They Fought a War and Created the Grinch
During this holiday season, like so many before, millions of people will watch the Grinch vent his spleen on Whoville, descending like Krampus Claus with his poor dog in tow to loot the town of Christmas presents and cheer. The classic story sprang from the imagination of Theodore Geisel,... Read more
A Strange Braggart’s Incompetent Naval Career in the Heart of Africa
The self-proclaimed hero of a little-known episode of World War I was equal parts H. Rider Haggard, Fitzcarraldo and Monty Python. A superannuated Royal Navy commander who fought an absurd naval campaign on a lake in the middle of Africa. English author Giles Foden recounted the bizarre story of... Read more
Where to Find the Best Diving Gear? Not the U.S. Navy
Thousands of people around the world explore the underwater world every day using self-contained, underwater breathing apparatuses known as scuba gear. Invented during World War II by Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan, this simple but effective system for breathing compressed gas from a cylinder revolutionized diving during the 20th... Read more
Verifying Nuclear Tests Helped to End the Cold War
It may seem hard to believe today, with tensions rising between Russia and the West. But late in the Cold War, both the U.S. and the USSR directly measured nuclear experiments at each others’ test sites. The unlikely but successful collaboration helped to end the five-decade conflict. For many... Read more
What These Ghostly Shipwrecks Tell Us About the Atlantic War
On Oct. 21, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the discovery of a remarkable pair of shipwrecks off the North Carolina coast. In an area long known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” for the many vessels lost there, the crew of NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer located both the... Read more
The U.S. Military Is Working on Nuclear Batteries
For most of us, recharging a phone is simply a matter of finding a standard electrical outlet. But war zones aren’t so conveniently wired. As the military learned during more than a decade at war, supplying immense quantities of diesel fuel for generators at forward operating bases proved costly... Read more
The Drones of the World Wars
We think of aerial drones as uniquely modern weapons of war. But they’re not. The first combat drone appeared during World War I. And the next world war saw even more flying robots on the front lines. In 1917, American inventor Charles Kettering, later chief scientist for General Motors,... Read more
Future Military Sensors Could Be Tiny Specks of ‘Smart Dust’
In the 1972 science fiction story The Unknown by Christopher Anvil, three space pilots find themselves plagued by “ultra-miniature spy-circuits.” Tiny computers used for espionage and no bigger than a speck of dust. “They drift in like dust motes,” one space pilot says. “But you have no control over... Read more
Hunting Nuclear Weapons From the Sky
The 1960s produced a lot of technological innovation in the science of mass destruction. But testing nukes also required learning how to detect the telltale signs of radiation. For survey teams flying in specially-equipped aircraft low above the Nevada desert, it was grueling and dangerous work. But what they... Read more
The Tower of Boom
For more than 40 years, the BREN Tower at the U.S. government’s atomic warfare playground in Nevada held the record as the tallest free-standing structure west of the Mississippi River. Its 1,527-foot height topped the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building. Few structures—among them North Dakota’s KVLY-TV Mast,... Read more