’s kiss wasn’t just for Sergeant Harley, but for all the allies who fought so hard, risked so much, and lost so much to liberate France and other European nations.
US assault troops in an LCVP (landing craft, vehicle, personnel) landing craft approach Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944

Let’s not just remember the sacrifices of the soldiers who fought and/or died on D-Day; let’s redouble our own efforts to preserve the liberty they gave so much to protect.

May we repent of our sins so that God will forgive us and bring us together, united under a renewed respect for Him and His law, and deeply appreciative of His infinite grace!

Go here to hear and see some amazing snapshots and clips from and about the events of June 6, 1944!

You’ll also be able to watch President Ronald Reagan’s speech commemorating the 40^th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, presented on June 6, 1984. Additional sights and sounds from 77 years ago also are available on the same page.

Is it an ancient s*x toy, a good luck charm, or a pestle for grinding medicine?

The 6.3 inch long artifact was discovered in England, at the Roman fort of Vindolanda. The Vindolanda Trust

S*x toys can provide pleasure, deeper intimacy, and can even help those with pelvic floor pain, erectile dysfunction, and the effects of menopause. People have also probably used them for much longer in history than we think.

A study published February 20 in the journal Antiquity believes that a nearly 2,000 year-old penis-shaped wooden object might have been a s*x toy used by ancient Romans in Britain. It could be the “first known example of a non-miniaturized disembodied phallus made of wood in the Roman world,” according to the study.

Archaeologists found the almost seven-inch-long artifact over 20 years ago in a ditch near Vindolanda, the remains of a Roman Fort near Hadrian’s Wall. The 73-mile-long wall in northern England once once marked the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire.

According to the study, the tool was initially believed to be a darning tool, likely because it was found alongside dozens of shoes, dress accessories, and small tools and craft waste products. It was also suspected that the object may have been used as a pestle or as a charm to “ward off evil,” as phalli were used across the Roman Empire as a way to protect against bad luck. They were usually depicted in paintings and mosaics, and small phalli made from metal or bone were commonly worn as pendants around the neck.

A new analysis from Newcastle University and University College Dublin found that this is the first known example of a disembodied wooden phallus recovered in the Roman world.

“Wooden objects would have been commonplace in the ancient world, but only survive in very particular conditions – in northern Europe normally in dark, damp, and oxygen free deposits,” said Rob Sands, a study co-author and archaeologist from University College Dublin, in a statement. “So, the Vindolanda phallus is an extremely rare survival. It survived for nearly 2000 years to be recovered by the Vindolanda Trust because preservation conditions have so far remained stable. However, climate change and altering water tables mean that the survival of objects like this are under ever increasing threat.”

The team believes that it was more likely used to stimulate the clitoris and not necessarily used for penetration. It could have been used as a pestle to grind cooking ingredients or medicine. The phallus could have been slotted into a statue for passers-by to touch for good luck or to absorb its protection from back luck. This practice was common throughout the Empire and the statue it belonged to may have been located near the entrance to an important government or military building.

“The size of the phallus and the fact that it was carved from wood raises a number of questions to its use in antiquity. We cannot be certain of its intended use, in contrast to most other phallic objects that make symbolic use of that shape for a clear function, like a good luck charm,” said Rob Collins, a study co-author and archaeologist from Newcastle University, in a statement. “We know that the ancient Romans and Greeks used s*xual implements – this object from Vindolanda could be an example of one.”

The phallus is currently on display at the Vindolanda museum and the team hopes that the findings encourage more analysis of previously found objects to better understand their purposes.

“This rediscovery shows the real legacy value of having such an incredible collection of material from one site and being able to reassess that material,” said Barbara Birley, Curator at the Vindolanda Trust, in a statement. “The wooden phallus may well be currently unique in its survival from this time, but it is unlikely to have been the only one of its kind used at the site, along the frontier, or indeed in Roman Britain.”

B-17 Flying Fortresses parked and awaiting the furnaces after World War II

B-17s served in every World War II combat zone. The aircraft is best known for daylight strategic bombing of German industrial targets.

