Category Archives: History

Astronomy, History, Science, Space, Technology, Top 10, Weapons

Special section: the Middle Kingdom and the outer limits

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Chinese astronaut (taikonaut) Nie Haisheng

While Russian launches fail by the dozen, threatening operations aboard the International Space Station, and the American space program stalls amid political wrangling, China is building its own space laboratory, growing its satellite network, expanding its crewed space program, upgrading its launch facilities, improving its lift vehicles and laying the foundations for a moon shot. Are we witnessing the dawn of Chinese dominance in space?

Is China Winning the New Space Race?
10 Signs China is Serious About Space

Consumer, Culture, Engineering, Gadgets, History, Technology, Top 10, Weird

Big Mouth Billy Bass sings all the way to the bank

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Eddie hops aboard a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, along with Iraqi security forces and Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division.
Photo courtesy U.S. Army.

Some inventions save people’s lives, others improve them and still others end up as the white elephant gift no one wants to take home. Sometimes the question isn’t, “Why didn’t I think of that?” it’s, “Why would anyone think of that?”

Well, if benefit to humankind were the only means of making a profit, there would be no reality TV. In that spirit, here’s a list of ten kooky creations that made a mint, including one that turned out to fill a legitimate need.

10 Weird Inventions That Made Millions

Climatology and Meteorology, Geoscience, History, Science, Top 10

A hard rain’s a-gonna fall

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Super-typhoon Nina Think you know destructive storms? I’m talking about Old Testament, wrath-of-God type destruction, storms that kill people by the millions and require years and billions of dollars to recover from.

In this article, I count down the Top 10 most devastating engines of nature in terms of the lives they claimed, their financial toll, and their lasting impacts on the cities and towns they razed.

10 Most Destructive Storms

Chemistry, Engineering, History, Physics, Science, Technology, Weapons

The M.A.D. world of Alfred Nobel

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Alfred Nobel and several recipients of his namesake Peace Prize alike contributed to warfare and violence in numerous ways—a fact that some find ironic. Yet, Nobel lived at a time when scientists didn’t consider themselves responsible for how others used their inventions, and he held a view of destructive-weaponry-as-deterrent that presaged the Cold War philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction, so perhaps there was a method to his M.A.D.-ness. As for the others I discuss in my article below, only history can judge.

Why is the Nobel Peace Prize kind of ironic?

Computing, Culture, Gadgets, History, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Physics, Religion, Science, Technology

Under pressure: Pascal’s many places in the sun

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The Pascaline, an early digital calculator invented by Blaise Pascal
The Pascaline, an early digital calculator invented by Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was the quintessential Renaissance man. After all, how many people have a computer language, a religious argument, a triangle, a mathematical theorem, a law of physics and a unit of pressure named after them? Here was a man who could not only pose a philosophical wager, but also invent the system for calculating its odds and a digital calculator with which to tally the results.

It is unusual for a prodigy to stray so widely and successfully from their first area of excellence, but, as Pascal put it, “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.”

What were the famous Blaise Pascal inventions?