Of all major military conflicts of the Twentieth Century, the Second World War stands apart. Not only was it the deadliest conflict in modern history, claiming an estimated 85 million lives, or about 1 in every 25 people, but it was also arguably history’s first truly technological war. While many now-ubiquitous military technologies such as aircraft, tanks, and submarines saw […]

On the 25th of April, 1917, the British satirical magazine Punch ran an evocative political cartoon. In it, a stern Kaiser Wilhelm II, dressed in full regalia, stands before a young German army recruit. Pointing out the window to a giant factory belching black smoke, he declares: “And don’t forget that your Kaiser will find a use for you—alive or […]

It is one of the most iconic and enduring images in American history: a hollow-cheeked, white-haired figure with bushy eyebrows and a pointy goatee dressed in a tophat and tails emblazoned with the stars and stripes, pointing sternly at the viewer and declaring I WANT YOU FOR THE U.S. ARMY. This, of course, is Uncle Sam, the flamboyantly-dressed personification of […]

If I say the word “balloon”, the image that pops into your head is likely a benign one – a colourful helium party balloon, perhaps; or a hot air balloon drifting serenely over a city. But, as with pretty much all of mankind’s creations, these seemingly docile flying machines can and have been turned into weapons of war. As we’ve […]

On the morning of August 16, 1956, an alert reached controllers at Oxnard Air Force Base, just north of Los Angeles: a rogue aircraft was headed towards the City of Angels. It was the call the pilots of the 437th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron had been waiting for their entire careers. Minutes later, a pair of fighter jets roared down the runway […]

On July 9, 1916, an unusual vessel suddenly appeared in Baltimore Harbour: a German U-boat, proudly flying the red, white, and black Imperial flag. Yet no warships or gunfire greeted the foreign intruder, for she was on a mission not of war, but of commerce. The 60 metre long, 2,300-ton unarmed vessel, specifically designed to evade British naval blockades, was […]

Writing a book or a movie? Want to instantly communicate that your story takes place in an alternate reality? Just add zeppelins! More than any other form of transportation, rigid dirigible airships or zeppelins are emblematic of a bygone era of technology – and of a romantic, optimistic future that never was. From the flights of the first zeppelins at […]

From the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the world lived under the horrifying shadow of nuclear armageddon. Following the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, the Soviet Union, United States, and their allies stockpiled enormous arsenals of nuclear weapons to deter the other side from using theirs first, […]

On the morning September 2, 1945, delegates from the victorious Allied powers and the defeated Empire of Japan gathered aboard the battleship USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, to sign Japan’s official instrument of surrender. By 9:23, the ceremony was over; after 6 brutal years and over 75 million deaths, the Second World War was finally over. The world breathed […]

By the winter of 1944 and 1945, the German Third Reich was in dire straits. Adolf Hitler’s final offensive in the Ardennes had failed, the Soviet Red Army was driving ever closer to Germany’s borders, and day and night Allied bomber aircraft were pummelling German cities into smoking rubble. With the end in sight, the Nazi government hastily assembled a […]

Pop quiz: who was the first woman in space? Many of you probably just answered Dr. Sally Ride, who launched aboard the space shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983. But you would be wrong: Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, not the first overall. That honour belongs to a now scarcely remembered Russian woman who, all the […]