Last week, I wrote up

It was well received, and I’m a feedback junkie, so I’m considering making this a regular thing. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. One hint: I shared all of these on Twitter — so if you want to learn this things as I do, it’s best to follow me there.

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1) In Hong Kong, they drive on the left. In China, they drive on the right. The bridge between them is TOTALLY SCARY.

Someone I follow on Google Reader shared this blog post by Jason Kottke explaining the problem. But really, the picture sums it up:

Check out the right (closer) lane. Watch as it dips below its starting point, coming just a few feet above the water (!). Marvel as it passes under the previously left lane, and, effectively, flips itself into being the new left. Gorgeous and horrific at the same time.

Update: Yeah, yeah, it’s an artist’s conception. Still totally scary.

2) The New York City subway system accidentally renamed a station stop “FML.”

To the Internet generation, FML means something R-rated. To the Metropolitian Transit Authority (MTA), it means the F line, M line, and L line all stop here — “here” being 14th Street and 6th Avenue.

How did this happen? Due to service cuts and changes forced by a thinner budget, the MTA cut some lines and renamed others. The M line now runs down 6th Avenue, and due to coloring conventions, is now orange, like the F. (It used to be brown.) The F and M intersect the L — which runs across 14th into Brooklyn — at 6th and 14th. And F comes before L, so FM lead.

But the MTA is going to break convention after pictures like the one on the right popped up, surrounded by guffaws.

3) Planes sometimes run out of gas, requiring diversion to a nearby airport.



I met Michael Maney at the ReadWriteWeb Summit last week and have followed him on Twitter since. He shared this tweet from Colleen Swanger, who I don’t know from Adam (Eve?):

Thanks @delta for running out of gas. Now my mother and I are going to miss her mother’s funeral while stuck at LGA when we should be in BDL

The rest of the story:

Seriously @delta how do you run out of gas 75 miles short of your destination?!? (@ LaGuardia Airport (LGA) w/ 21 others)

Standing outside LGA with 100 others waiting for a bus to Hartford because a @delta plane ran out of gas. Not kidding. Or they are lying.

You can read more about the flight here. The diversion cost passengers six hours — which is ridiculous, given the fact that a bus ride from New York (where the plane landed) to Hartford (intended destination) should be about half that. It’s mind-boggling. How do you miscalculate the amount of fuel so badly that you end up having to land at an airport about 75 miles away?



4) There’s a secret, unused subway system underneath City Hall in Manhattan, which you can see if you stay on the downtown 6 one stop past the “last” official stop.



Around the turn of the century — the 1900s, that is — the powers that be decided that the Manhattan Main Line, now the 6 subway line in Manhattan, should terminate at City Hall. The station, given its location and prominence, was designed to be a showcase of sorts. But in the mid-1940s, longer trains made the station dangerous. It was one of the least-used stations anyway, serving a mere 600 people a day, due to the proximity of the Brooklyn Bridge station just a few hundred feet away. On the last day of 1945, service to City Hall was discontinued, and the station has been closed, frozen in time, since.

But the station is still there, and to a degree, is still used. The last stop on the downtown 6 is Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall, and the first stop uptown is in the same place. But the trains need to turn around — and they do so by going through the old City Hall stop. Which means if you stay on the train, you’ll go through this station. Which, apparently, is perfectly allowed.

But no, you can’t get out at City Hall. There are tours of the station, and Ben Kabak of Second Ave. Sagas was lucky enough to attend one. He gathered photos in the gallery below:

5) Speaking about Manhattan subways: are more Subway “restaurants” than subway stations in Manhattan.

I think, for a long time, I always wondered this. Not explicitly, of course, but subconsciously. Grub Street has done the heavy lifting and found official counts, and determined that it’s not particularly close: 171 “sandwich” shops to 147 train stops. Brooklyn represents the city much more positively, with the trains winning, 170 to 70.

It really is too bad that Manhattan isn’t in a dead heat — that would be reason enough to open the old City Hall stop.



