History of All Kinds

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June 2, 1953 - The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II - Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth Realms.
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One of the greatest women of my lifetime and proof women can reign effectively.
 
Tiananmen Sq. Massacre (1989)

U.S. Congress passed 19th Amendment (1919). A little over a year later Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it and about a week later it was officially proclaimed part of the U.S. Constitution. It gives women the right to vote.
 


June 6, 1944 - D Day for Operation Overlord.

In the military, D-Day is the day on which a combat operation is to be initiated. The best-known D-Day was during World War II. On June 6, 1944, the day of the Normandy landings, code named Operation Overlord began. Initiating the Allied effort to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany.

Operation Overlord​

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On this day in 2004 Phylicia Rashad became the first African American to win a Tony for best actress. This was for her role in the Broadway revision of A raisin In The Sun.

Also in entertainment, today in 1998 the popular American show Sex and the City first aired on HBO
 
11 March 2011 - The Great Tohoku Earthquake

I remember this day. I was working on a ship, doing a server upgrade. I went back to the office to pick up some tools and when I went back to the ship, the pier, made of concrete, was doing the wave. I scanned the area to see if a large tanker had done a drive by, but nothing. Someone yelled earthquake as I watched the ship, which had a lot of scaffolding on the mast, was rolling pretty good. I saw the foreman run up to the ship and got on the announcing system to get the workers down off the mast and off the ship.

That was my queue to go back to the office. I heard the windows and shutters making noise as they shook with the aftershocks. When I got into the office, I found people just continuing to do work. I told them that they needed to get out of there.

I got in my car and immediately went to get gas. Luckily, the gas station was still open and then left to get home. The lights were down by then and I just followed the flow of traffic to get home. The house had lost power and we filled up the bathtub with water, just in case we needed water later.

Since we live near an unconfirmed nuclear processing plant, we were high priority for power restoral. I think we were down for less than 24 hours, if my memory serves.

And then the Fukushima plant started failing. My buddy bought a geiger counter so I borrowed it and took it home. I showed it to my wife and it would tick once in a while. She started freaking out, until I told her that a tick once in a while was nothing and could have been from space.

A radiation monitoring site did show that we had an increase for our area, it still wasn't much to be worried about. I just monitored the wind direction and radiation levels.
 


14th June 1919

At 14.13 GMT, Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Whitten-Brown took off from Newfoundland on the first non-stop transatlantic flight to Galway, Ireland, in a Vickers Vimy.
They landed safely 16 hours later, on the 15th and claimed a £10,000 prize from the Daily Mail. They were eventually knighted by King George V. When Alcock was killed in an air crash in France in December 1919 his partner, Brown, never flew again.
 
June 15, 1775

George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army a day after Congress establishes the force

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For an interesting perspective on George Washington, the JF Cooper novel "The Spy", published in 1821, includes some true historical anecdotes about him. Written close to when the events took place.

Also, families divided by alliances to opposing parties. Washington himself had ties to the Loyalists that he had difficulty extinguishing.
 
President Harry S Truman (NO period after the S) said, "The future is the history we don't know yet." Sometimes, things we presume turn out to be different from what we thought. For example, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, many, myself included, figured they must have ICBM capability, which could allow them to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. It was not until after the Soviet Union collapsed, that we found out, they did NOT have that capability then. (They did later, of course, as did/do we.) Their chief designer, Koryolev admitted to Nikita Khrushev that he didn't have the re-entry problem solved, but if they put a satellite into orbit, it would scare the daylights out of the U.S., which it did...for awhile, until we developed our own Atlas ICBM.
Now, what's the point of this? We know a certain Middle Eastern country has orbited some satellites. That might indicate they have the capability of hitting the East Coast of the U.S. The question is do they have the re-entry problem solved? Assuming they have, the next question is whether they have the lift capability to launch a nuke, and the re-entry problem solved? Since it unlikely that our own capabilities would deter that country, then it is vital to be sure they can't develop a nuclear weapon.

This discussion is not to be political, but simply showing the technical requirements.
 
