A Brief History On October 30, 1985, the American Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off on its 9th mission, a successful flight that lasted over 7 days and was notable for having taken the first Dutch astronaut into space. Digging Deeper Challenger had a successful career from its first flight into space in April of 1983 through its 9th flight in October and November of 1985, spending nearly 1500 hours in space flight. Unfortunately, as we have chronicled, on January 28, 1986, the magnificent space machine blew up and went to pieces only 73 seconds into its 10th and final flight,…
Browsing: October 30
A Brief History On October 30, 1806, 5300 Prussian soldiers defending the city of Stettin surrendered to only 800 French soldiers commanded by General Lassalle, falling for the ruse that the French force was much larger. We previously used this example of wartime trickery as the start of our article, “Fooled You! Battles Won by Trickery.” Today we continue to explore the use of ruses, false information, decoys, fakes and general trickery in the conduct of warfare. Here are some more such incidents, and like our previous article, concerning World War II (with other tricky battles from other wars to…
A Brief History On October 30, 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of the greatest writers in Russian literature, completed his novel The Gambler with help from his future wife, the then twenty-year-old Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. A writers’ work can come from various sources of inspiration, whether they are sharing their knowledge on certain topics, reflecting on specific occurrences, connecting with deep emotions or letting their imagination run wild. Perhaps the most powerful messages are those influenced by real events paired with a strong need to spread what we have to say out in the world. Such is true for Dostoevsky, who undoubtedly put…
A Brief History On October 30, 1942, the heroic efforts of 3 British sailors resulted in the capture of codebooks and key setting sheets for the top secret Enigma code machine used by the German military during World War II. The sailors had boarded a sinking German submarine, U-559 in the Mediterranean Sea, costing 2 of the men their lives but reaping incredibly valuable coding material. The 2000 French-American World War II movie, U-571, shows a fictionalized account of American Navy forces capturing an intact German U-boat, a coup reminiscent of the U-559 incident and certain other U-boat related incidents…
A Brief History On October 30, 1974, the unlikely venue of Kishasa, Zaire (Zaire is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) was the scene of one of the most memorable fights of all time. Muhammad Ali squared off against Big George Foreman in a fight billed as “The Rumble in the Jungle.” Today we honor those fighters brave enough to face the best and give as well as take with the hardest punchers in the world. Digging Deeper 1. Ali-Foreman, October 30, 1974. Known as “The Rumble in the Jungle,” the match pitted 25 year old reigning Heavyweight Champion “Big…
