The tri-winged Barling Bomber was one of the most notorious military boondoggles of the 1920s. The exorbitantly expensive plane, which never made it out of prototype, was knocked for being ludicrously slow despite being equipped with an unprecedented six engines. It was a prime example of what happens when designers feel obligated to respond to […]
The hooded lady above was not a bandit, but rather a New York City detective who worked the 21 Jump Street beat in the early 1970s. Kathleen Conlon earned her gold shield after surviving a scary incident in the Bronx: While working on an undercover narcotics unit, she was dragged into an alley, assaulted, and […]
Tags:Congress·crime·drugs·Joseph Valachi·Kathleen Conlon·Mark McGwire·New York City·police·politics·War on Drugs
Some Wired research recently familiarized us with the career of Keeve M. Siegel, a well-known champion of both holography and controlled nuclear fusion. Siegel’s involvement in the latter technology earned him a 1975 invite to Congress, where he was supposed to make the case for additional government funding. But, tragically, he never got the chance […]
While today’s Congressional politics may seem somewhat distasteful to fans of decorum, Capitol Hill’s past is full of far more vicious conflict between ideological opposites. As noted in this New York Times report from 1856, the people’s representatives were once none-too-shy about resorting to the gun or sword when positions seemed irreconcilable—though, to the American […]
Tags:Bladensburg Dueling Grounds·Congress·dueling·Maryland·politics·U.S. history
