POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/07/2009
In the year 79 C.E. Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano near Naples, Italy, erupted with fatal force. OVer the course of two days it completely buried two Roman Cities, Herculaneum and the more famous Pompeii.
Pompeii and Herculaneum were two wealthy cities in the Roman world, both situated at the base of the fertile slopes of Mount Vesuvius. This placed them right in the path of several pyroclastic flows and surges that contributed, in addition to ash-fall, to the complete burial of both cities under tens of feet of volcanic materials.
People were caught in the middle of their daily lives and their homes have been kept in a remarkable state of preservation by the dense ash covering them. The bones of the victims have been found in small cavities in the ash. When these cavities are filled with plaster and the excavated, archaeologists are left with sulptures of the residents of the cities, caught in their final moments of life, some with such clarity that even the expression on their faces may be seen.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/06/2009
In late 1977, two small spacecraft launched from earth and began a mission to visit Jupiter and Saturn and learn more about them. 32 years later, these two spacecraft, called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are flying at incredible speeds out of the solar system and into the vast regions of interstellar space; all the while, sending back new data about what they find so far away from our planet. Both spacecraft have now crossed the termination shock and are flying traveling through the Heliosheath, the final layer of the solar system before leaving the Heliosphere and reaching interstellar space.
The spacecraft are powered by radioisotope generators that are expected to provide power until about 2025. However, as the generators lose capacity, various experiments will need to be shutdown in order to conserve power.
It is unknown when the Voyager spacecraft will reach the Heliopause.
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 also carry a small gold plated copper phonographic record (The Voyager Golden Record), containing greetings in various languages, music and pictures. These records are there in case one of the spacecraft is found by extraterrestrial beings, though the chance of this happening is next to nothing.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/05/2009
Thomas Edison may have invented the first commercially practical light bulb and popularized the usage of electricity, but Nikola Tesla made our modern electrical infrastructure possible.
In the late 1800’s Thomas Edison founded the Edison Illumination Company, which provided electricity to a small number of customers in Manhattan. The electricity was transmitted as 110 volts of DC current and thus could only be transmitted about two miles. Tesla introduced a new system, called alternating current, which allowed the power to be transmitted over longer distances by stepping up the voltage of the electricity with transformers. Without this new system, it would not have been economical to run national power grids because there would have to be a generating station every few miles.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/02/2009
Its April of 1860 and you are out following your daily routine. Suddenly you see on the horizon a small dust cloud. As the source draws near, you see a lone horse and rider, galloping quickly across the American countryside in a race to complete their part of the nation’s newest mail delivery system: The Pony Express.
In April of 1860, a new fast mail delivery service was started. It consisted of horses and riders carrying mail in a relay system across the US from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Each rider would carry saddle bags full of mail from one station to the next, where it would be handed off to the next rider for the next leg of the journey.
The Pony Express lasted for only 18 months before it was disbanded in favor of stage coaches and later a transcontinental telegraph system. The Pony Express was never a commercial success and ended completely bankrupt.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/01/2009
In November of 1944 as the second world war was nearing its end, a hydrogen balloon floated over the Alaskan coast and dropped a small bomb. It didn’t do any damage whatsoever, but it marked the beginning of an extremely unusual type of attack; Fire Balloons.
The Japanese Fire Balloons were hydrogen filled balloons much like a weather balloon, with various types of explosive payloads. These balloons were launched from Japanese beaches into the gulf stream and floated across the Pacific Ocean into US airspace. Once above US soil, the balloon’s payload was dropped and detonated and shortly after, an explosive charge detonated the hydrogen in the envelope was detonated as well. The balloons also had mechanisms that detected the change in altitude of the balloon and adjusted ballast and hydrogen so as to keep them within the confines of the gulf stream.
Over the course of about six months, more than 9000 of these balloons were launched into the sky and an estimated 1000 actually reached US soil. These balloons were extremely inefficient and caused only a minor amount of damage. In addition, the US press agreed not to release information about the balloons, thus preventing the Japanese from knowing that they had any effectiveness at all.
There is only one recorded incident of a fire balloon actually killing anyone. The balloon had drifted over Oregon and gotten caught in a tree. It was found by a group of people on a church picnic and exploded while they were attempting to pull it from the tree, killing the pastor’s wife and five of the attending children. After the deaths, the media blackout was lifted so as to warn the public about the dangers of these balloons.
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