Category: Note

On July 23rd, 1982, outside Santa Clarita, California, actor Vic Morrow (of Combat! fame) and two children were killed when a helicopter crashed onto them while shooting a scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present first part of a four-part article. This is another entry for Round 83  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include: First Prize: A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public. A …

July 22nd is the birthday of actor Willem Dafoe (born 1955). Perhaps his best role was in the movie The Hunter, set in Tasmania.

July 21st is the birthday of Ernest Hemingway. He was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He committed suicide in July 2, 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho, after being diagnosed with haemochromatosis, and after electroshock treatments failed to lift him from chronic alcoholic depression. He lived a sad life but was a great writer. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 83  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include: First Prize: A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. …

Fifty years ago today, on July 20th, 1969, At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, spoke these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. Despite the Apollo 1 tragedy which took three lives, the lengthy Apollo moon mission series was an overall success. In all, there were six moon landings. Some of the later missions incorporated electric lunar rovers–such as …

July 19th is coincidentally the birthday of handgun designers Samuel Colt (born 1814) and Gaston Glock (born 1929). — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 83  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include: First Prize: A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value), A course certificate …

July 18th, 1954 is the birthdate of Ricky Skaggs, an American country and bluegrass singer, musician, producer, and composer. He primarily plays mandolin; however, he also plays fiddle, guitar, mandocaster and banjo. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 83  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include: First Prize: A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used …

July 17th, 1889 was the birthdate of novelist Erle Stanley Gardner. He was an American lawyer and author. Though best known for the Perry Mason series of detective stories, he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces, as well as a series of nonfiction books, mostly narrations of his travels through Baja California and other regions in Mexico. The best-selling American author of the 20th century at the time of his death, Gardner also published under numerous pseudonyms, including A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray and Robert Parr. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest …

July 16th is the anniversary of the first successful atomic bomb test in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945. This portentous event heralded the advent of the age of nuclear weapons. Plans for the creation of a uranium bomb by the Allies were established as early as 1939. In 1940 the federal government granted a total of $6,000 for research, but in early 1942, with the United States at war, the limits on spending were removed. The total cost was in excess of $2 billion. Germany was also feared to be working on a bomb as was Japan, though neither of …

Please pray for the millions of our fellow Americans who face flooding from Tropical Storm Barry. — I’d like to make special mention of two new retreat properties listed on SurvivalRealty.com: First, the Rural Revolution homestead, near Plummer, Idaho. This farm was developed by Don and Patrice Lewis of the great Rural Revolution blog. It is an amazing well-developed place with great neighbors and it sits on a very defendable plateau amidst farming country in north Idaho!   I’ve personally visited this property several times and can vouch that it is retreat worthy. And second, a “Fortified house of character …

July 14th is the birthday of Colonel Einar A. Malmstrom. He was born in 1907 and died August 21, 1954 near Great Falls, Montana, in the crash of a T-33 jet. He was a decorated Air Force pilot, a Luft Stalag POW survivor, and test pilot. Malmstrom AFB was one of the settings for JWR’s novel Founders. (The base was named in his honor.)

On this day in 1787, Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance structuring settlement of the Northwest Territory and creating a policy for the addition of new states to the nation. The members of Congress knew that if their new confederation were to survive intact, it had to resolve the states’ competing claims to western territory. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 83  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include: First Prize: A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. …

On July 12, 1865, George Washington Carver, the African-American scientist whose numerous discoveries helped to improve agriculture in the South, was born. He died on Jan. 5, 1943. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 83  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include: First Prize: A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, …

July 11th is the birthday of John Quincy Adams. He was born in 1767 and died in 1848. Not to be confused with his father–John Adams– the younger Adams also served as a diplomat, congressman, and as president. — Our small remaining supply of waterproof SurvivalBlog Archive USB sticks is currently on close-out sale, at just $19.95 each.  This is just until we exhaust the annual supply. When I last checked, there were less than 25 left. This is your chance to order some extras, for gifts. I expect them to sell out in the next 48 hours. So consider …

July 10th is the birthday of British novelist John Wyndham. (His full name was John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, but Harris shortened that to just John Wyndham for his pen name.) He we was born in 1903 and died March 11, 1969. Harris was a good friend of fellow novelist Samuel Youd (1922-2012), who wrote under several pen names, including John Christopher. Both men were famous for writing what are often called cosy catastrophies. Several of Wyndham’s novels and short stories have been adapted to film, with varying degrees of success. One of the best of these was a …

July 9, 1938 was the birthday of Brian Dennehy. He is most often remembered for his role as the alien leader in Coccoon and as Sheriff Teasel in Rambo: First Blood, but he was also in the cast of in many other movies and in hundreds of television show episodes. July 9, 1956 was the birthday of actor/director/producer Tom Hanks. His acting in the movie Saving Private Ryan is riveting. — Our small remaining supply of waterproof SurvivalBlog Archive USB sticks is currently on close-out sale, at just $19.95 each.  This is just until we exhaust the annual supply. This …