The B-17 flew mostly out of England, equipping 26 of the 40 bombardment groups of the 8th Air Force.

After the end of World War II in August of 1945, the U.S. Army Air Corp found itself with thousands of surplus, and now obsolete, B-17 bombers.

The B-17 was quickly phased out of use as a bomber and the Army Air Forces retired most of its fleet.

Production of the B-17 ended in May 1945 and totaled 12,731 aircraft. Most of those still in service at the end of the war were sent to military aircraft boneyards for temporary storage, sale, or scrapping and smelting into aluminum ingots. Flight crews ferried the bombers back across the Atlantic and Pacific to the United States.

Some planes remained in use in second-line roles such as VIP transports, air-sea rescue and photo-reconnaissance.

However, most B-17 airplanes ended their service, not in combat, but in the smelter at locations such as Kingman Army Air Field in Arizona and Walnut Ridge Army Air Field in Arkansas.

Some of the B-17 Flying Fortresses Scrapped After World War II

Aerial view of B-17 Flying Fortresses in storage at Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, in November, 1945
(Photo by the Walnut Ridge Army Flying School Museum)

 

 

Rows of B-17 Flying Fortresses awaiting their final destiny at Kingman Army Airfield in LIFE Magazine

B-17G “Five Grand” S/N 43-37716 awaiting the scrapping process at Kingman AAF in Arizona.
This was the 5,000th B-17 built by Boeing in support of the World War II effort.
It was unique in that on it were written the signatures of Boeing workers.
In wartime action, it flew 78 missions with the 96th Bomb Group as reported in LIFE Magazine

 

B-17G-5-VE Flying Fortress “Leading Lady”, S/N 42-39948, minus engines, at Kingman Army Airfield.
The plane became the first aircraft in the 305th Bombardment Group to complete 100 missions, and finally performed 133 successful missions in a career spanning 18 months before surviving the war. After WWII, in the fall of 1945, it was transferred to Kingman AAF and subsequently scrapped.

One of the three smelters, or furnaces, used at Kingman to melt
small aircraft pieces and parts into ingots

Stacks of aluminum ingots …
the remains of the great American World War II bomber fleet

The Chief’s star couldn’t believe his eyes after receving the gift from the soccer star.

It’s no secret that Athletico Madrid star Antoine Griezmann is an NFL superfan. The French star has expressed his love for American Football on various occasions, even jetting off to watch his favorite team the Kansas City Chiefs when not occupied by his commitments with the Madrid side.

And it is precisely Griezmann’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, that for the second time in a row are playing a Super Bowl final. It also happens to be their third final in four years. Not bad.

Travis Kelce’s priceless reaction after being gifted a shirt from Antoine Griezmann

Ahead of the much-anticipated game that will see the Chiefs take on the San Fransisco 49ers this coming Monday, the World Cup winner decided to make a special gesture- perhaps made to bring his favorite team and player more luck ahead of the encounter.

Griezmann sent a signed Athletic Madrid shirt to Travis Kelce, who in recent months has seen his fame skyrocket not just because of his impressive performances on the field, but also because of his high-profile relationship with the singer Taylor Swift.

He was given the shirt by a Spanish journalist in a press conference and his reaction was priceless. “That’s wild baby,” he said after staring at it surprised for several seconds. “For sure I’ll take it… this is like Christmas man,” said the tight end. He finished with a message for the Athletico Madrid striker: “We’re gonna try and get the win for you.”

Lamar Jackson expressed frustration, stating that the referees seemed biased against his team, favoring Travis Kelce. He highlighted instances where he felt held down during plays and criticized the referees for not making necessary calls.

Lamar Jackson expressed frustration, stating that the referees seemed biased against his team, favoring Travis Kelce. He highlighted instances where he felt held down during plays and criticized the referees for not making necessary calls.

Lamar Jackson recently revealed that he has requested a trade from the Baltimore Ravens. His tweet confirming the news gave rise to expectations that Jackson will no longer play for the Ravens and will be seen on a new team next season.

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce recently spoke about Jackson’s future. On the “New Heights” podcast, Kelce said he wants Jackson to leave the AFC and play for an NFC team next season, as he knows how great of a player the Ravens quarterback is.

