A Brief History On January 12, 2023, Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, died at the age of 54, one of the many early deaths of those related to Elvis. Digging Deeper Lisa Marie died of cardiac failure due to complications of bariatric surgery she had undergone. Her death at a premature age is only one such tragedy associated with Elvis. Of course, the King himself died at the age of 42 in 1977, also of cardiac arrest and not of complications of his extensive prescription drug regimen. Elvis was touched…
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A Brief History On January 11, 1962, the Soviet Navy suffered an embarrassing loss of a submarine when their Foxtrot Class sub, B-37, caught fire while tied up at dock at Polarny naval base, resulting in the total loss of the sub. Digging Deeper B-37 had been undergoing routine maintenance when the fire broke out, possibly due to hydrogen gas set off by an electrical spark. With all the watertight doors open, the fire spread and reached the torpedoes, setting off the explosives contained within those weapons and destroying the submarine. Sadly, 59 of the 61 crewmen aboard B-37 were…
A Brief History On January 8, 2020, Iranian air defense forces fired a surface to air missile at a civilian jetliner, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737 carrying 176 passengers and crew, downing the jet and killing all those aboard. Digging Deeper Sadly, there have been too many instances where airliners have been shot down, either on purpose because they were thought to be violating some defense parameter or accidentally due to misidentification. Today, we look at a few of those incidents, incidents that make TSA inconveniences, surprise fees, cramped seats, and crying babies on planes seem like…
A Brief History On January 7, 1954, Georgetown University teamed up with IBM to perform the first public computer translation of different languages automatically, showing the promise of speedier and easier translation tasks. Digging Deeper In the so-called “Georgetown–IBM experiment” the computer was tasked with translating over 60 sentences of the Russian language into English, although this early stage of computer translations required programs geared toward the general field discussed in the languages being translated. The computer used in this experiment was an IBM 701, also known as the Defense Calculator or the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, developed…
A Brief History On January 3, 1961, a steam explosion occurred at the SL-1 US Army experimental nuclear reactor located outside Idaho Falls, Idaho, leaving three technicians dead, the only immediately fatal US nuclear reactor accident so far. Digging Deeper The explosion was caused by the too rapid withdrawal of a control rod, causing the reactor pile to go critical and creating a burst of intense heat that instantly vaporized the cooling water and causing the explosion. Incredibly, one of the nuclear techs was hit by a high-speed piece of the reactor and pinned to the ceiling, the shield plug…