Browsing: Society

A Brief History On May 29, 2026, war drama film Pressure was theatrically released by Focus Features in the United States of America. Digging Deeper Pressure captures a critical aspect of military operations that is often if not normally overlooked in movies, novels and even casual history.  Weather and weather forecasting is a crucial part of military operations that does not make for dramatic battle scenes  as similarly logistics is also often ignored despite its massive importance to combat.  The main fact the film brings to the audience is that the pivotal battle of the Western Front in Europe during…

A Brief History On February 24, 2022, days after recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Digging Deeper Russia’s invasion has had five major phases thus far.  The first phase covers the period from February 24th, 2022, when Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine, to April 7th, 2022 when fighting focused away from the northeast and Kyiv and towards the south and east of Ukraine.  The second phase covers the period from April 8th, 2022, when the area of heavy fighting shifted to the south and east of…

A Brief History On February 24, 2022, days after recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a full scale invasion of Ukraine.  Since then, the war has expanded to involve many more countries either directly or indirectly.  North Korea has sent military personnel to fight against Ukraine for Russia, while Iran has supplied drones to Russia for use against Ukraine.  To help Ukraine against Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and numerous other nations on nearly every continent have delivered significant numbers of weapons and other aid to Ukraine. Digging Deeper Exacerbating…

A Brief History On August 21, 1888, American inventor William Seward Burroughs of New York patented the first successful American adding machine, a device that remained in service until superseded by electronic calculators in the 1970s.  While mechanical adding machines date back long before that of Burroughs’s, his machine was definitely an improvement and was made to even print results. Digging Deeper Other old fashioned tech that also worked rather well is the slide rule, a computing device that could perform all sorts of mathematical operations almost as quickly as an electronic calculator.  Invented in the 1600s by William Oughtred,…

A Brief History On August 20, 1962, the NS Savannah set out on her maiden voyage, a trip from Yorktown, Virginia to Savannah, Georgia, through the Panama Canal and on to Hawaii.  This nuclear-powered cargo ship, the first of its kind, was built in New Jersey at a cost of $47 million. Digging Deeper The ship itself only cost $18 million, but adding the nuclear reactor and fuel added a whopping $29 million to the price, paid by the US government.  An allegedly “civilian” nuclear-powered icebreaker had been built by the USSR in 1957, and in all, only four nuclear-powered…