SoCal Outdoor Explorer

SoCal Outdoor Explorer I like to combine hiking with a little bit of history.

I'm especially interested in SoCal waterfalls, Native American sites, historical ruins/relics, peaks, mines, caves, all things abandoned, fire lookouts, & California historic landmarks and monuments.

In 1932, a performer known as Moro the Human Iceberg (identified in records as William Aspinwall) shocked crowds in San ...
08/20/2025

In 1932, a performer known as Moro the Human Iceberg (identified in records as William Aspinwall) shocked crowds in San Diego by having himself sealed inside a block of ice on a wheeled cart. After about thirty minutes, the ice was cracked open and he emerged alive. Moro took this stunt on the road, repeating it in other cities like Portland, where photographers documented him lying motionless inside the frozen block—an early spectacle of endurance long before the era of viral publicity stunts.

Photo Credits: San Diego History Center / Calisphere (UT 8284-70, Feb. 4, 1932); Vintage Everyday (Portland stunt photographs).

In 1965, California drivers watched in awe as the largest, heaviest load ever to travel the state’s highways—200,000 pou...
08/15/2025

In 1965, California drivers watched in awe as the largest, heaviest load ever to travel the state’s highways—200,000 pounds—slowly rolled toward the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. This was the Saturn S-II common bulkhead test tank, a 33-foot-diameter, 40-foot-long section of the rocket that would carry astronauts to the moon. The journey required skeleton-crew test runs, custom-built transporters, temporary road closures, and even removing overhead lines at 14 freeway overpasses. At SSFL, it was subjected to extreme low-temperature tests to prove its structural integrity before the Apollo program’s final leap into space.
Original article published in Skyline (Vol. 23, No. 3, 1965) by North American Aviation, Inc. — scanned by heroicrelics.org.

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