Browsing: Science & Technology

A Brief History On August 18, 2019, about 100 environmentally concerned citizens, including government officials and activists, held a funeral for the Okjökull glacier in Iceland. Digging Deeper The glacier, a large landbound ice formation, once covered about 6 square miles, but had completely melted away, presumably due to global climate change.  Located northeast of Reykjavík, the end of the glacier often called “the Ok glacier” actually came in 2014, so the 2019 funeral was perhaps a bit late. The gone but not forgotten glacier is memorialized on a metal plaque placed in its honor that bears the inscription (in…

A Brief History On August 17, 1914, the World War I Battle of Stallupönen was fought between the Imperial German army and the Imperial Russian army near Nesterov, Russia.  The Germans were armed with the Mauser M98 chambered in 7.92 mm Mauser (sometimes called “8 mm Mauser”) and the Russians with the M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle chambered in 7.62×54mmR.  both rifles were 5 shot bolt action repeating rifles firing smokeless powder cartridges topped by copper jacketed pointy nosed bullets that were accurate and highly effective. Digging Deeper Bullets were originally merely lead round balls, and then were blunt tip hollow based…

A Brief History On August 16, 1940, Flight Lieutenant Nicolson of the British Royal Air Force flew his Hawker Hurricane fighter into history during combat over England against the German Luftwaffe when he continued to fight an aerial battle despite his plane being on fire from 4 cannon shells and multiple machine gun bullets striking it from an enemy Me-110.  Only after shooting down the enemy fighter despite being wounded and suffering severe burns, did Nicolson bail out, and was later awarded the Victoria Cross. Digging Deeper Air to air combat is a demanding and tricky business, and one of…

A Brief History On August 16, 2008, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, Illinois topped out and immediately became the tallest residence above ground level of any building in the world. Digging Deeper Towering, an appropriate adverb, 1,389 feet high, the skyscraper bearing the name of the future President of the United States cost about $847 million dollars in those-days dollars and would not open until January 30, 2009.  When completed with its spire in 2009, Trump International became the 7th tallest building in the world, and boasted 98 floors with 2.6 million square feet of floor space.…

A Brief History Because the Northeast blackout of August 14–16, 2003 came only two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the first thought in the minds of many people was that a terrorist attack had occurred.  Of course, the US government quickly reassured the public that no such attack had taken place, even though they did not have an answer as to why the outage occurred. Digging Deeper The problem turned out to be a software bug in the portion of the electrical grid controlled by FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio based electrical utility.  Tree branches contacting power…