A Brief History On February 18, 2023, the USA celebrates another National Battery Day! We would like to take this opportunity to briefly talk about batteries. Digging Deeper An electro-chemical device used to power any sort of electrical gizmo, we use batteries to start out cars, power our cell phones, light our flashlights, run our radios, power medical devices such as hearing aids and pacemakers, and they keep our computer data from being lost when the lights go out. Batteries were first invented way back between 150 BC and 650 AD, although we are not sure, the first known example…
Author: Major Dan
Major Dan
Major Daniel Zar is a retired veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He served during the Cold War and has traveled to many countries around the world. Prior to his military service, he graduated from Cleveland State University, having majored in sociology. Following his military service, he worked as a police officer eventually earning the rank of captain prior to his retirement.
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A Brief History On February 17, 1600, Italian polymath and philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in the Papal States of Rome for the crime of heresy. Digging Deeper Bruno had the nerve to believe in the Heliocentric model of the solar system as taught by Polish astronomer Copernicus, and that the stars in the sky were really distant suns that had their own planets. Further, Bruno opined that unlike the Catholic belief, not only was our Sun not the center of the universe, the universe is infinite and therefore could have no center. As he was led…
A Brief History On February 16, 1904, African American movie actor and singer James Franklin Baskett was born in Indianapolis. You may not know his name, but the character he played in the Disney classic movie, Song of the South in 1946, Uncle Remus, is a beloved part of Americana as is his rendition of the song, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Digging Deeper In 1948, Baskett was awarded an honorary Oscar, becoming the first Black actor to receive an Academy Award. Other notable African American births on February 16th include pianist and organist Bill Doggett in 1916, actor LaVar Burton in 1957, both…
A Brief History On February 15, 1996, the Chinese space program took a tragic turn when a Long March 3B rocket malfunctioned and crashed into a Chinese village, killing between 6 and 100 people on the ground. Digging Deeper The rocket was carrying an Intelsat 708 communications satellite into space, but veered off course shortly after lift off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. While the highly publicized American Space Shuttle disasters come to mind when discussing fatal space incidents, there have been many failures of space launches that have resulted in the expensive loss of equipment and in some…
A Brief History On February 14, 2000, the American spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker orbited asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft from Earth to orbit an asteroid. Digging Deeper NEAR Shoemaker had been designed for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and was launched in 1996. Not only did the spacecraft make history with its orbit, a year later it made space history again by being the first spacecraft to touch down on an asteroid, the same 433 Eros. The spacecraft was named after Eugene Shoemaker, an American geologist that studied impact craters on the Earth, but also studied…