STS-41-D, the orbiter Discovery was launched on its maiden flight — the 12th in the program — on 30 August 1984. It was the third orbiter built and the lightest one thus far because of its lightweight thermal blanket material. The six-person flight crew consisted of Henry W. Hartsfield Jr., commander, making his second Shuttle […]

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Thurgood Marshall was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education.
Marshall […]

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The Moscow-Washington hotline is a system that allows direct communication between the leaders of the United States and Russia. It was originally designed by Harris Corporation for communication between the United States and the Soviet Union. Also known as the “red telephone”, it linked the White House via the National Military Command Center with the […]

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The NAMC YS-11 is a turboprop airliner built by a Japanese consortium, the Nihon Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation which included Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Fuji Heavy Industries (now better known as the parent company of automobile manufacturer Subaru). The program was initiated by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1954 and the first aircraft […]

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Charles Douville Coburn was an Academy Award-winning American film and theater actor. He started out doing odd jobs at the local theater and was the theater manager by the age of 18. He later moved on to acting and made his debut on Broadway in 1901. In 1937, Coburn relocated to Los Angeles, California and […]

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The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, consists of two parallel bridges that are the longest bridges in the world by total length. These parallel bridges cross Lake Pontchartrain in southern Louisiana. The longer of the two bridges is 23.87 miles (38.42 km) long. The bridges are supported by over 9,000 concrete pilings. The two bridges feature bascule […]

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Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur arrived at Atsugi on 30 August 1945 to prepare for the acceptance of Japan’s surrender; it was his first trip to Japan. During the occupation, the base housed the overflow from nearby Camp Zama. The Imperial Japanese Navy constructed the Atsugi base in 1938 to house […]

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In conjunction with its military campaign in World War II, the Empire of Japan invaded Hong Kong in December 1941. The Battle of Hong Kong ended with British and Canadian defenders surrendering control of the colony to Japan on December 25. During the Japanese occupation, civilians suffered from widespread food shortages caused by imposed rations, […]

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The Battle of Alam el Halfa took place between August 30 and September 6, 1942 during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II. The combatants were Panzer Army Africa, commanded by Erwin Rommel (”the Desert Fox”) and the British Eighth Army, commanded by Bernard Montgomery
From the start things went wrong for Rommel. False intelligence […]

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The Siege of Leningrad was one of three strategic goals in Hitler’s initial plans for Operation Barbarossa. Hitler gave the order: “Leningrad first, the Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third.” From August 1941 when the Wehrmacht troops of Army Group North reached the outskirts of Leningrad through to January 1944, operations to take the city dominated […]

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