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…
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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 25, 1968, South Korean Marines fighting against the communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army alongside Americans and the South Vietnamese committed a terrible atrocity in the town of Hà My in South Vietnam. Sadly, in virtually any war that can be researched, atrocities are almost sure to be found committed by both sides in the conflict. Digging Deeper The South Korean Marines, renowned for their toughness, had suffered a mortar attack in which an officer, an NCO, and 4 troops had been killed. The direction the mortar fire came from was deemed to be…
A Brief History Nowadays, it seems that World War 2 (WW2) is talked about all the time – so let us talk about it some more; however, the question I want to postulate is, why is World War 2 spoken about so often, so specifically? It is not as if WW2 is a SlotoCash Casino. World War 2 has a unique cultural hold for some reason that no other war really has. Perhaps it can be chalked up to how recent it was, although there have been several major wars since then and loads of civil wars going on right…
A Brief History On February 22, 1944, American bombers accidentally bombed the Dutch cities of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede, and Deventer, killing over 800 civilians in the Netherlands towns. In previous articles, we have discussed the tragedy of good guys accidentally killing good guys, a phenomenon called “friendly fire” incidents. While the United States military tries especially hard to avoid such incidents, including sometimes putting our own people in danger to minimize the possibility of killing innocent civilians, in war stuff happens, often bad stuff. Digging Deeper In February of 1944 the Netherlands were occupied by German military forces and had…