A Brief History On March 4, 1970, the French submarine, Eurydice, apparently blew up violently while underwater off the coast of Cape Camarat in the Mediterranean Sea. As you can imagine, all 57 hands were lost. When the boat (submarines are called “boats” instead of ships, regardless of their size) was discovered several weeks later, only pieces were found spread over a large area. No cause of the explosion was ever determined, a not uncommon fate of submarines and the sailors that operate them. Today we will touch on several incidents that should give anyone contemplating a life as a…
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A Brief History On February 28, 1844, a steam powered, sail and propeller (screw) driven US Navy corvette, the USS Princeton, one of the newest and most modern ships in America’s fleet, was sailing on the Potomac River with a large retinue of US Government officials aboard including the President of the United States when she experienced one of those terrible maritime experiences we at History and Headlines call a “Naval Oops Moment.” Yes, yet another in a long line of ignominious incidents involving incredibly inane ideas and infamy that we have touched upon on several previous articles. (As noted…
A Brief History On February 26, 1935, British scientist Dr. Robert Watson-Watt performed a demonstration that was to lead directly to the development of radar by the British, a concept long anticipated by previous scientists and first demonstrated by German inventor Christian Hülsmeyer in 1904. Digging Deeper Back in the infancy of radio, researchers were discovering the phenomenon of radio waves echoing off objects, a fact Hülsmeyer used to demonstrate how such reflected radio waves could be used to show the position of ships that could not be seen due to darkness, fog, or distance. Considered the inventor of radar,…
A Brief History On February 23, 1954, the first mass inoculation of children against the Polio virus took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The developer of the vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk, was hailed as hero and the scourge of Polio was basically eradicated from the United States. No longer would “iron lungs” be common, and parents did not have to live the nightmare of their children dying or becoming crippled by Polio. As with other vaccines, the Salk vaccine saved untold millions of lives and prevented untold amounts of misery, and yet in recent years vaccines have been under fire from…
A Brief History On February 15, 1961, the sporting world was rocked by one of the worst disasters in sports history, the crash of Sabena Flight 548 in Belgium, killing all 72 people on board, including the entire US Figure Skating team, both competitors and coaches and even some family members. Luckily, only 1 person on the ground was also killed. Other sports teams have suffered from the catastrophic crash of airliners and buses, or even the terrorist massacre at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, but the US Figure Skating team loss was one of the first really big disasters…