A Brief History On August 21, 2025, Australian science fiction action horror film Primitive War was released in theaters in the United States by Fathom Entertainment. The film features fearsome dinosaurs in the 20th Century, but definitely not part of the Jurassic Park film franchise Digging Deeper The film finds our heroes, US Army long range recon soldiers, in the jungles of Viet Nam during the war, fighting not only the communist enemy, but murderous reptiles from millions of years ago that have unexpectedly appeared. In the interest of not providing a spoiler, we will let you find out why the…
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 August 21, 1888, American inventor William Seward Burroughs of New York patented the first successful American adding machine, a device that remained in service until superseded by electronic calculators in the 1970s. While mechanical adding machines date back long before that of Burroughs’s, his machine was definitely an improvement and was made to even print results. Digging Deeper Other old fashioned tech that also worked rather well is the slide rule, a computing device that could perform all sorts of mathematical operations almost as quickly as an electronic calculator. Invented in the 1600s by William Oughtred,…
A Brief History On August 20, 1962, the NS Savannah set out on her maiden voyage, a trip from Yorktown, Virginia to Savannah, Georgia, through the Panama Canal and on to Hawaii. This nuclear-powered cargo ship, the first of its kind, was built in New Jersey at a cost of $47 million. Digging Deeper The ship itself only cost $18 million, but adding the nuclear reactor and fuel added a whopping $29 million to the price, paid by the US government. An allegedly “civilian” nuclear-powered icebreaker had been built by the USSR in 1957, and in all, only four nuclear-powered…
A Brief History On August 18, 2014, Dominick George “Don” Pardo, Jr. died at the age of 96. His voice was so excellent for announcing, deep and mellow, that he was the Saturday Night Live announcer from its start in 1975 right up until he died. Digging Deeper He had worked for NBC for an incredible 70 years, starting as a radio announcer in 1944. Pardo started a long run as a television game show announcer in 1952 on Winner Take All and soon took over the microphone for The Price is Right and then for Jeopardy! His stint at…
A Brief History On August 17, 1945, George Orwell published his novella, Animal Farm, a cautionary tale that amounts to “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!” An allegory about the siren song of communism, Animal Farm was proven right when almost all the communist countries in the world reverted to at least somewhat of a market system. Digging Deeper Other authors have foretold the future, such as Jules Verne with his tales of submarines and space travel. Orwell himself struck again with Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, forecasting our descent into universal surveillance of the population and the…