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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In a dim corner of Fire Station #6 in Livermore California hangs a truly extraordinary object…a lightbulb. But this is no ordinary lightbulb. First installed in 1901, it has been burning almost continuously ever since, having only been switched off a handful of times in nearly 120 years. The Livermore Centennial Bulb has become something of a local celebrity, with […]
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330 kilometers northwest of the Canadian capital of Ottawa lies the town of Carp. At first glance the place might seem unremarkable, no different from the countless other sleepy little towns dotted across rural Ontario. But Carp is a small town with a big secret. For 35 years it was the site of a vital piece of Cold War infrastructure, […]
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On July 28, 1944, a flight of P-51 Mustangs escorting a squadron of B-17 Bombers on a mission over Merseburg, Germany, spotted something strange in the distance: a pair of white contrails rising at tremendous speed into the stratosphere. As the contrails pitched over and dove onto the bomber stream, the fighters broke formation to intercept. Seconds later, a pair […]
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At 11:30 AM on May 12, 1913, a man was taken from his cell at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City and lead out into the prison yard. There, he was strapped into a chair in front of a wall of sandbags and prepared for execution by firing squad. But instead of a group of trained marksmen, the man […]
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When we think of weapons of war doing damage to physical things, we tend to think of solid objects, whether they be spears, swords, guns, bombs, tanks, or aircraft. But in June of 2010, a group of computer programmers stumbled on one of the most innovative of a new type of weapon that had recently emerged: one made up of […]
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The name Albert Einstein has become a byword for genius – and rightly so. The German physicist’s theories of Special and General Relativity fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the uni-verse to a degree not seen since Isaac Newton, while his groundbreaking 1905 papers on Brownian Motion and the Photoelectric Effect laid the groundwork for modern atomic and quantum theory. Yet […]
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The six Apollo missions that landed on the moon between 1969 and 1972 left an extraordinary amount of equipment behind on the lunar surface. This included Lunar Module descent stages, Lunar Roving Vehicles, ALSEP experiment packages, American flags, and over 800 items jettisoned to save weight – from EVA boots to cameras to waste bags. But among these thousands of […]
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The rules are simple. All that is needed is a revolver, some cartridges, and one or more players. The revolver is opened, a single cartridge loaded, and the cylinder spun. The players then take turns placing the revolver against their heads and pulling the trigger. Depending on the rules, the cylinder is either re-spun after each play or left as-is. […]
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On June 7, 1912, Lieutenant Roy Kirtland took off from a field outside College Park, Maryland in a Wright Model B, the first aircraft ever purchased by the American Army Air Services. To his right sat Captain Charles Chandler, a Lewis light machine gun cradled between his legs. As Kirtland banked the aircraft 300 feet over the field, Chandler took […]
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The phrase ‘the peaceful use of nuclear weapons’ might sound like the ultimate oxymoron. While nuclear reactors are widely used to peacefully generate electricity and medical isotopes, it is difficult to imagine a peaceful use for atomic bombs on account of the whole, you know, radioactive BOOM. But incredibly, between 1961 and 1989, both the United States and the Soviet […]
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