When a terrorist began attacking people with knives on London Bridge recently, a man, described in news reports as a Polish chef, at nearby Fishmongers’ Hall, where the incident began, grabbed a narwhal tusk that was displayed by the side of the hall’s doorway and, wielding it like a lance, deployed it against the assailant outside. It was one of the more unusual uses of a narwhal tusk in recent memory.
The Washington Post quotes British historian and journalist Guy Walters on the use of the tusk. “There’s something very British about fighting a terrorist with something as surreal as a narwhal tusk,” he said. “We don’t carry weapons in this country. But we do have narwhal tusks around.”
Happy Thanksgiving for those on this side of the pond and below the 49th parallel. (The Canadians celebrated the holiday in October.) Here is a repost of a story I think is well worth retelling. 
The 
The livestock carrier, 
The Secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer, has been fired. What is revelatory is what he was fired for. 
Lucy Hughes, a 24-year-old recent engineering graduate of the University of Sussex has won this year’s 
One hundred and seven years ago today, the three-masted schooner 
Last March, 
When I bought my new-to-me old boat, I bought several booklets of paper charts covering the waters from the Chesapeake to Maine. Over the last few years, I have never used them. Never, not once. Instead, I have chart plotters on a laptop, two tablets, and my phone. My paper charts have stayed buried at the bottom of the cabinet beneath the chart table. Nevertheless, I still had mixed feelings when I read that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is phasing out the production of traditional paper nautical charts.