"You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing! "

-- Richard Feynman
-- From his undergraduate CalTech lectures, 1961

"The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."

-- Gibbons
-- Quoted by Richard Feynman

Carwood Lipton:

 

For some reason, at that moment, in that half-finished foxhole...

...all I could think about was the Fourth of July when I was a kid.

I loved to make my own firecrackers, cherry bombs, ladyfingers.

I loved to blow up dirt clods and pop bottles and the like.

Looked forward to it all year long.

What I saw that day was the most awesome...

...and terrifying display of firepower I'd ever seen in my life.

Of course, I wouldn't have been laughing if I'd known what happened to Joe Toye.

 

During the second barrage, I wasn't laughing anymore.

 

Joe Toye had lost his leg.