Sept. 1, 1939: Wehrmacht Puts the Blitz in Krieg (2)
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1939: Germany invades Poland, starting the second European war in a generation and introducing the world to a new kind of warfare: blitzkrieg. This form of attack, which helped the Germans obliterate the Poles in three weeks and the French in only six, relies on rapid mobility and the coordination of massed armor and infantry, with fighter planes and dive bombers providing air support. It also depends on the element of surprise, one reason Nazi ...
Aug. 29, 1965: Long-Distance Calling ... Very Long Distance (1)
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1965: An astronaut in space holds a conversation with an aquanaut underwater, marking another milestone in human communication. Astronaut Gordon Cooper, orbiting the Earth with Pete Conrad in Gemini 5, hooked up by radiotelephone with an old pal, astronaut-turned-aquanaut Scott Carpenter, who was living and working 205 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla, California, aboard Sealab II. The two men had known each other since 1959, when they were among ...
Aug. 29, 1965: Long-Distance Calling ... Very Long Distance (1)
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1965: An astronaut in space holds a conversation with an aquanaut underwater, marking another milestone in human communication. Astronaut Gordon Cooper, orbiting the Earth with Pete Conrad in Gemini 5, hooked up by radiotelephone with an old pal, astronaut-turned-aquanaut Scott Carpenter, who was living and working 205 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near La Jolla, California, aboard Sealab II. The two men had known each other since 1959, when they were among ...
Aug. 27, 2003: The Lights Will Stay On in Fairbanks (1)
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2003: Fairbanks is connected to the world's largest storage battery, built to provide Alaska's second-biggest city with an uninterrupted power supply. Fairbanks' remote location and sub-Arctic climate makes supplying reliable power to the city of 32,000 difficult. In deep winter, the temperature in Fairbanks is almost constantly subzero, dropping as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit The situation is complicated by the fact that Alaska isn't connected to the power grid that keeps the lower ...
Aug. 27, 2003: The Lights Will Stay On in Fairbanks (2)
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2003: Fairbanks is connected to the world's largest storage battery, built to provide Alaska's second-biggest city with an uninterrupted power supply. Fairbanks' remote location and sub-Arctic climate makes supplying reliable power to the city of 32,000 difficult. In deep winter, the temperature in Fairbanks is almost constantly subzero, dropping as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit The situation is complicated by the fact that Alaska isn't connected to the power grid that keeps the lower ...
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/08/dayintech_0822 (4)
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1962: NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, completes its maiden voyage. In a world terrified by the prospect of nuclear war, the Savannah was meant to demonstrate the peaceful use and positive potential of nuclear power. President Eisenhower conceived the idea as part of his "Atoms for Peace" program in 1955, a time when the United States and Soviet Union were routinely testing increasingly powerful nuclear weapons. Four nuclear-powered merchant ships were eventually ...
Aug. 22, 1962: First Nuke-Powered Cargo Ship Docks (1)
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Wired: Science (22)
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1962: NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, completes its maiden voyage. In a world terrified by the prospect of nuclear war, the Savannah was meant to demonstrate the peaceful use and positive potential of nuclear power. President Eisenhower conceived the idea as part of his "Atoms for Peace" program in 1955, a time when the United States and Soviet Union were routinely testing increasingly powerful nuclear weapons. Four nuclear-powered merchant ships were eventually ...
Aug. 20, 1960: Back From Space, With Tails Wagging (3)
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1960: Belka and Strelka, a couple of stray mutts impressed into the Soviet space program, become the first living creatures to return alive from an orbital flight. The Russians had been using dogs for experimental high-altitude flights long before Belka (Russian for "squirrel") and Strelka ("Little Arrow") lifted off from Baikonur on what would be a 16-orbit flight. Their safe return was by no means a certainty: Less than a month earlier, two other dogs ...
Aug. 18, 1947: Birth of the Cool (Company, That Is) (5)
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1947: Eight years after its founding, Hewlett-Packard incorporates. The tiny garage in Palo Alto, California, where the company originated is now regarded as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Plenty of rock bands have come out of garages, and Jobs and Wozniak noodled around in one with their goofy little computer, too, but Hewlett-Packard must be considered the mother of all garage productions. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard met as engineering students at Stanford back in ...
Aug. 15, 1877: 'Hello. Can You Hear Me Now?' (9)
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1877: Thomas Edison suggests using the word hello as a telephone greeting. The idea catches on. Edison invented a lot of things, for sure, but one thing he didn't invent was the telephone. The brass ring for that one goes to Alexander Graham Bell, although Elisha Gray filed his patent for a similar device the same day. But they never called it Ma Gray, did they? Edison's contribution to the "improvement in telegraphy" was giving ...
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Dave White said:
I had no idea that "Hello" was such a recent invention!
