A Brief History On April 19, 1989, one of those naval oops moments we keep writing about occurred, and this particular one had catastrophic consequences for the history of the battleship. The Iowa class battleships (Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and New Jersey) produced by the US during World War II were the epitome of the type, combining the most effective combination of firepower, armor protection, speed and endurance of any of the ships of their kind. Digging Deeper The Iowa, lead ship of the greatest class of battleship ever produced, suffered an enormous explosion in the Number 2 turret when the…
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A Brief History On April 17, 2014, the Kepler space telescope operated by NASA confirmed the existence of Kepler-186f, the first discovery of a planet of equivalent size to Earth within the “habitable zone” of another solar system. The newly discovered planet is in the solar system of a red dwarf star called Kepler-186, only about 582 light years away! (A light year is roughly 6 trillion miles.) Digging Deeper We know that at some point the Earth will become uninhabitable for human civilization. This eventuality may take hundreds of millions of years, or even billions of years, when our…
A Brief History On April 14, 1986, the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh experienced the largest hailstones ever recorded, with an incredible weight of 1 kilogram for a single hailstone! As you can imagine, the damage caused was extensive, but even worse, 92 people were killed by the giant ice balls from above. Today we take a look at this particular weather phenomenon. Digging Deeper Hail is basically frozen rain. Little balls of ice, or irregular shaped lumps, hail differs from ice pellets in that ice pellets usually fall in the winter or cold weather and are smaller. Hail varies in…
A Brief History On April 7, 1827, John Walker of Stockton-on-Tees, England (Dunham County), first sold the item he had invented the year before, the now taken for granted friction match. Today, with smoking on the decline, and the need for starting fires greatly diminished by modern technology, it is hard to remember just how important the invention of the friction match was. Just try lighting a stogie with flint and steel! Digging Deeper Walker was original apprenticed to a surgeon, but quickly realized he was not of the proper mind set for surgery, so he switched his studies to…
A Brief History On April 6, 2018, a bus carrying a junior hockey team, the Humboldt Broncos of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, crashed into a semi-tractor trailer near Armley, Saskatchewan, leaving 10 members of the team dead and also killing an additional 6 persons. Another 13 people were injured, but the driver of the semi survived. In spite of the horrific cost in lives, this particular tragedy was not among the absolute worst in the history of Canada. Today we remember some of those terrible traffic accidents that rank among the worst in Canadian history. Among the worst Canadian…