A Brief History Because the Northeast blackout of August 14–16, 2003 came only two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the first thought in the minds of many people was that a terrorist attack had occurred. Of course, the US government quickly reassured the public that no such attack had taken place, even though they did not have an answer as to why the outage occurred. Digging Deeper The problem turned out to be a software bug in the portion of the electrical grid controlled by FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio based electrical utility. Tree branches contacting power…
Browsing: August 14
A Brief History On August 14, 1480, during the protracted Battle of Otranto in Southern Italy, a siege of the city between the Ottoman Turks and the Italian defenders of their homeland, the Ottomans, who of course were of the Islamic faith, took 800 Christian Italians hostage and gave them a choice, convert to Islam or be executed. The Italian Christians chose not to renounce their faith, and in turn beheaded by the Ottomans. Sadly, this terrible incident is but one of many in which one side or the other has attempted to use force upon other people to cause…
A Brief History On August 14, 1937, the Japanese invasion of China that started July 7, 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, saw the first air to air combat of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and arguably the first air to air combat of World War II (presuming you consider the start of the war between Japan and China as the start of World War II). While Japanese aviation and aviators are often given accolades as the best trained and equipped air forces in the Pacific theater early in World War II, this first aerial combat resulted in a resounding…
A Brief History From August 14 through 16, 2003, a widespread power outage affected millions of people living throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and the Canadian province of Ontario. Today, though, it may be hard to imagine not just a couple weeks but rather a whole life without electricity. Nevertheless, there has been indeed a time period when there was a world without electricity. We, the humans, have come a long way as a race and civilization. For instance, one can create a quality research paper about how people discovered fire, harnessed electricity and was able…
A Brief History On August 14, 2003, an enormous electrical blackout struck the Northeast and upper Midwest of the United States and a large part of Western Ontario, Canada, leaving about (or “aboot” in the Great White North) 55 million people without electricity for a period lasting between 7 hours and 2 days. As is nearly always the case, the government response was a knee jerk reaction to lie to the public! While the 9/11 terrorist attacks were still fresh in the minds of North Americans, the US Government assured the public that the power outage was NOT a terror…
