Today I learned that the word TARE found on railway wagons and shipping containers comes from an Arabic word  طَرْح  ṭarḥ meaning “deduction” or “that which is removed”. The word refers to the unladen weight of a cargo van, vessel or container, and its use in English dates back to the reign of King Henry VII at the end of the 15th century.

A TARE weight is subtracted from the value recorded on a weighbridge to calculate the actual weight of the cargo for customs or shipping charges.

The photo is of a “Cavell Van” a type of railway parcel van, so named because it was famously used to transport the body of nurse Edith Cavell from Belgium back to Britain in 1919.

https://kesr.org.uk/the-cavell-van/

12 minutes ago, toucana said:

Today I learned that the word TARE found on railway wagons and shipping containers comes from an Arabic word  طَرْح  ṭarḥ meaning “deduction” or “that which is removed”. The word refers to the unladen weight of a cargo van, vessel or container, and its use in English dates back to the reign of King Henry VII at the end of the 15th century.

A TARE weight is subtracted from the value recorded on a weighbridge to calculate the actual weight of the cargo for customs or shipping charges.

You will also find Tare in many places today for instance on modern digitql scales.

When making bread I put the mixing bowl on the scales and press the Tare function to 'zero things before adding the ingredients.

Today I learned that Studiot bakes bread ...

16 hours ago, toucana said:

Today I learned that the word TARE found on railway wagons and shipping containers comes from an Arabic word  طَرْح  ṭarḥ meaning “deduction” or “that which is removed”. The word refers to the unladen weight of a cargo van, vessel or container, and its use in English dates back to the reign of King Henry VII at the end of the 15th century.

A TARE weight is subtracted from the value recorded on a weighbridge to calculate the actual weight of the cargo for customs or shipping charges.

The photo is of a “Cavell Van” a type of railway parcel van, so named because it was famously used to transport the body of nurse Edith Cavell from Belgium back to Britain in 1919.

https://kesr.org.uk/the-cavell-van/

TIL
You carry just 1 dead body, and that's all you get remembered for.

TIL the curious fact that although power function can be formally defined from multiplication, the multiplication cannot be formally defined from addition and thus has to be added to axioms, if needed.

3 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

TIL
You carry just 1 dead body, and that's all you get remembered for.

LOL. If you have a string of several Cavell vans, it's a Cavell-cade.

Cool. It's often hard to define basic concepts without lapsing into tautologies. I've seen this also with definitions of time.

TIL what all these tiny islands are near the Strait of Hormuz.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-islands-strait-hormuz-oil-trump-1b3e770e61c6a05d3e078223e15b20b2

I had definitely not heard of Greater and Lesser Tunb.

TIL who Dirty Dick was, and how a pub in London came to bear his name.

Lest anyone think this is an April Fool, here is a brief biography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Dick

In his late thirties, Bentley became parsimonious and stopped washing and cleaning himself and his shop. He picked up the nickname Dirty Dick, and his shop became known as "the dirty warehouse". Both he and his shop became well known and were lampooned in the press. People visited the outlet to see the squalor and noted that Bentley was very polite and had impeccable manners. Rumours circulated that Bentley had not washed since his fiancée had died on their wedding eve and that he had locked the dining room, complete with the wedding feast, and left it to moulder.

Bentley moved out of his shop in 1804, and the contents were sold off. One enterprising publican purchased some of the contents, including mummified rats and cats, and used them to decorate his pub, which he renamed Dirty Dicks; as at 2025 the pub is still in operation under that name.

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

TIL who Dirty Dick was, and how a pub in London came to bear his name.

Lest anyone think this is an April Fool, here is a brief biography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Dick

In his late thirties, Bentley became parsimonious and stopped washing and cleaning himself and his shop. He picked up the nickname Dirty Dick, and his shop became known as "the dirty warehouse". Both he and his shop became well known and were lampooned in the press. People visited the outlet to see the squalor and noted that Bentley was very polite and had impeccable manners. Rumours circulated that Bentley had not washed since his fiancée had died on their wedding eve and that he had locked the dining room, complete with the wedding feast, and left it to moulder.

Bentley moved out of his shop in 1804, and the contents were sold off. One enterprising publican purchased some of the contents, including mummified rats and cats, and used them to decorate his pub, which he renamed Dirty Dicks; as at 2025 the pub is still in operation under that name.

Just now, exchemist said:

Yes, in Bishopsgate, next to Liverpool St station. Seems to be thriving if their website is to be believed:

Dirty Dicks

Home - Dirty Dicks

Liverpool St is a bit out of my way as a S Londoner, so I can't tell you what it's like. But apparently a Young's pub, so will have at least some real beer.

Though Young's sadly no longer has their original brewery in Wandsworth. When I was rowing, in my Putney days, the club used to get deliveries from Young's on a horse-drawn brewer's dray. Splendid carthorses: huge creatures, with hairy hooves. The horses used to make all the deliveries within 2 miles of the brewery. A wonderful marketing idea and cost-effective apparently, due to the terrible traffic jams in the area.

Here they are at a pub on the Thames in Richmond where I occasionally go for a session with one of my brothers:

Edited yesterday at 08:28 PM1 day by exchemist

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

But apparently a Young's pub, so will have at least some real beer.

Youngs and Fullers were two competing breweries that faced each other across the river Thames.

7 hours ago, studiot said:

Youngs and Fullers were two competing breweries that faced each other across the river Thames.