If Lamar Jackson ends up getting traded from the Ravens to an NFC team, it could help the Kansas City Chiefs as well as the other teams in the AFC.Players around the league respect Jackson a lot, yet no team is willing to aggressively pursue him, which is in fact quite surprising

Taylor Swift stole the headlines by simply showing up at Arrowhead Stadium to watch Travis Kelce and the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs destroy the Chicago Bears.(AP)

(AP) – The NFL didn’t need a popularity boost before Travis Kelce became enchanted with Taylor Swift.

They’ll gladly welcome millions of Swifties to watch this love story unfold.

The biggest news that came out of Week 3 wasn’t Tua Tagovailoa and the Miami Dolphins lighting up the scoreboard against Denver with only the fourth 70-point performance in NFL history.

It wasn’t Arizona shocking Dallas, Houston upsetting Jacksonville or Matt Gay kicking four 50-yard field goals to help Indianapolis knock off Baltimore.

Instead, Swift stole the headlines by simply showing up at Arrowhead Stadium to watch Kelce and the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs destroy the woeful Chicago Bears. The pop star joined Donna Kelce in a suite and mesmerized the world with her high-fiving, glass-pounding, chest-bumping enthusiasm.

Swift then left the stadium with Kelce and accompanied the four-time All-Pro tight end to an after-party with his teammates.

Two-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes was impressed.

“She was really cool. Good people,” Mahomes said.

Andy Reid joked that he played matchmaker.

“I set them up. She’s tremendous at everything she does. I haven’t got to meet her, but if she ends up with Travis, I’ll probably get to meet her,” Reid said.

Even Bill Belichick shared his thoughts on America’s newest power couple.

“Well, I would say that Travis Kelce’s had a lot of big catches in his career. This would be the biggest,” Belichick said in a radio interview on WEEI in Boston.

There’s no shaking off the Swift-Kelce buzz if the NFL’s grumpiest coach is dropping lines about their possible relationship.

Everything really has changed.

Kelce’s No. 87 jersey sales skyrocketed this week, spiking 400%. Television ratings for the Bears-Chiefs game soared despite the lopsided score. A total of 24.3 million viewers tuned in, making it the second-most watched game this season.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban took notice.

“Like literally, she impacts economies when she brings her tour to a city,” Cuban said on ESPN’s First Take. “She is literally the most popular artist on the planet right now, not even close. So what I’m going to tell ya, Taylor, if you are listening, sorry Travis, break up with him. I got a bunch of good looking, single guys that play for the Dallas Mavericks. I gotchu, I gotchu.”

Kelce responded on X, formerly known as Twitter, telling Cuban to sign him to a 10-day contract.

Kelce, who joked about paparazzi staking out his house, has had plenty of fun in the spotlight but he plans to keep things quiet going forward.

“What’s real is that it is my personal life. I want to respect both of our lives,” he told his brother, Eagles All-Pro center Jason Kelce, on the ” New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce” podcast.

But, two is better than one. So, Swift is reportedly heading to MetLife Stadium to see Kelce and the Chiefs take on the Aaron Rodgers-less New York Jets on Sunday Night Football.

That’s another big win for the NFL since it’ll be difficult for the Jets to keep up with the high-flying Chiefs if Zach Wilson is still their quarterback. He should be since the team only signed Trevor Siemian this week. If the score gets out of control, expect the Swifties to stick with the NBC broadcast to see when the television cameras pan to the 12-time Grammy Award winner.

Betting sites are offering odds on how much face time Swift gets during the game, what color she will wear, which broadcaster says her name first, who she’ll sit with and much more.

Nobody reaps the benefit of this relationship more than the NFL, which already was doing just fine before Swift crashed the stadium and brought her 367 million followers on Instagram and X to the party.

The attention exceeds even the league’s wildest dreams.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

 

Jason Kelce faced the wrath of his wife, Kylie, after ripping off his shirt and jumping into the crowd during the Chiefs’ win against Buffalo, as Patrick Mahomes’ dad was forced to play messenger and relay the message to ‘get his a** back’ in the VIP suite.

