A Brief History On May 23, 1939, the submarine USS Squalus demonstrated the dangers faced by submarine sailors even in peacetime. Squalus was commissioned in March of 1939, with a length of 310 feet and a normal crew of five officers and 54 enlisted men. Digging Deeper With four bow torpedo tubes and four more aft, Squalus was a formidable warrior, boasting a 3-inch gun and four machine guns. After completing a series of test dives, Squalus once again dove on May 23, 1939, and suffered the catastrophic failure of her fresh air intake valve, partly flooding the sub, drowning 26 men…
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A Brief History On May 22, 2021, what may be the saddest and most bizarre event to strike an athletic competition in progress occurred in Gansu, China. An ultra-marathon held in the Yellow River Stone Forest was the final race for 21 of the 172 long distance runners competing in the 100 km race. Digging Deeper During the race, the weather had turned cold, rain and possibly graupel, a form of frozen rain, pelted the hapless runners as temperatures dipped from an “apparent” 34 degrees Fahrenheit to about 23 degrees Fahrenheit in wind gusts between 47 and 55 miles per…
A Brief History On May 21, 2005, Six Flags Great Adventure became home to the tallest roller coaster in the world. Called Kingda Ka, the 456 foot tall steel ride eclipsed Ohio’s Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster for the height crown, and boasted a top speed of 128 miles per hour to boot! Digging Deeper The world of roller coasters is not stagnant, and the title of the fastest coaster today is held by Formula Rossa in Abu Dhabi, with a top speed of 149 MPH! At 1.29 miles, Formula Rossa is the second longest coaster, beaten by Steel Dragon’s…
A Brief History On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off on his non-stop, solo trans-Atlantic flight, a flight into aviation history. Five years later, in 1932, Amelia Earhart took off on her flight as the first female pilot to fly non-stop solo across the Atlantic. Digging Deeper Numerous great aviation milestones have been achieved, including around the world flights, solar powered flights, altitude and speed records, and other great feats of aviation skill and technology. We wonder what the next great aviation milestones are going to be, or even should be, and we nominate a few of those here:…
A Brief History On May 19, 1959, the North Vietnamese Army formed Group 559 and gave the group the job of establishing a reliable supply route for NVA and Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam. The result became the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of roads and footpaths used by the communist North to funnel people and supplies to the South, via Laos and Cambodia. Digging Deeper Called by the American spy group the NSA “one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century,” the Ho Chi Minh trail was a constant target of US bombing…