Topic: Military history (Page 15)

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πŸ”— Steam Cannon

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Middle Ages πŸ”— Middle Ages/History

A steam cannon is a cannon that launches a projectile using only heat and water, or using a ready supply of high-pressure steam from a boiler. The first steam cannon was designed by Archimedes during the Siege of Syracuse. Leonardo Da Vinci was also known to have designed one (see the Architonnerre).

The early device would consist of a large metal tube, preferably copper due to its high thermal conductivity, which would be placed in a furnace. One end of the tube would be capped and the other loaded with a projectile. Once the tube reached a high enough temperature, a small amount of water would be injected in behind the projectile. In theory, Leonardo da Vinci believed, the water would rapidly expand into vapour, blasting the projectile out the front of the barrel.

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πŸ”— Kurt Vonnegut's rules for writing short stories

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— Science Fiction πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Biography/military biography πŸ”— Biography/arts and entertainment πŸ”— Chicago πŸ”— United States/Massachusetts - Cape Cod and the Islands πŸ”— United States/Indiana - Indianapolis

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction, with further collections being published after his death. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but dropped out in January 1943 and enlisted in the United States Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden and survived the Allied bombing of the city by taking refuge in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He later adopted his sister's three sons, after she died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident.

Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively but was not commercially successful. In the nearly 20 years that followed, Vonnegut published several novels that were only marginally successful, such as Cat's Cradle (1963) and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1964). Vonnegut's breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The book's anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, Slaughterhouse-Five went to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures and commencement addresses around the country and received many awards and honors.

Later in his career, Vonnegut published several autobiographical essays and short-story collections, including Fates Worse Than Death (1991), and A Man Without a Country (2005). After his death, he was hailed as a morbidly comical commentator on the society in which he lived and as one of the most important contemporary writers. Vonnegut's son Mark published a compilation of his father's unpublished compositions, titled Armageddon in Retrospect. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction including five previously unpublished stories. Complete Stories was collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.

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πŸ”— Feb 22 marks death anniversary of Sophie Scholl (9 May 1921–22 February 1943)

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Germany πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Women's History πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Biography/military biography πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/German military history πŸ”— Biography/politics and government πŸ”— Anti-war πŸ”— Lutheranism πŸ”— Pritzker Military Library πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Germany/Munich

Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany.

She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU) with her brother, Hans. For her actions, she was executed by guillotine. Since the 1970s, Scholl has been extensively commemorated for her anti-Nazi resistance work.

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πŸ”— Utah Teapot

πŸ”— Military history

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πŸ”— Tupolev Tu-144

πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Russia/technology and engineering in Russia πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Aviation/aircraft πŸ”— Military history/Cold War πŸ”— Russia/Russian, Soviet, and CIS military history πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Russia/history of Russia πŸ”— Aviation/Soviet aviation πŸ”— Soviet Union/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history

The Tupolev Tu-144 (Russian: TyΠΏΠΎΠ»Π΅Π² Π’Ρƒ-144; NATO reporting name: Charger) is a retired jet airliner and commercial supersonic transport aircraft (SST). It was the world's first commercial SST (maiden flight – 31 December 1968), the second being the Anglo-French Concorde (maiden flight – 2 March 1969). The design was a product of the Tupolev design bureau, headed by Alexei Tupolev, of the Soviet Union and manufactured by the Voronezh Aircraft Production Association in Voronezh, Russia. It conducted 102 commercial flights, of which only 55 carried passengers, at an average service altitude of 16,000 metres (52,000Β ft) and cruised at a speed of around 2,000 kilometres per hour (1,200Β mph) (Mach 1.6).

The prototype's first flight was made on 31 December 1968, near Moscow from Zhukovsky Airport, two months before the first flight of Concorde. The Tu-144 first went supersonic on 5 June 1969 (Concorde first went supersonic on 1 October 1969), and on 26 May 1970 became the world's first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2. The aircraft used a new construction technique which resulted in large unexpected cracks, which resulted in several crashes. A Tu-144 crashed in 1973 at the Paris Air Show, delaying its further development. The aircraft was introduced into commercial service on 26 December 1975. In May 1978, another Tu-144 (an improved version, the Tu-144D) crashed on a test flight while being delivered. The aircraft remained in use as a cargo aircraft until 1983, when the Tu-144 commercial fleet was grounded. The Tu-144 was later used by the Soviet space program to train pilots of the Buran spacecraft, and by NASA for supersonic research until 1999, when the Tu-144 made its last flight (26 June 1999).

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πŸ”— Naumachia

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Classical Greece and Rome πŸ”— Military history/Roman and Byzantine military history πŸ”— Theatre πŸ”— Martial arts

The naumachia (in Latin naumachia, from the Ancient Greek ναυμαχία/naumachΓ­a, literally "naval combat") in the Ancient Roman world referred to both the staging of naval battles as mass entertainment, and the basin or building in which this took place.

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πŸ”— Toss Bombing

πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Aviation/aircraft πŸ”— Military history/Cold War

Toss bombing (sometimes known as loft bombing, and by the U.S. Air Force as the Low Altitude Bombing System, LABS) is a method of bombing where the attacking aircraft pulls upward when releasing its bomb load, giving the bomb additional time of flight by starting its ballistic path with an upward vector.

The purpose of toss bombing is to compensate for the gravity drop of the bomb in flight, and allow an aircraft to bomb a target without flying directly over it. This is in order to avoid overflying a heavily defended target, or in order to distance the attacking aircraft from the blast effects of a nuclear (or conventional) bomb.

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πŸ”— Echelon (signals intelligence)

πŸ”— United States/U.S. Government πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Mass surveillance πŸ”— Espionage πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— United States/Military history - U.S. military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Intelligence πŸ”— United Kingdom πŸ”— Military history/Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history πŸ”— Military history/Canadian military history πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program (signals intelligence/SIGINT collection and analysis network) operated by the United States with the aid of four other signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, also known as the Five Eyes.

Created in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, the ECHELON project became formally established in 1971.

By the end of the 20th century, the system referred to as "ECHELON" had evolved beyond its military and diplomatic origins into "a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications" (mass surveillance and industrial espionage).

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πŸ”— The Colditz Glider

πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Aviation/aircraft πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Aviation/gliding πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

The Colditz Cock was a glider built by British prisoners of war for an escape attempt from Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle) in Germany.

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πŸ”— Balloon Buster

πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation

Balloon busters were military pilots known for destroying enemy observation balloons. These pilots were noted for their fearlessness, as balloons were stationary targets able to receive heavy defenses, from the ground and the air. Seventy-seven flying aces in World War I were each credited with destroying five or more balloons, and thus were balloon aces.

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