Browsing: Military

A Brief History On July 27, 1189, Friedrich Barbarossa (also known as Frederick), the Holy Roman Emperor, arrived at the capital of the Serbian King Stefan Nemanja, a city called Nis. King of Germany, King of Italy, and King of Burgundy, Barbarossa was a medieval force to be reckoned with, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1155. His undoing was his ill-considered foray into the Third Crusade, a venture that cost the Holy Roman Emperor his life. Digging Deeper Perhaps you are familiar with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, a plan the Germans called “Operation Barbarossa” in…

A Brief History On July 17, 1918, in the latter stage of World War I, the RMS Carpathia, a ship made famous for rescuing 705 of the passengers of the infamous RMS Titanic when she sank in 1912, was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by German submarine SM U-55 and sunk, losing only 5 lives in the process, a far different circumstance than the Titanic. Digging Deeper Carpathia, completed in 1903, was built for the Cunard Line of shippers, an intermediate sized ship not designed to compete with the very largest and fastest ocean liners, but to operate economically…

A Brief History On July 15, 1815, Emperor Napoleon I of the French surrendered to the British aboard the HMS Bellerophon. We have previously used this historic occasion to commemorate 10 ships that had nifty, martial sounding names that seemed likely to inspire their crews. (We have also noted goofy ship names in the past, “June 5, 1829: 10 Goofy Names for Ships”.) Today we name 10 More Ships with Cool Names since we certainly did not get all the good ones the first time. What ship names would you add to the list? (As previously noted, the British are…

A Brief History On July 14, 1938, Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. defied death and danger by flying his Lockheed 14 Super Electra around the world in a record time of 81 hours. Despite his great wealth, Hughes flew as a test pilot on airplanes under development and in record setting attempts, risking his wealthy life in the process. Throughout history, there have been rich people that take seemingly unnecessary chances with their lives either for the thrill of the event or because they are doing what they love. Today, we list some of those risk taking wealthy dare devils. Digging…

A Brief History On July 7, 2016, police in Dallas, Texas, made the first ever use of a robot to kill a murder suspect when a robot carrying a bomb blew up and killed gunman Micah Xavier Johnson who had shot 14 police officers (killing 5 of them) and 2 civilians in an effort to kill White people in retaliation for the perceived unnecessary killing of Black males by American police. The police robot was a type used by bomb disposal units and carried a 1 pound block of C-4 explosive in its extended robotic arm. Despite the bomb exploding…