 

Viral footage on X, formerly Twitter, shows the 36-year-old Eagles center interacting with fans of both teams involved in Sunday’s contest, while wearing nothing but a Chiefs beanie and sweatpants, as he battled 20-25 degrees Fahrenheit weather at Highmark Stadium.

‘Jason!’ a fan yelled among a flock of them surrounding the Chiefs’ VIP box, which Taylor Swift was a part of.

‘Hey, Kylie said get your a** back in here,’ then said Mahomes’ father, Pat, while he stood on the edge of the window.

Fans hailed Jason’s appearance in Orchard Park, New York, this weekend, after he lifted up a young girl to help show Taylor her homemade sign, at one point during Sunday’s game.

What’s more is that, Jason who teased rumors of retirement last week, even showed up to a Bills tailgate before the intense AFC Divisional game – as he downed drinks in front of fans in a parking lot.

The dad of three then stripped-down and celebrated – despite freezing conditions this weekend in Buffalo – after Travis, his younger brother by two years, was on the receiving end of a 22-yard touchdown in the second quarter.

All the while, Kylie remained unfazed by her husband’s behavior. His mom Donna erupted in laughter, and was seen pointing at Jason going wild.

Jason was said to have an awkward relationship with Taylor before this weekend’s game but interacted with the pop icon aplenty on Sunday, and even made her laugh with his antics.

When he found out of his brother’s celebration in the Chiefs’ VIP suite, postgame, Travis said: ‘My brother was shirtless?! I love that guy!’

Swift entering the Kelce family’s orbit has skyrocketed Jason and Travis’ popularity well beyond the gridiron, as both were already first-ballot future Hall of Famers before being mentioned in the same sentence as the 12-time Grammy winner.

Click for larger image

Clara Mae Leach Adams-Ender was born on a tobacco farm in Willow Springs, North Carolina, on 11 July 1939. Her parents were sharecroppers. She was the fourth of Otha and Caretha Bell Sapp Leach’s ten children. Leach was a bright, diligent child who at age four learned about an impressive lady judge featured in Ebony magazine. She subsequently aspired to become a lawyer and follow in that justice’s footsteps. However, Leach’s astute father had other ideas, insisting she become a nurse. This ultimately led Leach to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University where she earned a baccalaureate degree in nursing in 1961.¹ The seeds of Leach’s character emerged in her youth—her ingrained sense of hard work, spirit of determination, facility in overcoming barriers, and resolute pursuit of goals.

During her sophomore year, Leach discovered the Army Student Nurse Program and enlisted to fund her collegiate education. So began her lengthy, notable service in the Army. Leach’s initial assignment in 1961 after attending the Orientation Course at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, was at Fort Dix, New Jersey’s, Walson Army Hospital in the Recovery and Intensive Care Unit. Another tour of duty came to pass in 1963 at the 121st Evacuation Hospital in Korea. Next Leach spent six months in the Officer Advanced Course and then transferred in 1965 to the Medical Training Center at Fort Sam Houston as a medical-surgical nursing instructor. While there, she successfully qualified for the grueling Expert Field Medical Badge, the first woman in the Army to achieve this distinction. In 1967, the Army chose Leach to matriculate at the University of Minnesota. There she earned a master of science in nursing degree. Having finished graduate school, her next assignment directed her to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing in Washington, DC, as instructor and later assistant professor. Adams taught adult nursing and played a key role in recruiting minority students to redress inequities in the institution’s racial mix. During this period, Leach entered into a brief marriage with childhood friend, Kelso Adams. The next stop along her career path took place at Fort Meade, Maryland’s, hospital as assistant chief nurse in 1974, followed a year later by attendance at the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. There she earned a second graduate degree, a Master of Military Art and Science. Adams’ postings from 1976 to 1987 furnished her with even greater opportunities to contribute to the Army Nurse Corps mission while simultaneously expanding her repertoire of professional skills and knowledge. These sequential positions involved serving on the inspector general team at Health Services Command, Fort Sam Houston; as chief, department of nursing at the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt; chief of nurse recruiting at Fort Sheridan, Illinois; chief, department of nursing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC; and special assistant to the chief, Army Nurse Corps, in the Office of the Army Surgeon General. During this busy period, she married Dr. F. Heinz Ender; the union counted many happy days until Ender’s passing in 2004. In 1982, Adams-Ender completed program requirements and graduated from the Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

