Sable Island lies 300 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, near the edge of the eastern continental shelf. A windswept, crescent-shaped sandbar 43 kilometres long and barely one kilometre wide, it has long been known as the graveyard of the Atlantic, with over 350 ships having foundered on its shores since 1583. The… Read More »
If I were to ask you which 20th Century recording artist had the most top-ten hits in their lifetime, you might be tempted to guess Elvis Presley, or maybe a member of the Beatles. But no: that honour belongs to Glenn Miller, the trombonist and band leader whose recordings of such classics as “In the… Read More »
On July 20, 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon and uttered the immortal words “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” bringing to a close the decade-long Space Race between the US and USSR. While the Americans beating the Soviets to the moon might… Read More »
At 8:20 AM on August 6, 2016, 66-year-old veteran pilot Scotty Wilson opened the throttle and roared down the runway at Clinton-Sherman Industrial Air Park near Burns Flat, Oklahoma. Moments later he was airborne, and began climbing into a clear blue sky. But almost immediately things started to go wrong as the aircraft banked sharply… Read More »
During the Second World War, more than 260,000 Allied personnel were captured by the Western Axis powers and held in prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, Italy, and their occupied territories. Their bold and often ingenious escape attempts have become the stuff of legend, including the famous “Great Escape” from the Stalag Luft III camp in March… Read More »
If you are the sort of person who spends a lot of time staring at old buildings, you may have noticed a strange symbol cropping up again and again: a bundle of rods bound together with criss-crossing straps, often topped by an axe head. This motif shows up just about everywhere, from theatres, universities, courthouses,… Read More »
