History
Did you know that "small unmanned undersea vehicles were considered the main workhorses of the mine clearing effort during Operation Iraqi Freedom," or that submarine drones were "used in support of Hurricane Katrina recovery operations in 2005"? Debate on unmanned vehicles is focused on airplanes. But they're already operating on land and beneath the surface of the ocean.
The Pentagon intends for the trend to continue.
Astonishing letter reveals how Führer ordered Gestapo to leave his WW1 commander alone
In 1954, 23-year-old Jack Fletcher showed off his new home to the media. Reporters called it the "house of the future" because of all the unique features he had designed into it. The windows closed by themselves when sensors felt rain. Lights came on automatically when someone entered a room. The phone had a speed-dial feature. The lamps didn't need cords. Instead you just placed them over induction coils installed in the floor. And strangest of all, electromagnets caused pots and pans to float over the stove (which also used induction coils to heat the food).
...Bill Warren... Californian treasure hunter... claims he has located [Osama Bin Laden's] cadaver... 200 miles to the west of the Indian city of Surat.... says he's aiming at starting the mission [to retrieve the body] on June 1, and that he may be able to find the body in "under a week...." declares that his only fear is that the US Government would kill him or sink his boat....
WTC 1, the Freedom Tower, which will surpass 1,250 feet today, will taunt the Empire State Building (height: 1,250 feet) by lighting a blue and white color scheme this evening. Those colors were chosen to mock the Empire State Building’s controversial 2010 decision not to light the building in honor of the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth. Didn't see that coming.
Update - Andy: As luck would have it, I visited the 9/11 memorial yesterday and took this picture of One WTC [photo]
235 Great pic but it still leaves me feeling v. empty. Nothing will ever replace the Twin Towers.
Posted by: laceyunderalls
239 The worst is when you're watching an old movie or looking at pictures and you see the twin towers in the background. Then you get a wave of "sick" immediately followed by "fury" and then "hopelessness" and then an increased desire to un-elect muslims from office...
Posted by: Dagny, warrior queen
Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel. "What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."
My father served in the Soviet Army during the Second World War, and while it was easy to make him talk about the war (especially after a few drinks .... and always with his war buddies) .... he and his war buddies always got silent whenever one of them would mention the time that they liberated a small Polish camp filled with Russian Slavs and Jews near the end of the war.
As a young child .... and later as an adult .... seeing 5-6 hardened decorated Soviet veterans of the Second World War going completely silent at the same instant when that war experience was mentioned .... the hard look on their faces when they sipped or gulped their vodka .... not even able to look at each other .... I have .... and I will .... never forget that. I know that my father and his comrades experienced some horrible things in that war .... and they always talked about it among themselves .... but that experience of liberating that camp is the only one that they could never talk about in depth .... even when they were totally stoned drunk.
Unbelievably, the loss of life was equal to more than six sinkings of the Titanic. It is arguably the greatest unknown single disaster in modern history. Furthermore, the true story surrounding the Gustloff is not only tragic but absolutely incredible – filled with a wide spectrum of human drama – during one of the most terrifying periods in history: World War II.
The sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage cost more than 1,500 human beings their lives. But the ship's fate also caused a tremendous loss of material goods, including some irreplaceable cultural artifacts.
Extraordinary images merge images of European city streets in war and peace
"Pectoral crosses from the dawn of Christianity in England, and bed burials - where the body was laid on a real bed, now traced only by its iron supports, centuries after the timber rotted – are both extremely rare.
[...]
A gold and garnet pectoral cross of such quality, the most beautiful and sophisticated examples of Anglo-Saxon metalwork like the contemporary jewels found in the Staffordshire Hoard or the Sutton Hoo burial, could only have been owned by a member of an aristocratic or even royal family. Only five have been found, one in the coffin of St Cuthbert. In some contemporary pieces the gems came from as far as India, and the gold from melted down coins from Constantinople."
Holder had authorized the FBI to provide the explosives to McVeigh and Nichols in conjunction with a Clinton administration undercover operation
Using e-mails and handwritten notes acquired in that lawsuit, Trentadue demonstrated in his correspondence to Patrick Leahy that then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder had engineered a scheme to sidetrack any investigation into his brother’s death in order to “deflect congressional oversight and media attention.”
Vernor Vinge is a former San Diego State University math professor and a Hugo award-winning science fiction novelist. In Vinge's 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity" Vinge wrote, "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." [video]
'I will never forgive Goebbels for what he brought into this world,' said Frau Pomsel. 'And the fact that he could murder his innocent children in this way.
In a book due out Thursday, eminent scholars say it's unlikely that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings' children, disputing a decade's worth of conventional wisdom that the author of the Declaration of Independence sired offspring with one of his slaves. ... scholars doubted the claim and said the evidence points instead to Jefferson's brother Randolph as the father. The scholars also disputed accounts that said Hemings' children received special treatment from Jefferson, which some saw as evidence of a special bond between the third president and Hemings.
[large, intriguing graphic]
the Central Intelligence Agency is demanding extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda. ... Ali H. Soufan, argues in the book that the C.I.A. missed a chance to derail the 2001 plot by withholding from the F.B.I. information about two future 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego.... gives a detailed, firsthand account of the C.I.A.'s move toward brutal treatment in its interrogations, saying the harsh methods used on the agency's first important captive, Abu Zubaydah, were unnecessary and counterproductive....
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked 66 years ago. 30 years ago Paul Fussell wrote this important essay, 'Thank God for the Atom Bomb'. 21 year old 2nd Lt. Fussell commanded infantry in WWII France. Later, he had to sit around waiting to invade Japan and die. That was the general expectation of the vets of the European theater - they didn't think they'd survive Japan. Then Aug 6th happened.
Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, 'explosive' recordings are set to reveal. ... The then Mrs Kennedy, who went on to marry Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, had ordered that they should not be released until 50 years after her death, with some reports suggesting she feared that her revelations might make her family targets for revenge. She died 17 years ago from cancer aged 64 and now her daughter, Caroline Kennedy, has agreed to release the recordings early....
Interestingly, that congressional inquiry went on to state that the Founding Fathers "did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation, the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy." And make no mistake, there are no better words to describe a lawsuit to obliterate the 9/11 cross than "revolting spectacle."