Browsing: Society

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…

A Brief History On March 1, 2014, a mass stabbing occurred at Kunming, Yunnan, China in the railway station, a bloody affair that left 35 people dead and another 143 wounded.  The perpetrators were a group of 8 Xinjiang separatists, according to analysis of evidence including an East Turkestan flag found at the scene and Uyghur Muslims were involved. Digging Deeper The group of 6 men and 2 women were linked by the Chinese authorities to the separatist movement of Xinjiang, an autonomous region of China in the far Northwest portion of the country largely peopled by ethnic Turkic people…

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 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…