Cruisers
I studied War at university (yes really). I had a whale of a time and enjoyed it immensely. Most of the degree has faded gracefully to the back of my mind but my dissertation seems oddly unwilling to do the same. The title?

"Regional variation in Washington Treaty heavy cruiser design 1922-35"

This is something that I am still worryingly proficient at. The design, philosophy and employment of a category of warship that was built as a result of a conference that occured 89 years ago and of which none survive. It makes some of the stuff people know about vintage computers look pretty up to the minute. This extends to a weird ability to remember the individual units from various photos that are "commonly" (a relative term here) published of them. This is an ability so sad, you can't even impress other nerds with it.

Length? Roughly 600ft with an all up weight not including crew, ammunition or provisions but including boiler feed water of not more than 10,000 tons.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Thu 30 Jun 2011, 22:43, 3 replies)

Cool
Big ships rock!
( The_Commander_of_Skips wears his sunglasses at night, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 0:43, closed)

In the end though,
a bit of a useless Treaty - all it did was make the major powers focus on how they could get around the limitations, rather than focus on what was actually effective...
( Hunter Stockton was murdered by a bicycle wielding axolotl,.,.,.,., Fri 1 Jul 2011, 11:24, closed)

A hugely
important document which lead to some weird designs (Nelson and Rodney) and some utter bullshit (the Japanese "treaty" cruisers which were about 4,000 tons overweight). If you have any interest in WW2, especially the Pacific theatre, this treaty is fundamental to the development of the War.
(kitescreech still here, Tue 5 Jul 2011, 18:34, closed)