Browsing: Science & Technology

A Brief History On November 4, 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter found the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Digging Deeper The boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun reigned ca. 1332 to 1323 B.C., his name meaning that he is the living image of the god Amun.  “Tut” was likely the son of the rather unique pharaoh Akhenaten, the husband to Nefertiti, who herself ranks seventh on a list of Top 10 African Rulers, Kings and Emperors.  Tut’s father’s uniqueness stems from attempting something of a religious revolution.  Tut’s father tried to focus worship on the sun disk…

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A Brief History On November 2, 1947, eccentric airplane designer Howard Hughes performed the maiden and only flight of his Spruce Goose (also known as the H-4 The Hercules), the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built. Digging Deeper Howard Hughes was a veritable renaissance man.   The businessman dabbled in everything from film making to flying.  One of the wealthiest men of his day, he had a net worth of $1.5 billion at the time of his death.  A man of such wealth and such diverse interests is not surprisingly going to sometimes use that wealth for attempting to make his most…

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A Brief History On November 1, 1896, a picture showing the unclad or bare breasts of a woman appeared in National Geographic magazine for the first time in the publication’s long history. Digging Deeper National Geographic is one of the world’s most respected and outright useful magazines.  Founded in 1888, the National Geographic Society has expanded to have a magazine with a U.S. readership of 4,125,152 and international readership of 875,962 (as of December 2012) in addition to its own television network and even video games.  The scientific and historical work done by its members have brought about numerous breakthroughs…

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A Brief History On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the North of Russia; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise by humankind! Digging Deeper Roughly a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to plunge the world into a nuclear world war in which both sides possessed large arsenals of weapons of annihilation, the Soviets showed off their nuclear potential by testing the “Tsar Bomb”. The bomb weighed 27,000 kilograms (60,000 lb) and was 8…

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A Brief History On October 21, 1944, Japan began their notorious kamikaze attacks during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, first striking HMAS Australia. Digging Deeper By 1944, World War II in the Pacific Theater had been raging for several years.  While the European War is traditionally dated to have begun in 1939, the Pacific Theater arguably began two years earlier with Japan’s invasion of China.  Thus, Japan had been fighting against myriad enemies for nearly seven years by the autumn of 1944. During those seven years, Japan had rapidly established an impressive colonial empire that at its height seemed to…

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