In 1987, the Army nominated Adams-Ender as the eighteenth chief of the Army Nurse Corps. As one of her first deeds, she asked Colonel John Hudock to serve as her assistant chief; he was the first male Army Nurse Corps officer to hold that senior position. Hudock was especially adept in dealing with issues of personnel numbers and force structure, talents that would stand the newly minted partnership in good stead.²

A complex and crippling shortage of Army Nurse Corps officers took precedence among the many issues that Adams-Ender initially faced. To resolve this, she instituted an array of strategies to recruit and retain military nurses such as the Army Nurse Candidate Program, the Accession Bonus Program, and the introduction of incentive pay to address the critically low numbers of certified registered nurse anesthetists. She also conceived and implemented the Enlisted Commissioning Program and expanded Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarships. In addition, Adams-Ender staunchly defended the notion of the baccalaureate degree as the minimum entry standard for Army nurses, began the practice of testifying every year before Congress, placed Army Nurse Corps fellows in various Congressional offices, and supported the creation of innovative organizational configurations to enhance hospitals’ efficiency and quality of care. During this eventful time, Adams-Ender added another challenging role when she assumed responsibilities for heading up the directorate of personnel for the Army Surgeon General. Finally, Adams-Ender led the Corps through two major combat operations–Just Cause and Desert Shield/Storm–successfully responding to the voracious human resource demands these campaigns generated.

While almost all former chiefs typically retired from the service after their four-year term in the most senior Army Nurse Corps leadership position, such was not the case for Adams-Ender. In 1991, this versatile officer assumed command of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and served as deputy commanding general of the Military District of Washington. This noteworthy assignment was yet another example of Adams-Ender’s ability to navigate in circumstances involving unprecedented, multifaceted challenges. She retired after serving 34 years in the United States Army in 1993.³

However, Clara Adams-Ender’s life story did not conclude at this point. A few among many of her post-retirement activities included forming a management consultation business called Caring About People With Enthusiasm (CAPE Associates, Inc.) which she later served as executive director of its Legacy Fund, a non-profit foundation dedicated to assisting students of modest means to complete their education; serving on the board of directors at Andrews Federal Credit Union; mentoring military officers and others, particularly under the aegis of the ROCKS organization⁴; and contributing as a member of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS). Furthermore, Adams-Ender took great pleasure in traveling the world with her husband, Heinz, and reconnecting on a more frequent basis with her beloved siblings.⁵ Over the years, she received a myriad of awards and recognition for her contributions. Most recently, the American Academy of Nursing recognized her as a Living Legend and the Army War College Foundation Board honored her as an Outstanding Alumna.⁶ Brigadier General Clara Mae Leach Adams-Ender enthusiastically embraces life from her home in Lake Ridge, Virginia.

NASA scientists have been capturing sounds across the universe, from the screams of black holes to the gassy outbursts of distant stars.

Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. Now you can listen to it. NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/C. Reynolds et al.

If a black hole devours a planet and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Physicists and astronomers have been trying to map astronomical data through sound for decades—and now we can finally listen to a black hole scream into the void.

Earlier this month, NASA released the first recordings, or sonifications, of what two black holes sound like—and it’s just the kind of noise astronomers and science fiction buffs were expecting: eerie, ethereal, and aurally extraordinary.

In this new sonification of Perseus, the sound waves astronomers previously identified were extracted and made audible for the first time. The sound waves were extracted in radial directions, that is, outwards from the center. The signals were then resynthesized into the range of human hearing by scaling them upward by 57 and 58 octaves above their true pitch—or in other words, they are being heard 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times higher than their original frequency. Credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/C. Reynolds et al.; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
The universe is rife with the hum of celestial melodies—but it’s only relatively recently that humans have developed the technology to be able to hear them. A team of scientists at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory were able to extract and make audible previously identified sound waves from a nearly 20-year-old image of the Perseus galaxy cluster—a collection so full of galaxies, it’s assumed to be one of the most massive objects in the universe. It’s one of the closest clusters to Earth, around 240 light-years away.

