31 May 2019

Annihilating Space

"From Harrisburg to Philadelphia there was a railroad, the first I had ever seen ... In travelling by the road from Harrisburg, I thought the perfection of rapid transit had been reached. We traveled at least eighteen miles an hour, when at full speed, and made the whole distance averaging probably as much as twelve miles an hour. This seemed like annihilating space."
- Ulysses S. Grant, in 1839 as a teenager heading to West Point

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