Browsing: January

A Brief History On January 11, 1962, the Soviet Navy suffered an embarrassing loss of a submarine when their Foxtrot Class sub, B-37, caught fire while tied up at dock at Polarny naval base, resulting in the total loss of the sub. Digging Deeper B-37 had been undergoing routine maintenance when the fire broke out, possibly due to hydrogen gas set off by an electrical spark.  With all the watertight doors open, the fire spread and reached the torpedoes, setting off the explosives contained within those weapons and destroying the submarine. Sadly, 59 of the 61 crewmen aboard B-37 were…

A Brief History On January 10, 1920, The Treaty of Versailles went into effect, marking the official end of World War I, although the United States did not endorse the treaty.  While some called World War I “The War to end all wars,” we know too well the false optimism of that epithet as only two decades later the world would be wracked by a much bigger and more deadly war. Digging Deeper The tremendous cost of World War I in lives and national resources led participants to insist on a clear winner/loser outcome and any thought of a negotiated…

A Brief History On January 9, 1964, a riot broke out between Panamanian nationalists and American Canal Zone Police and US Military forces stationed in the Canal Zone after a Panamanian flag had been torn during a confrontation between the Panamanians and Canal Zone Police. Digging Deeper As the riot and violence grew, US Army troops were called in to quell the riot, leading to three days of fighting that left about 22 Panamanians and four Americans dead. Panama had gained its independence with the help of the US in 1903, for the American aim of building the Panama Canal. …

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…

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…