A Brief History On January 8, 2020, Iranian air defense forces fired a surface to air missile at a civilian jetliner, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737 carrying 176 passengers and crew, downing the jet and killing all those aboard. Digging Deeper Sadly, there have been too many instances where airliners have been shot down, either on purpose because they were thought to be violating some defense parameter or accidentally due to misidentification. Today, we look at a few of those incidents, incidents that make TSA inconveniences, surprise fees, cramped seats, and crying babies on planes seem like…
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 January 7, 1954, Georgetown University teamed up with IBM to perform the first public computer translation of different languages automatically, showing the promise of speedier and easier translation tasks. Digging Deeper In the so-called “Georgetown–IBM experiment” the computer was tasked with translating over 60 sentences of the Russian language into English, although this early stage of computer translations required programs geared toward the general field discussed in the languages being translated. The computer used in this experiment was an IBM 701, also known as the Defense Calculator or the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, developed…
A Brief History On January 6, 1994, American figure skater and favorite to win the US Figure Skating Championships, Nancy Kerrigan, was attacked by two men hired by the ex-husband of her rival, Tonya Harding, beating the skater’s leg with a metal baton. In trying to clear the way for Harding in the US championships and presumably onto the Olympic team, the thugs failed to prevent Kerrigan from headlining the US Olympic figure skating team, although she was out of the US championship contest due to her injuries. Digging Deeper Athletes have been attacked, assaulted, or forcibly robbed many times,…
A Brief History On January 4, 1970, the Beatles, minus John Lennon, had their last studio session as the iconic group, marking an end of the phenomenon that was The Beatles, probably the greatest rock band of all time, and possibly the greatest musical act of any genre in music history. Digging Deeper That sad but sweet last session saw the three mop tops overdub and polish Paul McCartney’s “Let it Be,” a song that would go on to have the highest debut on Billboard and then reach #1 in the US. By April of 1970, Paul had announced he…
A Brief History On January 3, 1961, a steam explosion occurred at the SL-1 US Army experimental nuclear reactor located outside Idaho Falls, Idaho, leaving three technicians dead, the only immediately fatal US nuclear reactor accident so far. Digging Deeper The explosion was caused by the too rapid withdrawal of a control rod, causing the reactor pile to go critical and creating a burst of intense heat that instantly vaporized the cooling water and causing the explosion. Incredibly, one of the nuclear techs was hit by a high-speed piece of the reactor and pinned to the ceiling, the shield plug…