A Brief History On May 4, 1988, one of those spectacular disasters that can be associated with a space program gone wrong occurred at Pacific Engineering and Production Company of Nevada (PEPCON), a chemical plant only 10 miles from Las Vegas. A massive fireball and series of explosions caused over $100 million in damage and took 2 lives, while injuring another 372. The PEPCON Disaster joins many other space and rocket related disasters that have happened while still on Mother Earth. Digging Deeper The plant was one of 2 plants in the US that produced an oxidizer for solid fuel…
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A Brief History On April 24, 1918, at the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux in Northern France, 3 British tanks met 3 German tanks in the first known instance of tank vs. tank combat in military history. The battle raged from April 24 to April 27, 1918, as part of the German Spring Offensive (alternately known as the Ludendorff Offensive), a desperate attempt to snatch victory before the Americans could bring overwhelming reinforcements to the fight. Of course, tanks had already seen battle in World War I, just not against each other. Digging Deeper One of the enduring innovations of World…
A Brief History On April 23, 2005, the video world was treated to the first ever YouTube video, a video created by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, under the screen name of “jawed.” The 18 second video was of the Elephant exhibit at the San Diego Zoo, and was so brief we can include the entire script here: “All right, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants, and the cool thing about these guys is that, is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks, and that’s, that’s cool, and that’s pretty much all there is to…
A Brief History On April 22, 2020, the pandemic of the COVID-19, or SARS-CoV-2, or better known as “coronavirus,” has claimed another victim, as reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer, in this case the venerable Urbana University, an Ohio college that was only the second institute of higher learning in Ohio to admit women as students alongside men. Digging Deeper Urbana University, founded in 1850, has been ailing financially for several years, and was acquired by Franklin University in 2014 and operated as a branch of that institution. The school, located near Columbus, Ohio, in the city of Urbana (Champaign County),…
A Brief History On April 22, 1915, the Imperial German Army used chlorine gas in large quantities for the first time at Ypres, in Belgium, targeting French colonial troops. Previous use of irritant (tear gasses) substances had previously been attempted by both side with little practical effect. The shift to gas that could disable and kill people was a tremendous escalation in the chemical war aspect of World War I (1914-1918), then known as “The Great War.” (Not so “great” if the enemy uses lethal gas against you!) Digging Deeper While people have engaged in warfare for thousands of years,…