Machines that dig

Tunnel Boring devices, or TBMs, are among the many interesting manufacturers of our infrastructure: Two-ton primary-colored cylinders with jagged teeth that chomp through the world. And every single one features a traditionally female name.

From Big Bertha in Seattle to mother Chung in San Francisco, to lady-bird in DC, TBMs are all females.

Based on a l . a . Times article, miners into the sixteenth century prayed to Saint Barbara to safeguard them through the many problems underground. Saint Barbara—who may have been a real individual during the third century in chicken or Lebanon—was a martyr who was simply imprisoned in a tower by the woman tyrannical father Dioscorus. She privately studied in order to become a Christian against his wishes until all hell broke free, according to Catholic.org:

Dioscorus was enraged by her activity and also by the woman conversion. So he himself denounced her prior to the municipal tribunal. She was horribly tortured, as well as last had been beheaded. Her very own parent, merciless to your final, acted as the woman executioner. God, however, speedily penalized the woman persecutors. While her heart was being borne by angels to Paradise, a flash of lightning hit Dioscorus, in which he ended up being hurried prior to the judgment seat of God.

Therefore wait, so how exactly does that connect to mining precisely? In the 1500s, miners utilized weapon dust to bust open their mines, so Saint Barbara’s masterful summoning of a rather specific and incredibly effective lightning hit had been a lot like those mining explosions, consequently making the woman the patron saint of mining and geology (and artillery). And from now on the TBMs traveling below your city right now have changed those explosions—making them into a bunch of modern Saint Barbaras.