On March 10, 1972, an Atlas-Centaur rocket blasted off from pad LC-36A at Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the unmanned probe Pioneer 10 on humanity’s first mission to the planet Jupiter. Along with cameras and various scientific instruments to study the gas giant planet and its moons, Pioneer 10 also carried a curious object. Bolted to the struts of the probe’s […]
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On a cold February morning in 1942, the residents of the Canadian city of Winnipeg, Manitoba awoke to discover that their worst nightmare had come true. It began at 6:30 AM as air raid sirens wailed and streetlights blinked out as a blackout rolled across the city. Aircraft droned overhead and the dull roar of exploding bombs could be heard […]
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In the early morning hours of May 10, 1940, soldiers manning the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael looked up at the sky and beheld an alarming sight: nine strange slender-winged aircraft descending silently towards them. Within seconds the aircraft skidded to a halt and disgorged 54 highly-trained German airborne troops onto the fort’s grass roof. Little could the garrison have […]
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In Hollywood, miscasting is a fact of life. The reasons why an actor might be cast in a role for which they are ill-suited are many and varied. Sometimes the actor just happens to be incompatible with the director or their co-stars, or a rushed schedule or personal problems interfere with the delivery of an effective performance. In other cases […]
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The American Revolution is one of the historical events that together with things like the French Revolution, among other things, helped usher in the modern era. Americans, on the whole, tend to be proud of this event and focus on it heavily in their school curriculum, as it heralds the birth of their nation and the triumph of a handful […]
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The Crusades are seen as a milestone in European history. Especially through romanticizing eyes, they are often viewed as a heroic age, with legendary tales of pious folk, honor-bound knights, and even epic narratives imbued with mystical and semi-mythological elements, such as the search for the Holy Grail. Modern historians, however, tend to view the crusades more than a little […]
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The McRib is a food with both a devout following and many detractors. But what is the genesis of the world’s most popular fast food chain’s most mysterious menu item? And why, oh why, is it not available all the time like the majority of the rest of the McDonald’s menu? Cooking ribs in the Americas predates the colonial period. […]
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She has been called “the most kissed girl in the world,” and in the 120 or so years since her death she has certainly been among the most widely-seen. Her gently smiling face has adorned the homes and studios of some of the 20th Century’s greatest writers, artists, and thinkers, inspiring dozens of works of art and literature. And in […]
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Quantum mechanics is every Hollywood writers favorite handwavy tool to accomplish whatever they feel like in a given moment regardless of whether what they say or have happen has anything remotely to do with the reality of this branch of science and, well, reality. Beyond the masses, it is so NOT understood that even the likes of Richard Feynman, one […]
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Just where did language come from and what does it take for a language to develop? If a group of children grew up isolated from the rest of the world, without any access to human language, would they create one of their own and, if so, what would it look like and how long would it take? These questions have […]
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Of all the advanced weapons technology developed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, perhaps none was as sought after by the Allies as the Aggregat-4 rocket, better known as the V2. Developed at the Peenemunde Army Research Station under the direction of Walter Dornberger and Werner von Braun, the V2 was the world’s first operational ballistic missile, pioneering […]
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The Edwardian Era, lasting from 1901 to 1910, is often remembered as a final age of innocence before Europe descended into the savagery of the First World War – a gilded period of refinement and elegance. This is somewhat ironic, as for most of his life the namesake of the era, King Edward VII, embodied exactly none of these virtues. […]
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On October the 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, into orbit. This event sent shockwaves through the United States defence establishment. Not only did Sputnik demonstrate that the Soviets were more technologically advanced than anyone had imagined, but it announced that they now possessed long range ballistic missiles capable of reaching any target […]
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In May 1972, technicians at the Tricastin Uranium Enrichment Plant in France made an alarming discovery. A shipment of Uranium ore from the Oklo mine in the African nation of Gabon was found to contain only 0.71% of fissile isotope Uranium-235, instead of the 0.72% typically found in nature. This discrepancy, while small, was enough to set off alarm bells, […]
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It is the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. A patient is dragged kicking and screaming by hospital orderlies and pinned to a gurney. A bite block is forced into their mouth, and a pair of electrodes placed on their head. Then, at the flick of a switch, hundreds of volts of electricity are passed through the patient’s head. This […]
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On the beach just outside Grantley Adams Airport on the island of Barbados, five large naval cannons sit overgrown and rusting in the tropical heat, lying where they were abandoned fifty years ago. These relics are all that remain of Project HARP, an audacious 1960s attempt to launch satellites into space using giant guns – and of the grand ambitions […]
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In the summer of 1915, a lone British soldier cycled down a country road outside the French town of Albert. His papers identified him as Private Denis Smith of the 1st Leicestershire Regiment, and at first glance he would have seemed quite ordinary: a slightly plump and ruddy-faced boy with short brown hair – no different from the thousands of […]
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It has been called the Emperor of all Maladies. For the entirety of human history, Cancer has been our constant companion, afflicting young and old, rich and poor, sinner and saint alike. And for most of that history we have been all but helpless against it. It was not until the 19th century that advances in surgery made it possible […]
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