Erik Weiss, better known by his stage name Harry Houdini, was one of the greatest entertainers in history, and among the first modern mega-celebrities. Over a 35-year career spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Houdini thrilled audiences the world over with his headline-grabbing feats of stage magic and death-defying escapology, making entire elephants… Read More »
The age of the giant rigid airship or Zeppelin was tragically brief, lasting barely forty years from the first Zeppelin flights in 1900 to the scrapping of the last surviving such airship, the Graf Zeppelin II, in 1940. When we think of the end of giant airships, we tend to picture the Hindenburg, which met… Read More »
For the residents of San Francisco, October 11, 1950 started out like any other day, with thick banks of autumn fog rolling in from the bay and across the city. By the afternoon, however, it became clear that something was seriously wrong. On that day alone, eleven patients were admitted to Stanford Hospital with pneumonia,… Read More »
Shortwave radio signals, which occupy the radio frequency band between 3 and 30 megahertz, have the unique ability to bounce or “skip” off the earth’s ionosphere, allowing them to propagate over vast distances. This has attracted a devoted international community of shortwave radio enthusiasts, who exploit the unique properties of the medium to listen to… Read More »
American gangster films of the 1920s, 30s and 40s have contributed a wealth of colourful slang to the English language, much of which is still floating around popular culture to this day: “sleeping with the fishes”, “concrete overshoes”, “G-man”, “Chicago typewriter”, “goon”, “big house”, “private dick”, “speakeasy”, “Chicago overcoat”, “ride the lightning”, “fuzz”, and many… Read More »
If you’ve ever worked in an office, chances are at some point you’ve had to interact with that coworker. You know the one: miserable, antisocial, constantly grumbling about every minor inconvenience. The one who never takes lunch with the rest of the staff, is constantly late or underperforming, and responds to even the most reasonable… Read More »
On February 21, 1967, tragedy struck the Apollo moon landing program. During a dress rehearsal or “plugs out” test for Apollo 1 – the first planned shakedown mission of the new spacecraft – an electrical wire sparked and started a fire in the capsule. In the pressurized, pure oxygen environment of the cabin, the flames… Read More »
At precisely 3 in the morning on January 17, 1991, a series of explosions rocked the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The explosions were exact and devastating, destroying Iraqi military radars, command bunkers, and communications hubs with surgical precision. Immediately, Iraq’s aerial defence system sprang into action, its 3,000 anti-aircraft guns saturating the air with explosive… Read More »
In modern boxing, unless your name happens to be Rocky Balboa, it is generally advised that you not try to block punches with your face and chin. Back in the early days of the sport in the 18th and 19th centuries, however, the idea of slipping or dodging a punch was so alien that most… Read More »
The game of soccer (henceforth referred to as football to satisfy my English sensibilities, though to be fair, it was the English who originally named the sport Soccer in its earliest days under somewhat codified rules and only abandoned that original moniker about a half century ago in favor of the more generic “Football”) is… Read More »
When we think of Sparta, the first thing that comes to mind is the Spartan warrior. Unlike other historical warrior peoples like the Samurai, the Spartan warriors were pretty close to our imagined conception of them. They were manly warriors who were very muscular, fought wearing red capes, and holding big shields. They were the… Read More »