York Town Square

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Gravity Hill: Optical illusion or warp in earth’s gravity?

Linked in/Neat stuff: The Drifters-Charlie Thomas/Indian Steps Museum
gravityhill
A bottle of water appears to roll uphill – or its actually downhill – at Gravity Hill in Bedford County, Pa., about 140 miles west of York. Actually, there are two spots on Gravity Hill where your car, basketballs – and bottles of water – appear to roll uphill. A Gravity Hill brochure lists this as one of the top 10 reasons to visit: ‘Ice cream cones aren’t as messy on a hot day.’ York County has a similar ‘Gravity Hill’ in its northern part. That one, like many of such locales around the country, have haunted tales attached to them. Not so, in Bedford County. At least as far as brochure descriptions go. Why does it happen? “Some speculate it’s an optical illusion,” a Bedford County tourism brochure states. ‘Others are certain there’s a warp in the earth’s gravity that causes this strange occurrence. But whatever the reason, you can tell your friends that you’ve made it to the often talked about, but seldom found, GRAVITY HILL.’ Also of interest: Yorkers are discovering Brigadoon-like Bedford, Pa.

Neat stuff from all over … .

Charlie Thomas, famous as a member of The Drifters, has called York home for years. But does he still live here?

David Messick of the Daily Press in Norfolk, Va., wrote:

‘I’m trying to find Charlie Thomas and see that you did a story on him a while back. Is Charlie Thomas still a resident of York? I’m trying to contact him and his old website is down.”

Can anyone help David? You’ll remember that a house containing some of Charlie Thomas’ memorabilia burned in a York rowhouse fire some years ago.


Thanks for the reminder:
A FB fan pointed out that you can see past iterations of flagship site Ydr.com.

“You can see all of the incarnations of ydr.com using the WWWayback Machine, he wrote. “Just click on the timeline at the top and select an active snapshot date from the calendar. Goes back to 1996.”

Articles of Confederation Day: The York County Heritage Trust has put information on the annual Articles of Confederation Day in November.

As many York countians know, Continental Congress adopted the document when meeting in York in 1777-78.

Dinner for two? From Indian Steps Museum’s Facebook page: “Our Web site, www.indiansteps.org is now able to accept secure payments online. This is useful if you would like to make a donation (desperately needed) to help keep Indian Steps running. We are also raffling off a romantic ‘Dinner for Two’ at Indian Steps as a fundraiser. Tickets may now be purchased online. Check out www.indiansteps.org if you would like to help us.

And see a photo of a two-headed calf on that FB page.


Pretty soon, I’ll have every Central Pa. third place documented. These are good places to work on stuff … including this blog.