Browsing: Science & Technology

A Brief History On July 5, 2010, the City of London, England could boast of having the tallest building in Europe, when the 95 story (storey if you are English) “Shard” was completed.  Alas, London could make the claim of having the tallest European building only for a year, when the Mercury City Tower in Moscow, Russia passed it in 2013.  In fact, recent years have seen frequent changes in buildings claiming to be the tallest in Europe, and here we list the 10 Tallest Buildings in Europe (as of July 2017).  (In deference to European sensitivities, we are noting…

A Brief History This article presents a timeline of American history through the Civil War.  Please click on any of the dates to learn more about that date’s events. Digging Deeper I. Background and Colonial Development – 1500-1763 On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus, the Italian adventurer sailing into the unknown in the name of the Spanish Crown, landed in the Bahamas, the landing that became known as the “discovery” of America (or, “The New World” if you prefer). On March 15, 1493, Christopher Columbus made his triumphant return from his first voyage to the New World, a momentous occasion in human history…

A Brief History On June 26, 1794, the army of the First Republic of France (the result of the French Revolution) made the first use of balloons in combat at the Battle of Fleurus against the forces of the First Coalition. Digging Deeper The French army under Jean-Baptiste Jourdan had seized upon the new technology pioneered by the French Montgolfier Brothers to create an observation/reconnaissance balloon that could give military commanders and observers much greater fields of view of battlefields and their approaches, a distinct advantage in battle. Originally, the Montgolfier Balloons were of the hot air variety, but French…

A Brief History On June 5, 1829, the British ship, HMS Pickle, a 5 gun schooner, captured an armed slave ship, the Voladora, off the coast of Cuba.  This vessel was not the first British ship named “Pickle,” and in fact, it was the third British Navy ship with that name.  Indeed, there have been 8 Royal Navy ships with that goofy name!  With all the cool and bad ass sounding names you could give a warship, why settle for some goofy name?  Well, there are a bunch of goofy named warships, and here we list 10 of them.  (Our…

A Brief History On May 25, 1953, the United States Army conducted a live nuclear artillery test shot, the only time the US ever conducted such a test. Digging Deeper Conducted in the Nevada desert (Nevada Test Site, later renamed the Nevada National Security Site) the test firing and detonation of a live nuclear (fission type) bomb fired from a cannon was called by the code-word Upshot-Knothole Grable.  One of only 4 “gun” type atom bombs ever detonated by the US, the warhead was constructed similar to the “Little Boy” bomb that obliterated Hiroshima in 1945.  It used 2 chunks…