President Harry S Truman (NO period after the S) said, "The future is the history we don't know yet." Sometimes, things we presume turn out to be different from what we thought. For example, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, many, myself included, figured they must have ICBM capability, which could allow them to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. It was not until after the Soviet Union collapsed, that we found out, they did NOT have that capability then. (They did later, of course, as did/do we.) Their chief designer, Koryolev admitted to Nikita Khrushev that he didn't have the re-entry problem solved, but if they put a satellite into orbit, it would scare the daylights out of the U.S., which it did...for awhile, until we developed our own Atlas ICBM.
Now, what's the point of this? We know a certain Middle Eastern country has orbited some satellites. That might indicate they have the capability of hitting the East Coast of the U.S. The question is do they have the re-entry problem solved? Assuming they have, the next question is whether they have the lift capability to launch a nuke, and the re-entry problem solved? Since it unlikely that our own capabilities would deter that country, then it is vital to be sure they can't develop a nuclear weapon.

This discussion is not to be political, but simply showing the technical requirements.
Trailrider: Technical questions; so rambling - those ballistics the ME Country are firing do not appear to have any sort of GPS that guides them to a pin point target. Kinda like 'within a mile diameter, we good'. Same for the other war going on. If they do have a form of GPS to guide, would it not be feasible to have 3 or 4 planes up transmitting a GPS signal at a greater power so that the object in question captures the transmission from the planes for triangulation instead of those orbited satellites? If so, all you would have to do is to move the thing a few degrees for the object to miss? Sure, flying at Mach 5 or 6, so not much time to do anything. Also, think the lift capability is moot as their new design allows for 5KLbs package - how much does a small nuke weigh? In the case of nukes, re-entry is not that much of a problem: what goes up, comes down and can go bang way up high. EMP alone is probably enough to wreck havoc.

Have not heard anything on the other war lately, maybe they are reconsidering after loosing 1/3 of their air capability in one swoop?

I still love the hand-held radio/cell phone thing Israel did. 'hello, hello, boom'. 10-4 good buddy! I assume that they did not use the battery ( L-ion ) to blow itself up; instead a 1/2 square chunk of C4 ( or the like ) would do the trick. Would not want to be on the manufacturing line for that.

L8r
 
Trailrider: Technical questions; so rambling - those ballistics the ME Country are firing do not appear to have any sort of GPS that guides them to a pin point target. Kinda like 'within a mile diameter, we good'. Same for the other war going on. If they do have a form of GPS to guide, would it not be feasible to have 3 or 4 planes up transmitting a GPS signal at a greater power so that the object in question captures the transmission from the planes for triangulation instead of those orbited satellites? If so, all you would have to do is to move the thing a few degrees for the object to miss? Sure, flying at Mach 5 or 6, so not much time to do anything. Also, think the lift capability is moot as their new design allows for 5KLbs package - how much does a small nuke weigh? In the case of nukes, re-entry is not that much of a problem: what goes up, comes down and can go bang way up high. EMP alone is probably enough to wreck havoc.

Have not heard anything on the other war lately, maybe they are reconsidering after loosing 1/3 of their air capability in one swoop?

I still love the hand-held radio/cell phone thing Israel did. 'hello, hello, boom'. 10-4 good buddy! I assume that they did not use the battery ( L-ion ) to blow itself up; instead a 1/2 square chunk of C4 ( or the like ) would do the trick. Would not want to be on the manufacturing line for that.

L8r
About 60-odd years ago, there was no GPS for pinpoint guidance of an ICBM or even an IRBM. Yet, IIRC, the CEP (Circular Error Probable...the diameter of a circle into which you could figure getting half of warheads inside) of Minuteman I was about 1 mile at 5500 miles range, with a 1 megaton warhead. The birds were simply aligned using Swiss-made precision theodolites, and were deemed adequate for the times. Nowadays, I would guess secure GPS, star-trackers and I dunno what probably targets Minuteman III. And the range capability is greater. While it is true that a nuke exploded at high altitude can play hob with communications, I would believe that certain entities would be more interested in destruction of a "Great Satan", no matter how small an amount of damage...say to our Eastern coast. If your objective is to wreak havoc on anything at that range, even a small size nuke would do the trick. The warhead's reentry vehicle would have to withstand at least 5000 deg. F. Heat-resistant materials have been available since Titan I and Atlas E/F. Depends on who has them and from where they got them, internally or externally.

