A Brief History On April 26, 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte signed a general amnesty for those members of the émigrés of the French Revolution, those royalists and others opposed to the French Revolution that had fled France. Allowing all but about 1000 of the most die hard opponents of the Revolution (and Napoleon) such as the ringleaders of the Armée des Émigrés, those expatriate French royalists that created military forces to fight against Napoleon’s regime, to return to France without penalty was of course a healing gesture to unite France under the leadership of Napoleon. (Napoleon publicly stated respect for the…
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A Brief History On April 13, 2017, a United States Air Force C-130 Hercules cargo plane dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat on the unhappy heads of ISIS Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, killing 94 ISIS fighters, including 4 of their leaders. Incredibly, no civilian casualties were reported. (See our related articles Biggest Non-Nuclear Bomb of World War II Dropped and Russians Test “Father of All Bombs.” For extra information see our article “Weapons with Cool Names!” ) Digging Deeper The so called “Mother of All Bombs,” a witty take on the real name of “Massive Ordnance, Air…
A Brief History On April 12, 1807, the so called Froberg Mutiny came to a spectacular end on the island of Malta when the mutineers blew up the powder magazine. A person calling himself Count Froberg from Germany (really a Frenchman named Gustave de Montjoie, a Royalist and a foe of Napoleonic regime in France) was granted the right to raise a regiment to be stationed at Fort Ricasoli on Malta. The faux Count went about a most irregular way of recruiting his regiment, tapping men from Germany, Wallachia, Poland, Greece, Switzerland, Russia, Albania, and even Christians from the Ottoman…
A Brief History On April 11, 1990, British customs officials seized what they believed was to be a barrel for an enormously large super cannon headed for Iraq, presumably to be used to shell Israel and Iran from an immense distance (up to 625 miles) away. Iraq never did get its chance to field a combat ready version of their super cannon, called Project Babylon, but they did get as far as building prototypes for testing, serious cause for concern by the neighbors of Iraq in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel. Digging Deeper Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was…
A Brief History On April 4, 1965, Swedish automaker and aerospace manufacturer Saab introduced its upcoming Saab 37 Viggen (Thunderbolt) fighter jet, the most advanced European jet fighter design until superseded by the Panavia Tornado in 1981. The futuristic looking Viggen was distinctive in its “canard” design, a sort of double delta wing layout never before used on a mass produced aircraft. The Viggen replaced the Saab 35 Draken (Dragon) as Sweden’s primary jet fighter. The Draken, introduced in 1955, had been the first fully supersonic jet fighter produced in Europe. Digging Deeper Originally created as an airplane manufacturing company…