Browsing: February 13

A Brief History Doctor Who, a pinball machine designed by Bill Pfutzenreuter (Pfutz) and Barry Oursler, and released by Midway (under the Bally brand name) in September 1992, is based on the television series of the same name.  In January 2016, FarSight Studios created a Kickstarter campaign here in the hopes of raising funds to make a digital version of the table available for their various versions of The Pinball Arcade. Digging Deeper This campaign is the fifth one started by FarSight Studios in order to raise sufficient funds to digitize notable pinball machines.  The previous four campaigns (all of which I have personally contributed…

A Brief History On February 13, 1961, while 3 Californians were looking for geodes, they picked up a rock believed to be 500,000 years old that was later found to contain a spark plug!  Understandably, this find, now known as the “Coso artifact,” sparked a lot of mystery and controversy.  Digging Deeper Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell (love that name), were poking around the geology of Olancha, California when they came across their amazing discovery. Upon cutting open the supposed geode, they expected it to be hollow inside and containing crystals.  Instead the trio’s diamond-bladed saw blade was ruined, and rather than find…

A Brief History On February 13, 1945, bombers from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the American Air Force (USAAF) struck the eastern German city of Dresden, a city so beautiful it was once known as the “Florence on the Elbe,” incinerating tens of thousands of people. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the Allies decisively beating the military forces of Nazi Germany on all fronts, including in the air. The British were particularly bitter about the destruction and death caused to British cities and civilians at the hands of Germany’s Luftwaffe (air force) early in the war and then again…

A Brief History On February 13, 2004, astronomers discovered that a white dwarf star known as BPM37093 is actually the largest diamond yet discovered in the universe! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find our great gem in the constellation Centaurus, about 50 light years away. White dwarf stars are now known to consist largely of crystallized carbon, which we know better as diamond!  With a mass of 11 x 10 to the 29th power in U.S. pounds, the pulsating orb has been described as being 10 billion trillion trillion carats by the television show Modern Marvels (in a program about carbon), making it a…