At closer range, which we are seeing in the ME, the heat resistant requirements are considerably less. So preventing launching of ANY nuke is the objective. And I can guarrantee, should, God forbid, that were to happen, the return fire would turn the impacted real estate into a trinitite parking lot! "Joshua's Battle"-3 is probably on alert, in case conventional measures don't do the job.
 
About 60-odd years ago, there was no GPS for pinpoint guidance of an ICBM or even an IRBM. Yet, IIRC, the CEP (Circular Error Probable...the diameter of a circle into which you could figure getting half of warheads inside) of Minuteman I was about 1 mile at 5500 miles range, with a 1 megaton warhead. The birds were simply aligned using Swiss-made precision theodolites, and were deemed adequate for the times. Nowadays, I would guess secure GPS, star-trackers and I dunno what probably targets Minuteman III. And the range capability is greater. While it is true that a nuke exploded at high altitude can play hob with communications, I would believe that certain entities would be more interested in destruction of a "Great Satan", no matter how small an amount of damage...say to our Eastern coast. If your objective is to wreak havoc on anything at that range, even a small size nuke would do the trick. The warhead's reentry vehicle would have to withstand at least 5000 deg. F. Heat-resistant materials have been available since Titan I and Atlas E/F. Depends on who has them and from where they got them, internally or externally.

At closer range, which we are seeing in the ME, the heat resistant requirements are considerably less. So preventing launching of ANY nuke is the objective. And I can guarrantee, should, God forbid, that were to happen, the return fire would turn the impacted real estate into a trinitite parking lot! "Joshua's Battle"-3 is probably on alert, in case conventional measures don't do the job.
Good info ... Thanks!
So using the theodolites I understand with it sitting on tripod right in front of you. However, is/was it some math function to have it downrange at some distance? Would hate to have to do that in asm.

As to the MMIII - we tried to get to Delta-01 compound a couple of times. No go for the silo tour on our home time trips as we could not set up that appointment cuz we did not know exactly when we were going to be through heading toward home. Did stop the at National Historic Site East of Wall and bought some trinkets. The shirt I wanted was out of stock and they would not order/ship when on hand. Shirt said "Guaranteed delivery 30 minutes world wide" with appropriate flag, missile and pizza piece on front. Need to check the site again to see if some are available.

L8r
 
They may want to go back to the old way of targeting vice relying on gps. That may be the first thing to go.
 


Good info ... Thanks!
So using the theodolites I understand with it sitting on tripod right in front of you. However, is/was it some math function to have it downrange at some distance? Would hate to have to do that in asm.

As to the MMIII - we tried to get to Delta-01 compound a couple of times. No go for the silo tour on our home time trips as we could not set up that appointment cuz we did not know exactly when we were going to be through heading toward home. Did stop the at National Historic Site East of Wall and bought some trinkets. The shirt I wanted was out of stock and they would not order/ship when on hand. Shirt said "Guaranteed delivery 30 minutes world wide" with appropriate flag, missile and pizza piece on front. Need to check the site again to see if some are available.

L8r
At ground level there were two concrete monuments on which we set an optical target. The monuments' azimuth were determined by Coast and Geodetics Survey teams using the North Star. We were given the azimuths and using the theodolite swung the angle between the two monuments, which gave us Station A. If that angle was less then 3 seconds of an arc, it was good. We then use the azimuth of one target, and transferred the azimuth through a sight tube down to the equipment room. where there were two reference mirrors. We transferred the azimuth to one of the mirrors, and then to a photelectric autocollumator, which gave the guidance platform in the missile a reference for its inertial guidance system. I describe it in more detail in my self-published book, "And the Truck You Rode In On" We sent the guidance data to the missile from a tape drive on the surface via a long cable, plugged temporarily into the electronics in the equipment room. We did NOT know where the bird was aimed at, and didn't want to know! After clearing up our tools, and waiting for a 3-1/2 hour automatic cycle on site, IF the launch officers at the Launch Control Facility...miles away...called and said they had a green light on their panel, we could try to drive back to the base (sometimes 163 miles away), IF our timelines hadn't run out. If not, we usually wound up going to the nearest LCF where they had facilities for maintenance troops to sleep, eat, and get hit with another dispatch to another site.
 




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