In late 1961, Drs. Philip Vogel and Joseph Bogen, neurosurgeons at the California College of Medicine in Los Angeles, were preparing to carry out a radical new procedure. The patients under their care suffered from severe epilepsy, which despite their doctors’ best efforts had resisted all attempts at conventional treatment. One such patient, a 48-year-old former paratrooper identified in medical […]
Read more
On April 6, 1945, the Imperial Japan launched Operation Ten-Go, a desperate last-ditch naval attack against the Allied fleet supporting the invasion of Okinawa. Supported by the light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers, the charge was led by the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the mighty battleship Yamato. A quarter-kilometre long, displacing 65,000 tons, and armed with no fewer […]
Read more
Drones. Whether raining down death and destruction on the battlefield, capturing sweet snowboarding and mountain bike moves for YouTube, helping farmers inspect their fields, or driving aviation authorities mad by wandering into controlled airspace, drones seem to be just about everywhere these days. Using the latest in remote control and automatic guidance technology, drones – more properly known as Unmanned […]
Read more
It was July 16, 1970, and Mario Escamilla was furious. The 33-year-old native of Santa Barbara, California, had just learned that a coworker, Donald “Porky” Leavitt, had broken into his trailer and stolen his most prized possession: a 15-gallon jug of homemade raisin wine. Determined to put an end to such theft, Escamilla grabbed a rifle and stormed off to […]
Read more
Looking at a small dog like a Chihuahua or a Pomeranian, it can be hard to imagine that such a creature is in any way related to a wolf. Yet every modern dog breed, no matter how big, small, or cute, can trace its genetic lineage directly back to a population of wild wolves living on the steppes of Siberia […]
Read more
On January 23, 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit research and education organization based in Chicago, moved the hands on its Doomsday Clock forward to 100 seconds to midnight – the closest in its 74-year history. According the Bulletin, this change reflects the growing threat posed by climate change, nuclear proliferation, and misinformation, and the increasing unwillingness […]
Read more
The tongue map. If you’ve ever taken an elementary or high school science class, chances are you’ve encountered this classic of scientific illustration: a diagram of the human tongue, neatly divided into zones showing the locations of receptors for the four basic tastes: sweet at the tip, salty and sour along the sides, and bitter at the back. You may […]
Read more
At 10:30 AM on February 14, 1929, a rattle of gunfire echoed through Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Seven men, Irish members of Chicago’s North Side Gang, had been gunned down in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street by assailants dressed in police uniforms. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre would go down as one of the most brutal chapters in […]
Read more
Space: the final frontier – or, if science fiction is to be believed – the final battlefield. In the land of sci-fi, no self-respecting Starfleet officer on an away mission or scruffy-looking nerf-herding smuggler would dare leave their spacecraft without a trusty phaser or blaster at their side. Even in universes where directed-energy weapons have not yet been invented – […]
Read more
In the world of modern weaponry, a good name can go a long way when it comes to the intimidation factor. Names like “Hellfire”, “Sidewinder”, “Stinger”, and “Javelin” convey menace and devastating firepower, making it abundantly clear that you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of these weapons. But what if you were confronted by a weapon named […]
Read more
Space travel is a pricey business. Even today, the average cost of launching a satellite or other payload into orbit hovers around $10,000 per kilogram. Much of this cost stems from the great complexity of space launch vehicles, which require a great deal of time, money, skilled personnel, and other resources to design, test, and launch. Further complicating matters, different […]
Read more
Take a moment to ask yourself: would you ever play a round of Russian roulette? As we’ve covered previously in our video Who Invented Russian Roulette and Has Anyone Ever Actually Played It? while partaking in this extreme pastime is, to put it mildly, ill advised, real-life cases, though tragic, are thankfully rare. Yet every year, thousands of people willingly […]
Read more
Crispy and golden-brown on the outside, pillowy soft on the inside, with just the right amount of salt and the perfect hearty finish. McDonald’s French fries are one of the world’s favourite snacks, with an astonishing 4 million kilograms being sold every single day. A full quarter of these are sold in the United States alone, accounting for nearly 33% […]
Read more
While many a historic leader can be credited with sometimes even millions of deaths via their orders, with perhaps the poster children of this in modern times being the likes of Hitler and Stalin, these individuals themselves only killed in a somewhat abstract way- not by their own hand directly. Which brings us to the topic of the day- who […]
Read more
The Great War of 1914-1918 is often remembered as one of the first truly modern, fully-industrialized conflicts, with many now-ubiquitous military technologies such as the aeroplane, the submarine, the tank, and poison gas making their combat debut on its battlefields. But the Great War was also a time of transition, with many older technologies and tactics like cavalry serving alongside […]
Read more
Sable Island lies 300 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, near the edge of the eastern continental shelf. A windswept, crescent-shaped sandbar 43 kilometres long and barely one kilometre wide, it has long been known as the graveyard of the Atlantic, with over 350 ships having foundered on its shores since 1583. The treacherous waters around the island […]
Read more
If I were to ask you which 20th Century recording artist had the most top-ten hits in their lifetime, you might be tempted to guess Elvis Presley, or maybe a member of the Beatles. But no: that honour belongs to Glenn Miller, the trombonist and band leader whose recordings of such classics as “In the Mood,” “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” and “Moonlight […]
Read more
On July 20, 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon and uttered the immortal words “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” bringing to a close the decade-long Space Race between the US and USSR. While the Americans beating the Soviets to the moon might seem inevitable in hindsight, this […]
Read more