A Brief History On January 8, 2005, the United States Navy, normally pretty safe drivers of large grey boats, managed another one of those “Naval Oops Moments” we keep writing about when the nuclear powered submarine, USS San Francisco (SSN-711) (Los Angeles Class attack sub), managed to collide at full speed with an underwater mountain off the coast of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. Operating at a depth of 525 feet and sailing at flank speed (the maximum, but classified top speed), it is a true testament to the brilliance of the designers and builders of the sub that the boat…
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A Brief History On December 25, 1951, Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and Harriette V. S. Moore were killed by a bomb explosion at their home in Sanford, Florida. Unfortunately, for many people, Christmas has not always been a time of happiness and celebration, but a time of death and destruction. Today we examine several of the unhappy incidents that have happened on this otherwise jolly holiday. Feel free to nominate other incidents that could be included on such a list, or to take exception with anything we have listed. (The list is in no particular order and we…
A Brief History On December 17, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight of a human piloted aircraft flown by Orville Wright was marked by another aviation first, that being the first supersonic flight by a human piloted aircraft that was built by a private company when SpaceShipOne, piloted by Brian Binnie achieved Mach 1.2 in a rocket powered test flight to a lofty altitude of 20.67 kilometers (almost 68,000 feet). SpaceShipOne is a privately developed space plane designed to take passengers into suborbital space flight, space being defined as at an altitude of at least 100 kilometers. …
A Brief History On November 20, 1917, a combined Allied offensive (British and French) stepped off against the Germans at Cambrai, France (Nord Department). The use of massed armor in close coordination with artillery and infantry was an historic first, and set the pattern for future use of armored vehicles. Although tanks had been used during World War I prior to Cambrai, they were used in smaller numbers (as many as 60 at a time) and only in close contact with the infantry in a strictly infantry support role. The British employed nearly 500 of their latest model tanks in…
A Brief History On November 19, 1911, the infamous “Doom Bar” located at the mouth of the River Camel in Cornwall, England where it empties into the Celtic Sea claimed another pair of ships, sinking both. The Island Maid and Angele both had run aground on the permanent sandbar, formerly known as the less poetic “Dunbar sands,” killing everyone aboard the Angele except, oddly enough, the captain. As can be expected by the demonstrative name, the Doom Bar is infamous for causing the sinking or grounding of many ships over the years. The River Camel estuary serves as access to…