Aug. 11, 1942: Actress + Piano Player = New Torpedo (6)
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1942: Hedy Lamarr, once described by German actor-director Max Reinhardt as "the most beautiful woman in Europe," receives a U.S. patent for a frequency-hopping device designed to guide radio-controlled torpedoes while making them more difficult to detect in the water. Holding the patent with her is George Antheil. It's the incongruity of the patent holders with their invention, as much as the invention itself, that is remarkable. Lamarr, a Viennese-born movie actress, would eventually be ...
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Aaron said:
OK, this is the craziest "This Day in History" item ever. Who knew Hedy Lamarr patented radio-frequency hopping torpedos in 1942?
Aug. 6, 1890: Kemmler First to 'Ride the Lightning' (3)
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1890: William Kemmler becomes the first person ever executed using electrocution. It doesn't go well. Kemmler, a Buffalo, New York, vegetable peddler with a strong jealous streak, confessed to killing his wife with a hatchet following an argument. "I killed her, and I'll take the rope for it," he said, expecting to be hanged. But the state of New York had other plans. It was Kemmler's bad luck to be condemned to death just as ...
Aug. 4, 1977: All U.S. Energy Placed Under Single Roof (4)
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1977: President Carter signs the Department of Energy Organization Act, creating the U.S. Department of Energy. Prior to 1973, the United States had no coherent energy policy. Instead, a number of smaller agencies, often working independently of one another, handled different aspects of the nation's energy needs. In the early years of the Atomic Age, for example, the military assumed responsibility for all nuclear-related issues. The 1973 energy crisis changed everything. It was triggered when ...
July 30, 1869: Moving Oil in Bulk, for Good and Ill (1)
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1869: The Charles, generally recognized as the world's first oil tanker, leaves the United States bound for Europe with the equivalent of 7,000 barrels of crude. The Charles, home-ported in Antwerp, Belgium, carried its cargo in 59 iron tanks below decks. Earlier, oil was transported across the ocean in actual wooden barrels, each capable of holding only 42 gallons, which severely limited the carrying capacity of individual ships -- but also established the "barrel" as ...
Gallery: The Space Suit Makes the NASA Astronaut (7)
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: Photo: NASA"Form follows function." Nowhere is that dictum more inflexible than in the hostile reaches of outer space. So nothing hews to that dictum more closely than the space suit. Even as it has evolved over NASA's 50 years to adapt to increasingly sophisticated missions and changing spacecraft technology, the space suit's central purpose -- to maintain a human environment where none exists -- remains constant. From the Mercury suit worn by John Glenn ...
NASA: 50 Years of Towering Achievement (9)
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One of the indelible memories for anyone living through the 1960s was watching CBS newsman Walter Cronkite anchor another televised liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Throughout the decade, from Alan Shepard through Neil Armstrong, Cronkite made it clear to his audience that they were taking part in something momentous, something that not only represented the flowering of a great technological achievement but stirred the human soul as well. This week, the National Aeronautics and Space ...
July 25: Four Women Who Made a Difference (8)
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July 25: In science and technology, spheres of society where women are woefully underrepresented, this day in history offers a bountiful exception. Here are the milestones: In 1865, "James Barry," the first woman physician in modern times, compelled to disguise herself as a man in order to practice her profession, dies. In 1920, Rosalind Franklin, the unheralded co-discoverer of DNA, is born. In 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first test-tube baby, is born. In ...
July 25: Four Women Who Made a Difference (1)
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via: Wired Top Stories (drop this source • show all sources) • help relevance: Fertility • Test pilots (tell me more...) rate it: | July 25: In science and technology, spheres of society where women are woefully underrepresented, this day in history offers a bountiful exception. Here are the milestones: In 1865, "James Barry," the first woman physician in modern times, compelled to disguise herself as a man in order to practice her profession, dies. ...
July 23, 1956: Bell X-2 Sets Aircraft Speed Mark (1)
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1956: A Bell X-2 rocket plane sets the record for fastest speed by an aircraft, reaching Mach 2.87, or more than 1,900 mph, 60,000 feet above the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The X-2 Starbuster, an experimental plane built by Bell Aircraft to test stability and control at supersonic speeds, made its debut in June 1952. Two were built, but only one became operational: The other was lost in a captive-flight ...
Higher, Faster, Stronger: 1950s Experimental Aircraft (11)
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: Photo: U.S. Air ForceThe 1950s was the decade of the test pilot and the experimental aircraft, as aviation technology turned to the jet engine and pushed its limits in both speed and endurance. With the world divided in Cold War, the stakes were high. Jet aircraft dominated both U.S. and Soviet arsenals and the data returned by subsonic and supersonic test flights had implications for the coming space race as well. A number of ...
