A Brief History On October 18, 1945, the Soviet nuclear program received American atomic bomb (plutonium implosion type) plans from scientist, Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee from the Third Reich.  Fuchs had been passing nuclear secrets to the USSR in Britain prior to his involvement in the US-British-Canadian Manhattan Project. Digging Deeper Born in Germany the son of a Lutheran minister, the Fuchs family had communist leanings and opposed the rise of the Nazi state.  Fuchs went to Britain in 1933 to study physics, and was awarded a PhD and a DSc (doctor of science) degree.  In 1939 at the…

A Brief History On October 17, 2003, the pinnacle was placed upon the top of the 101 story Taipei World Financial Center (the original name), making it (at the time) the tallest building in the world at a whopping 1667 feet tall, a full 184 feet taller than the previous record holder, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. Digging Deeper The Petronas Towers held the record from 1998 to 2003 (or 2004 if you want to wait until Taipei 101 was actually opened), and Taipei 101 held the record until 2010 when the even taller Burj Khalifa in…

A Brief History On May 12, 1864, as part of the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse (Virginia) Union and Confederate forces fought in the “Bloody Angle” resulting in thousands of casualties on both sides, just part of what was by far the bloodiest and most horrific war in American history.  ( Note: Numbers vary with sources.) Digging Deeper Part of the Overland Campaign, Spotsylvania (spelled Spottsylvania at the time) the battle pitted the Union Army of the Ohio (IX Corps of the Army of the Potomac) against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.  About 100,000 Union troops faced about 52,000…

A Brief History On at least four separate occasions electronic book burners known as “deletionists” tried to rid Wikipedia of its coverage of the internet phenomenon known as “creepypastas”.  Deletionists are a group of bullies who focus their efforts on trying to remove anything and everything they merely do not like from Wikipedia.  They typically, out of ignorance, refer to articles concerning topics they are unfamiliar with as “not notable”. Digging Deeper: A Timeline 26 March 2008: Allen3 nominated the article titled “Creepypasta” for deletion from Wikipedia.  After a brief discussion in which only five random user accounts voted to delete the article,…

A Brief History The Rake is a fictional cryptid resembling a humanoid creature that infrequently stalks people, sometimes appearing at the foot of the victim’s bed, and has been alleged to mutilate and abduct children.  According to Paul Tamburro, The Rake originated as a creepypasta created by an anonymous poster on 4chan’s/b/ imageboard in late 2005.  The creature is depicted as a crouching humanoid that is around 6 feet tall, with pale, grey-colored skin.  Its eyes are slightly larger than a human’s eyes, and they glow, which is the sign of a tissue in its eyes known as ”tapetum lucidum”.…