“This sort of bespoke method is really about extrapolating something new out of this archival information,” says Kimberly Arcand, the visualization scientist for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory who led the research. Translating scientific data into acoustic signals has also become vastly easier in the past few years. For example, scientists can create parameters for all kinds of numerical data by assigning those values to higher or lower pitches, or vice versa, to turn them into musical notes.

These short sonifications typically take a few hours to create, but with the right data, can be completed using sound engineering software and other publicly available computer programs, like Python.

The team’s finished result reveals a deep magnetic groaning created by a “supermassive black hole causing [a] rippling in its surrounding environments.” The radar band sweeping over the image in the video above allows the listener to take in what the ripples sound like from different directions. But Perseus’ original notes are pitched so low (about 57 octaves below middle C) that they exist outside the range of the human ear. This meant that the researchers had to resynthesize its signals by scaling them upward from their true pitch. Arcand’s team also used this technique to turn the recent Event Horizon Telescope image of Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole that lies at the center of our own Milky Way, into sound as well.

The sonification of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. Changes in volume represent the differences in brightness the Event Horizon Telescope observed around the event horizon of the black hole. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida); Image Credit: Radio: EHT Collaboration
“There are a number of areas in astrophysical research specifically where there’s really big data, or really noisy data,” Arcand says. “Having a human sense of hearing can be an excellent way of picking that good data out.”

But besides listening to the ghostly ringing of black holes, turning data into sound can also assist astronomers in exploring the universe outside our cosmic neighborhood, particularly in humanity’s rush to discover new exoplanets.

“In some cases, there are real musical rhythms and patterns in the cosmos,” says Matt Russo, an astrophysicist and sonification specialist who is a colleague of Arcand’s.  “Bringing that to life, I think really helps connect something that’s very abstract and technical, with something that’s very personal and familiar, which is music.”

After scientists discovered that the star Trappist-1 was the most musical solar system in 2017, Russo went on to co-found SYSTEM Sounds, an outreach project that translates the rhythm of the universe into beautiful, unearthly tones that expresses both sonic data and artistic pieces. The project has since produced regular sonifications in collaboration with NASA, and Russo himself has helped create many of the pieces featured in an entire album that utilized Chandra’s observations, called A Universe of Sound. 

“The connection between music and astronomy has gone back to Pythagoras over 2,000 years ago,” he says. “But lately, there’s been a huge explosion of sonification in general, especially in astronomy.” While data sonification in astronomy is a relatively new development, scientists have a long history of using sound to communicate all kinds of information and data.

“The beauty of sonification is there are many stories to tell.”

— Matt Russo, astrophysicist and sonification specialist

For instance, Geiger counters are devices used to warn humans of the dangers of nearby radiation levels, and relay that information by employing sounds like rapid clicks and popping noises that oscillate, depending on the level of radiation it detects. This month, researchers also made recordings of auroral sounds in an effort to prove that the aurora borealis, or the northern lights, are present even when invisible to the naked eye.

But unlike other scientific processes, creating music from data often comes down to perspective as well as artistic expression. “The beauty of sonification is there are many stories to tell,” Russo says.

And just like written stories, sonification can help people connect to places and entities far beyond our reach. Transforming celestial objects into sounds allows those with vision loss to experience these images.

One member of the blind and partially sighted community, Christine Malec, works with the SYSTEM Sounds project to improve the accessibility of their sounds. She often tests and gives feedback to help the scientists create sonifications that have different elements, often commenting on individual notes, or an entire piece’s pitch and tone. Until she first heard these celestial sounds, astronomical phenomena were merely abstract words and ideas.

“When I heard my first sonification I had goosebumps,” Malec says. “It was a visceral, sensory experience that I’d never had before with astronomy.”