A Brief History On October 18, 1945, the Soviet nuclear program received American atomic bomb (plutonium implosion type) plans from scientist, Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee from the Third Reich. Fuchs had been passing nuclear secrets to the USSR in Britain prior to his involvement in the US-British-Canadian Manhattan Project. Digging Deeper Born in Germany the son of a Lutheran minister, the Fuchs family had communist leanings and opposed the rise of the Nazi state. Fuchs went to Britain in 1933 to study physics, and was awarded a PhD and a DSc (doctor of science) degree. In 1939 at the…
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A Brief History On October 17, 2003, the pinnacle was placed upon the top of the 101 story Taipei World Financial Center (the original name), making it (at the time) the tallest building in the world at a whopping 1667 feet tall, a full 184 feet taller than the previous record holder, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. Digging Deeper The Petronas Towers held the record from 1998 to 2003 (or 2004 if you want to wait until Taipei 101 was actually opened), and Taipei 101 held the record until 2010 when the even taller Burj Khalifa in…
A Brief History On October 16, 1991, 35 year old loser George Hennard crashed his truck into the front of a Luby’s Cafeteria in Kileen, Texas, hopped out of the pick-up, and began shooting, eventually killing 24 people (including himself) and wounding another 27. Up to this point, the Luby’s Cafeteria shooting was the deadliest non-school shooting in US history. (Note: This tragedy was greatly eclipsed by the horrific mass shooting at Las Vegas, Nevada on October 1, 2017, in which a single gunman shot and killed 58 people, with another 413 reporting wounds or injuries.) Digging Deeper Although this…
A Brief History On October 15, 1997, Andy Green became the first supersonic driver of a car by setting the land speed record of 763 mph (Mach 1.016), driving a twin jet powered ThrustSSC across a measured course and back in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. This historic event occurred 50 years and 1 day after Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly supersonic in level flight. Digging Deeper Green is an RAF fighter pilot, no stranger to high speed, also is the holder of the land speed record for diesel powered vehicles with a speed of 350 mph in…
A Brief History On October 15, 1997, the ThrustSSC driven by Andy Green became the first land vehicle to break the sound barrier. At a speed of 763 mph this twin jet powered car became the fastest car on the planet. Here we list 9 such land based people, animals, or vehicles that are the fastest in their category. What additions to this list would you make? (See our list from March 30, 2014 10 Fastest Things, and our list from July 9, 2014, 10 Greatest Swimmers.) Digging Deeper 9. Fastest Roller Coaster, Formula Rossa, 149 mph. Located in the…