A Brief History On November 5, 1943, despite explicit orders from Allied and Axis commanders, four bombs from a bomber airplane were dropped on the Vatican. A few months later, on March 1, 1944, it happened again. Apparently during wartime, nothing is sacred. Digging Deeper The first incident was reported to be a single plane that had been circling the Vatican that night. Its identity has never been proven, with speculation that it may have been an Italian plane trying to take out the Vatican radio tower. Various theories present US, UK, German, or Italian responsibility. Despite heavy damage, no…
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A Brief History On November 4, 1962, 69,000 feet above Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean a nuclear armed Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missile was detonated in the last atmospheric nuclear test by the United States. These nuclear warhead tipped missiles used to be deployed across the US, just waiting to blast the expected hordes of Soviet bombers from the sky as they swarmed over US targets. Digging Deeper If you were born after the Baby Boom, you probably do not remember major cities having anti-aircraft missile sites. Our local site was in Parma, Ohio (suburban Cleveland), and became a city…
A Brief History On November 2, 1900, Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman (1854-1942), President of the First Philippine Commission, stated, “Should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the commission believe that the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy, which would excuse, if it did not necessitate, the intervention of other powers and the eventual division of the islands among them. Only through American occupation, therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, and united Philippine commonwealth at all conceivable. And the indispensable need from the Filipino point of view of maintaining American sovereignty over the archipelago is…
A Brief History On November 1, 1911, the first known dropping of a bomb from an airplane in combat took place, ushering in one more way for human beings to kill each other. This first incident was merely an Italian pilot dropping 2 hand grenades from his rudimentary airplane on a Turkish position in Libya, but soon airplanes made specifically for bombing and dropping bombs specifically made for use by airplanes would darken the skies above battlefields and cities alike. Digging Deeper The first bomber airplane was adapted for bombing not by one of the world’s great powers, but by…
A Brief History On October 31, 1864, the people of the United States got a big treat in their Halloween basket, the newly minted State of Nevada, the 36th state of the Union, appropriately known as “The Silver State.” Right in the middle of the bloodiest war in US history, for good measure. Digging Deeper At the time of admission as a state, Nevada only had about 14,000 people. Only 4 years earlier the number was a paltry 6857 souls. For such a large area (the 7th largest state by area) Nevada has for most of its existence been quite…