Browsing: June

A Brief History On June 14, 2002, an asteroid named 2002 MN passed within 75,000 miles of the Earth.  If that does not sound close to you, it is only a third as far away as the Moon.  (M-O-O-N, moon.)  Good old 2002 MN is what is called a “near earth asteroid,” a heavenly body that comes at least within 1.3 Astronomical Units (AU) of the Earth.  An AU is defined as the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Digging Deeper Asteroids are basically mini-planets, chunks of rock that orbit the Sun in our solar system.  Some are large…

A Brief History On June 11, 2015, President Obama was in the strange position of having a trade agreement he and many congressional Republicans supported shot down in a vote by members of his own party. Digging Deeper The “Pacific Rim” trade treaty endorsed by the President would involve Canada and 11 other countries in freer trade with the US.  Wary of another NAFTA trade fiasco where such a treaty cost American jobs, many Democrats opposed the agreement, as did enough Republicans to deal the President a defeat.  The President must now go back to negotiating a revised deal if…

A Brief History On June 8, 1966, while test flying the monstrously expensive XB-70 Valkyrie, the U.S. Air Force managed to knock the Mach 3 bomber from the sky when an F-104 “chase” plane got a little too close and bumped into it, resulting in the crash of both aircraft and the death of two pilots and severe injury to another.  The XB-70 had cost about $750 million to develop and build, quite a fortune in those days.  Military history is rife with such blunders, miscalculations and general screw ups.  Here we list 10 such incidents in no particular order.…

A Brief History On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, an African-American, was arrested for refusing to vacate his seat in a “Whites Only” railroad car.  His case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, where a 7-1 majority ruled against Plessy, and upheld segregation laws in states that had them, as long as the “separate but equal” rule was followed. (Ferguson was the lower court judge that ruled against Plessy.) Digging Deeper This concept of separate but equal was thus the law of the land until the 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education, and much…

A Brief History    On June 1, 1939, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, a plane designed by the German aeronautical engineer Kurt Tank, made its first flight and would go on to bedevil the Allies throughout the rest of World War II.  With upgrades throughout its service life, the “Butcher Bird” (or Shrike) as it was known due to its heavy firepower, would remain on the leading edge of piston-engine performance. Digging Deeper With its introduction to combat over the English Channel and France in 1941, the Fw 190 became an obvious game changer, requiring Allied designers to upgrade existing Spitfires and come up with…