The Russian Woodpecker: The Story Of The Mysterious Duga Radar
From July 1976 to December 1989 a strange noise could be heard on shortwave radios all around the globe. The signal was extremely powerful and…
A Submarine Made it Home with a Sail Made of Blankets
By today’s standards, a submarine from 1918 is rather basic, but even for a submarine of the time, using sails as a means of propulsion…
M50 Ontos – The “Thing” that was Hated by the Army and Loved by the Marines
In the early 1950s, the US was on the hunt for a lightweight air-transportable tank destroyer. Similar attempts were made during WWII, but limitations in…
In The Angolan Civil War, Angola Had An Unlikely Ally In Cuba
When Angola was plunged into a set of civil wars that lasted decades, the last country one might expect to join in might be Cuba.…
How The Bandung Conference Of 1955 Was The Beginning Of The End For Indonesia’s President
The Bandung Conference of 1955 was a meeting of Asian and African nations, many of which were newly emerging from colonial rule. It was an…
Kildin Island Incident: When a Russian Submarine Surfaced Right Under an American Spy Sub
Although the Cold War ‘ended’ with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the tensions built up over the previous 45 years did not…
Taking K-129: Howard Hughes, the CIA, and the Most Expensive Secret Plot of the Cold War
The Cold War was infamous as a time of bizarre weapons, vehicles, and projects. Because the US and the Soviet Union were not fighting a…
The “Great Impostor” — Fred Demara Pretended To Be A Ship’s Surgeon And Didn’t Lose A Soul
Ferdinand “Fred” Waldo Demara Jr. was a monk, a surgeon, and a lawyer. Well, kind of. He was a very skilled American impostor who was…
The Saint-Chamond: The WWI Tank That’s No Longer Considered A Tank
Tank warfare was introduced during the First World War. The British began development in 1915, and when the war broke out, more countries began to…
The Final Countdown Failed To Find Its Plot But Helped The US Navy Recruit
The 1980 naval action flick The Final Countdown received only average reviews at best upon its release. On the surface, it looks like a standard…
Rejected Prototype Aircraft That Were Given A Second Act
Not every aircraft that sounds great on paper actually proves to be great in practice. There are far more proposed aircraft designs than there are…
The B-52 Stratofortress Will Be In Service For A Century
It’s 1952: the P-51 Mustang is still in service, the majority of American homes did not yet have a television, and Elvis Presley was still…