Not quite. Youngs was on the south (Surrey) bank at Wandsworth and Fullers was (I think still is) on the north (Middlesex) bank at Chiswick, about 3 miles further upstream, just upstream from Chiswick Eyot. And another mile upstream, back on the Surrey bank at Mortlake is Watneys.

In fact, unlike the other two, Young's Ram Brewery was not quite on the waterfront but in the middle of the town, next to the river Wandle. They sold the site for development and I think their beer is now brewed in Bedford.

Just typing this I can again smell the mud at low tide……

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

Not quite. Youngs was on the south (Surrey) bank at Wandsworth and Fullers was (I think still is) on the north (Middlesex) bank at Chiswick, about 3 miles further upstream, just upstream from Chiswick Eyot. And another mile upstream, back on the Surrey bank at Mortlake is Watneys.

In fact, unlike the other two, Young's Ram Brewery was not quite on the waterfront but in the middle of the town, next to the river Wandle. They sold the site for development and I think their beer is now brewed in Bedford.

Just typing this I can again smell the mud at low tide……

Addendum: Seems Watney's Stag Brewery at Mortlake closed in 2015 (I stopped rowing in 2005 or so, so had missed this) and is now a big residential redevelopment project. Fuller's brewery is still going however: you can book a tour of it. They seem to have decided to use it to build up the brand rather than selling out to make money from sale of a prime riverside site.

Watney's was rather viewed with contempt by other brewers after the disaster of Red Barrel and the associated"watneyfication" of their tied pubs in the 1970s (red formica tables, red covered bar stools etc etc.). This marketing drive to get the population to accept pasteurised fizzy beer, which was convenient for the business as it could be kept for a long time without going off, wrecked their brand* and led to the formation of CAMRA, to oppose the imposition of this and similar keg beers by big brewing businesses. Amusingly there is a Young's pub right outside the gates of the Mortlake brewery. The workers from Watney's would all pile in there their after their shift and drink Young's! Watney's reputedly offered huge sums to buy out the pub but Young's always refused. It was a standing joke among those of us who lived in the area.

* Monty Python was partly responsible, due to a famous sketch railing against Watney's Red Barrel being pervasive in Spanish holiday resorts. That sketch holed them below the waterline. Thank God - it was a close run thing at the time. We thought real beer was dying out, rather as real bread has subsequently done in Britain.

Edited 13 hours ago13 hr by exchemist

When I hear names like Surrey and Bedford, Britain's post-war aviation history comes to mind.
Not beer, or that warm slop you Englishmen call beer 😄 .

42 minutes ago, MigL said:

When I hear names like Surrey and Bedford, Britain's post-war aviation history comes to mind.
Not beer, or that warm slop you Englishmen call beer 😄 .

American beer is cold because it needs to numb the tastebuds.

48 minutes ago, MigL said:

When I hear names like Surrey and Bedford, Britain's post-war aviation history comes to mind.
Not beer, or that warm slop you Englishmen call beer 😄 .

I expect you don't have the same history in Canada where beer was (as I think I heard) a healthier option for drinking in the (pre-?)industrial age than the water which was apparently anything but.

I think i heard thst that may have applied to spirits like gin too-incredibly.

Have you tried Newcastle Brown -what I used to drink ?

50 minutes ago, MigL said:

When I hear names like Surrey and Bedford, Britain's post-war aviation history comes to mind.
Not beer, or that warm slop you Englishmen call beer 😄 .

To a rower, Surrey and Middlesex mean the Tideway.

9 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

American beer is cold because it needs to numb the tastebuds.

I stay away from American swill also.
Give me a crisp, cold Heineken ( Peroni, Stella, Konigsberg, Tsing Tao, or any beer brewed in the German tradition ) any day.
Although a cold Guinness draught in a can can be quite refreshing.

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by MigL

4 hours ago, MigL said:

When I hear names like Surrey and Bedford, Britain's post-war aviation history comes to mind.
Not beer, or that warm slop you Englishmen call beer 😄 .

What do Surrey and Bedford have to do with post war aviation history - an air show ?

When I was in high school I used to take the dog past the Handley Page factory (now a museum).

That was post war history.

4 hours ago, geordief said:

I expect you don't have the same history in Canada where beer was (as I think I heard) a healthier option for drinking in the (pre-?)industrial age than the water which was apparently anything but.

'Small Beer' the industrial beer of steelworks and other places.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

'Small Beer' the industrial beer of steelworks and other places.

It's worth mentioning that small beer saved many lives in the 19th century .

"During the 1854 cholera outbreak in Soho, London, small beer (a low-alcohol beer) played a critical role in saving lives, as brewery workers and residents who consumed it were spared from the contaminated water that caused the epidemic

. PubMed Central (PMC) (.gov) +1"

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by OldTony

Bedford was the research site of the RAE ( Royal Aeronautical Establishment ) until 1994, and was the British equivalent of DARPA, with a supersonic wind tunnel. It oversaw prototype work and assessed whether manufacturer's proposals met Operational Requirement.

Surrey was the home of Vickers-Armstrong and Hawker Aircraft, which later became Hawker Siddeley, at nearby Kingston upon Thames, under the guidance of the late Sir Sidney Camm, for 40 years. Vickers-Armstrong, and others, became part of BAC prior to the TSR-2 debacle, and later Hawker Siddeley was also folded into present day BAE.

Incidentally, Westland, the helicopter manufacturer ( that used to do aircraft ) at Yeovil ( Somerset ), is now a fully owned subsidiary of Leonardo, an Italian company.
Don't you Brits have any pride in your aeronautical history, and past accomplishments ?