A Brief History On August 23, 1954, a harmless looking cargo aircraft made its first flight when the C-130 had become airborne. It would go on to become perhaps the greatest cargo plane in history, still in production over 50 years later! Despite its fantastic versatility as a troop and cargo transport, airborne laboratory, electronic warfare, weather reconnaissance plane, aerial tanker, fire fighter, search and rescue, paradrops, sensor drops, Special Forces support, and bomber that drops the largest bomb in the US Air Force (the MOAB, Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or colloquially, “Mother of All Bombs” due to its giant…
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A Brief History On August 22, 1971, Cold War anti-communist zealots FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General of the US John Mitchell announced the arrest of “The Camden 28,” anti-Viet Nam War protesters that had broken into a Camden, New Jersey draft board to destroy documents necessary for the administration of the military draft for that area. Digging Deeper The 28 anti-war activists included priests and former seminarians, and quite a few people that had experienced Catholic high school or college education, and some were involved in the priesthood (2 priests and a minister, plus a Franciscan Brother)…
A Brief History On August 22, 1880, The London Telegraph published an allegedly true story claiming that, believe it or not, people can be buried alive and still survive! Digging Deeper To support the article’s claims, they provided an example concerning the fakir Haridas. A fakir is a holy man, usually a Muslim. In 1835, at the maharaja’s palace in Lahore, India, Haridas spent 40 days locked in a sealed chest. It is said that Haridas fasted for seven days before the big moment. He also swallowed and then reproduced a 27 meter long strip of linen to clean out his stomach.…
A Brief History On August 20, 1977, the United States space probe, Voyager 2 was launched with the mission of studying the outer portions of our solar system and then becoming the first (with its sister ship, Voyager 1, actually launched 2 weeks later) man made object to enter inter-stellar space. Digging Deeper These Voyager spacecraft have sent back information about Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune and the moons of those planets, and are expected to continue to send back data (including images) until about 2020 when their Plutonium powered generators run down, with perhaps another 5 years of weak…
A Brief History On August 20, 2008, the results of the internet voting of which top locations should be included in Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition were announced. Of those selected, the Polish city of Gdynia was especially notable. The original Monopoly game is famously believed to have been created by Charles Darrow, but this was simply not the case. Here we list 10 people believed to have done something they did not do. (Note: These are mostly mistaken historical beliefs of laypeople, not historians.) Digging Deeper 10. Al Gore Claimed He had Invented the Internet. Often ridiculed for…