Imagine you are hiking in the woods. Emerging into a clearing, you stumble upon an unusual sight: a circular metal hatch like a manhole cover, protruding from the ground. Curious, you lift open the hatch to reveal a ladder, plunging down a vertical shaft into the earth. After taking a moment to gather your courage… Read More »
Quick: are you right-brained or left-brained? Chances are, you answered this question immediately and definitively. If you are the creative, intuitive type, drawn to creating music, stories, images, and other forms of art, then you are right-brained. If, by contrast, you are more analytical and logical, drawn to mathematics and pattern recognition, then you are… Read More »
On September 2, 1945, hundreds of servicemen and representatives from every Allied nation gathered on the deck of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Under the watchful eye of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific, representatives of the defeated Empire of Japan signed the formal instruments of surrender, officially bringing… Read More »
On April 12, 1961 at 9:07 AM Moscow Time, a Soviet Vostok rocket blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, and soared into the sky. Minutes later, the rocket reached an altitude of 200 kilometres, placing its payload, 27-year-old Air Force Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. Gagarin circled the earth once before reentering the atmosphere, landing… Read More »
On a snowy, blustery morning in March 1968, a two-man MiG-15 UTI jet took off from Chkalov air force base outside Moscow on a routine training flight. Barely ten minutes later, the aircraft’s pilot radioed air traffic control, announcing it was cutting its flight short and requesting permission to land. Then, the transmission went dead.… Read More »
On the morning of Thursday, December 17, 1903, two brothers stood on a windswept beach outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and prepared to make history. After winning a simple coin toss, one of the brothers climbed into a strange wood-and-canvas craft dubbed the Flyer. With a clatter and a whir the twin propellers spun up… Read More »
On September 1, 1974, U.S. Air Force pilots Major James Sullivan and Major Joel Widdifield took off from New York City and headed East over the Atlantic Ocean. By the time they reached London, only one hour, 54 minutes, and 56 seconds had elapsed – less than 1/17th the time it had taken for Charles… Read More »
Near the end of the groundbreaking 1988 hybrid live-action/animation film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? hardboiled detective Eddie Valiant is in hot pursuit of three villainous cartoon weasels, who escape through a tunnel into the animated ghetto of Toon Town. Before following them in, Valiant pulls out and loads a cartoon gun given him by none… Read More »
On June 7, 1195, an English Benedictine Monk named Gervase of Canterbury watched as a great thunderstorm descended on the city of London. What happened next, recorded in Gervase’s 600-page Chronicle, defied the monk’s imagination: “On the 7th of the ides of June, around the sixth hour, a marvellous sign descended near London. For the… Read More »
Of all prominent American families, few are more popularly associated with tragedy than the Kennedys. Most infamous of these misfortunes are, of course, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and that of his brother, Robert, in 1968. Also well-remembered is the death of John F. Kennedy Jr, his wife, and his sister-in-law in… Read More »
Valdivia, Chile. May 22, 1960. Magnitude 9.5. 1,655 killed. Prince William Sound, Alaska. March 26, 1964. Magnitude 9.2. 128 killed. Sumatra, Indonesia. December 26, 2004. Magnitude 9.1. 227,898 killed. Tohoku, Japan, March 11, 2011. Magnitude 9.1. 15,700 killed. These are the four most powerful earthquakes in recorded history. If you keep up with the news,… Read More »