A Brief History On February 28, 1959, a Thor-Agena A rocket was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying a spy satellite designated Discoverer 1, the first in a spy satellite program of the American military and intelligence network. Digging Deeper Discoverer 1 was intended as the first ever satellite to orbit the Earth via the poles rather than on an equatorial orbit, and was part of the CORONA program. Actually a testbed, Discoverer 1 was not equipped with the camera and film that later satellites of the KH-1 type would carry. Unfortunately, the star-crossed spacecraft failed in…
Browsing: Politics
A Brief History On February 26, 2023, the Wall Street Journal said that the US Department of Energy reported that the origin of the world-wide pandemic of COVID-19 in all probability did indeed come from a leak at the Wuhan, China biological lab that was the epicenter of the outbreak in late 2019. Digging Deeper The DOE joins the FBI in making this dramatic assertion, after years of suppression of any hint of allegations that this Chinese biolab that just happened to be at the source of the deadly virus was indeed responsible. It is abundantly apparent that the Chinese…
A Brief History On February 25, 1870, history was made when Hiram Rhodes Revels, an African American man from Mississippi, was sworn in as a US Senator, the first African American member of the US Congress. Digging Deeper Despite being born in North Carolina in 1827, Revels was not born a slave, and later lived in Indiana and Ohio. The son of a Baptist minister, Revels was educated in Quaker seminaries and at Knox College, in Illinois, later being ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Revels served in the US Army during the American Civil War as a chaplain,…
A Brief History On February 24, 1597, the Battle of Santavuori Hill was fought in Finland, the final battle of the Cudgel War. Digging Deeper You may know a cudgel is a thick stick or club used as a weapon, and in an age of firearms and sophisticated steel armor and weapons the cudgel may have seemed out of date. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and the peasants fighting for Finland against the oppressors from Sweden had to make do against their well-armed and well armored foes. Blunt force weapons such as cudgels, maces, and flails…
A Brief History On February 23, 1903, Cuba made a deal with the United States to lease 45 square miles of land and sea for a period of time with no expiration, virtually forever! Digging Deeper In 1898, the US and Spain fought a war, including ground and sea combat in Cuba, then a Spanish possession. The US won the short war, and took possession of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, while Cuba was freed from Spain and became an independent country. The original rent payment was to be paid in Gold, $2000 per year, but after 1934 the…
