Year: 2024

A News Flash:  An Earth-facing X6.3 solar flare was reported on Friday (22 February, 2024). There have already been cellular phone network outages reported.  My advice: Tuck all of your spare electronics into Faraday cans/bags, for the next few days! The photo above of this event is courtesy of NASA. – JWR — Composer George Frideric Handel, a leading figure of late Baroque music, was born in Germany on February 12, 1685 February 23, 1945, is the day that six Marines from E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi during the battle of Iwo …

On February 22, 1847,  U.S. General Zachary Taylor led troops against a Mexican force commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista. February 22, 1857 was the birthday of Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist who was the first to broadcast and receive radio waves and helped to invent radar technology On this day in 1943, Sophie Scholl was executed by beheading for organizing the White Rose group–a student resistance to the Hitler regime. She had been convicted of high treason, after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU) with …

On February 21, 1947, Edwin Land (pictured) presented his Polaroid photo product, the world’s first instant photos, in New York City. On February 21, 1972, Richard Nixon became the first US President to visit China, normalizing relations between the countries in a meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong in Beijing. On February 21, 1995, American businessman and adventurer Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon. It was the first of his many aviation records. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 111 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing …

On February 20, 1962, John H. Glenn, Jr., the oldest of seven astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury spaceflight training (and later a U.S. senator), became on this day in 1962 the first American to orbit Earth, doing so three times. — On February 20, 1902, Ansel Adams, the most important landscape photographer of the 20th century, was born in San Francisco. — Today is also the birthday of novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson (1926–2013). He wrote many sci-fi television scripts. His novella I Am Legend later was adapted into three different movies over the course of five decades, …