A Brief History On November 1, 1911, the first known dropping of a bomb from an airplane in combat took place, ushering in one more way for human beings to kill each other. This first incident was merely an Italian pilot dropping 2 hand grenades from his rudimentary airplane on a Turkish position in Libya, but soon airplanes made specifically for bombing and dropping bombs specifically made for use by airplanes would darken the skies above battlefields and cities alike. Digging Deeper The first bomber airplane was adapted for bombing not by one of the world’s great powers, but by…
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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 June 24, 1398, the Hongwu Emperor of China died. Soon after this emperor’s death, one of his sons, Zhu Di (1360-1424), began an ultimately successful rebellion to seize the throne from the Hongwu Emperor’s teenage successor, a nephew of Zhu Di. By 1402, Zhu Di’s nephew was dead and Zhu Di, now known as the Yongle Emperor, began a reign that has gone down in history as one of the most famous and significant in all of Chinese history. During his reign of over twenty years, the Yongle Emperor’s famed eunuch admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) conducted…
A Brief History On October 6, 1977, the Soviet aircraft design bureau, Mikoyan-Guryevich, flew their MiG-29 supersonic fighter for the first time. In service since 1983, over 1600 of these highly capable air superiority and fighter bomber jets have been built, and incredibly (for a fighter aircraft) the plane is still in production. Digging Deeper Conceived as the lower end mix of fighter jets, similar to the American F-16 vis a vis the F-15, the MiG-29 is the smaller, cheaper half of the Su-27/MiG-29 mix of Soviet (now Russian) fighters. (Note: Twice as many MiG-29’s have been built as have…
A Brief History On October 2, 1942, the Royal Navy teamed up with the Cunard White Star Line to pull off yet another of Naval History’s great “Oops” moments. In this incident, the giant luxury liner, RMS Queen Mary, collided with her own escort, the HMS Curacoa, an anti-aircraft cruiser, sinking the hapless cruiser. Digging Deeper Back on July 3, 2014, History and Headlines featured a list of 10 “Oops” Moments in Naval History. Today, we have another tale to add to this pantheon of blunders at sea. The RMS Queen Mary had been converted to use as a troop…
