A Brief History On June 9, 1959, the United States Navy launched the USS George Washington, the first ballistic missile submarine capable of launching nuclear missiles. We used that occasion to publish the article “10 Weapons Milestones (Modern Systems that Changed the Game)” in which we named 10 of the most interesting and important advances in weaponry of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Today we list 10 more of those weapons and or weapons systems, and we branch out to include the 21st Century and Olden times as well. (Lightsabers not included!) Digging Deeper 1. Lasers (a Directed Energy Weapon),…
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A Brief History On June 5, 1944, the British RAF plastered the Normandy coast of France with 5,000 tons of bombs dropped by over 1,000 bombers in preparation for the D-Day landings the next day. The bombing failed to destroy the German defenses, and the further bombing of the German “Atlantic Wall” after midnight on D-Day (June 6, 1944) by 2,000 allied bombers also failed to achieve any particular benefit, especially due to cloudy conditions and bombers being extra cautious to avoid dropping bombs on Allied troops taking part in the landings, causing the bombs to fall too far inland…
A Brief History On May 29, 1935, the brainchild of Willy Messerschmitt, the Bf-109, made its first flight. The most produced fighter of all time, the Germans built 33,984 of them, while Czechoslovakia and Spain also built a few hundred more until 1958. The main German fighter of the pre-war period and early in the war, it was to be superseded by the more modern and more heavily armed FW-190, but the ease of manufacture and maintenance kept the Bf-109 in production during the entire war. Constantly updated and refined, the aging airframe remained competitive with allied fighters throughout the…
A Brief History On May 27, 1962, a landfill above a coal mine in Centralia, Pennsylvania caught on fire probably due to someone intentionally burning trash. The landfill located right above a seam in a former strip mine ignited the coal seam which led to an underground fire that has been burning ever since. Digging Deeper Incredibly, authorities have never been able to extinguish the flames, and the abandoned mine continued to burn, making most of the town of Centralia above the mine uninhabitable. With a population of 1400 in 1962, the ghost town boasted only 7 residents by 2013.…
A Brief History On May 26, 1908, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East was made when the Masjed Soleyman strike was made in Southwest Persia, the country now known as Iran. The fact that the Middle East is so rich in petroleum oil resources has been an overwhelming factor in the history of the 20th and 21st Centuries and will continue to be of monumental importance until such time as human civilization drastically reduces its dependence on fossil fuels. Today we look at 10 of the dates in the 20th Century when events of great importance…