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22 March 2022
[war] “Z” Is the Symbol of the New Russian Politics of Aggression‘Graphically, the “Z” is clearly closer to the swastika than to any prominent Soviet symbol, such as the five-pointed star, the hammer and sickle, or the red flag. Its use seems to require a double inversion: first, the people of Ukraine—a nation that suffered some of the greatest losses at the hands of Nazi Germany and one that is currently led by a Jewish President—are rendered as Nazis; then, the Russians, who claim to be fighting for peace and “de-Nazification,” adopt a visual symbol that appears to reference the swastika.’
10 October 2019
[drinks] How Fanta Was Created for Nazi Germany … The wartime origin of the soft drink Fanta. ‘The drink was technically fruit-flavored, but limited wartime resources made that descriptor not wholly accurate. Its ingredients were less than appetizing: leftover apple fibers, mash from cider presses, and whey, a cheese by-product. “[Fanta] was made from the leftovers of the leftovers,” says Mark Pendergrast, who, as the author of For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, revealed this hidden past.’
11 August 2017
[war] Winners and Losers of the Recent Nuclear Holocaust‘Sure, the verdict may not be in just yet. But when the radioactive dust settles, we could be looking at a game-changing moment for a young presidency…’
27 September 2016
[ww2] High Hitler: How Nazi Drug Abuse Steered the Course of History … an interesting examination of Adolf Hitler’s drug addictions …

For Hitler, though, a crisis was coming. When the factories where Pervitin and Eukodal were made were bombed by the allies, supplies of his favourite drugs began to run out, and by February 1945 he was suffering withdrawal. Bowed and drooling and stabbing at his skin with a pair of golden tweezers, he cut a pitiful sight. “Everyone describes the bad health of Hitler in those final days [in the Führerbunker in Berlin],” says Ohler. “But there’s no clear explanation for it. It has been suggested that he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. To me, though, it’s pretty clear that it was partly withdrawal.” He grins. “Yeah, it must have been pretty awful. He’s losing a world war, and he’s coming off drugs.”

19 August 2016
[history] Interview with Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary‘But really, I didn’t do anything other than type in Goebbels’ office.’
2 February 2016
[war] How Rogue Techies Armed the Predator, Almost Stopped 9/11, and Accidentally Invented Remote War … a look at how the the Predator Drone was created …

The team found what they were looking for during one of the Predator’s very first split operations missions in early September 2000. Swanson was circling over Tarnak Farms, a walled compound near the Kandahar airport where bin Laden—or UBL as the team called him, referring to the alternative spelling, Usama—was thought to be living. Jeff Guay, an Air Force master sergeant on the team, was controlling the drone’s camera. Sure enough, a man in white, surrounded by an entourage, soon emerged on their screens.

“When UBL walked out of that one building,” Swanson says, “the way he appeared much taller than everybody, the people were deferential around him, the way he was dressed, Jeff and I just looked at each other and it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s got to be him.’” Swanson assumed a cruise missile would be dispatched in the direction of bin Laden while the Predator loitered overhead to make sure he stayed put. The team had been instructed to continue circling for as long as necessary, even if that meant running out of fuel and crashing.

But for reasons obscure to the team, no strike was ordered. With Swanson gripping his joystick, unable to do anything but stare, America’s final chance to kill Bin Laden before September 11 slipped away.

15 December 2015
[whatif] The Ethics of Killing Baby Hitler … the reasons why a time-traveller shouldn’t kill Baby Hitler …

These questions should inspire two feelings. The first is humility. We can never know what a universe without Hitler would have looked like. But the implicit argument that his removal would improve history must also consider that his removal could make it worse. Indeed, recent experience should make us doubt our abilities to bend the course of human events towards our will. The Bush administration naively claimed that toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 would produce a vibrant liberal democracy in the largely illiberal Middle East. Instead it brought about regional instability, ethnic cleansing, civil war, and ISIS.

The second is relief. We live in cynical times, which masks the fact that we live in extraordinary times. Atrocities still occur, but human rights are now a normative value throughout most of the world, even if their enforcement is imperfect. Conflicts are still fought, but the great powers have avoided another world war for seven decades. Racism and anti-Semitism still exist, but pre-war forms of colonialism and pogroms have largely disappeared. This is not the future for which Nazi Germany fought and fell. Removing Hitler from history would gamble with one irrefutable truth: He lost.

29 November 2015
[war] Behind the Design of the Doomsday Clock … the story behind one of the most memorable information designs of the last century … ‘Langsdorf and his fellow scientists began circulating a mimeographed newsletter called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In June 1947, the newsletter became a magazine. Langsdorf’s wife, Martyl, was an artist whose landscapes were exhibited in Chicago galleries. She volunteered to create the first cover. There wasn’t much room for an illustration, and the budget permitted only two colors. But she found a solution. The Doomsday Clock was born.’
28 November 2015
[isis] 7 Things I Learned Reading Every Issue Of ISIS’s Magazine‘Dabiq is an area in Northern Syria where, according to prophecy, Allah will do the whole “pillar of salt” thing on the armies of the West. For that to happen, we need to actually put our armies in Dabiq first. One thing reading 11 issues of Dabiq makes very clear is that ISIS considers a future U.S.-led invasion to be inevitable. They view the regional powers around them as destined to fall and, when that happens, in rides Uncle Sam and out pops the apocalypse.’
26 June 2015
[war] The man who sleeps in Hitler’s bed … a visit to the world’s biggest collection of Nazi memorabilia and a profile of the man who built it … ‘Later, among engine parts and ironwork, I came across a massive bust of Hitler, sitting on the floor next to a condom vending machine (“I collect pub memorabilia, too,” Wheatcroft explained). “I have the largest collection of Hitler heads in the world,” he said, a refrain that returned again and again. “This one came from a ruined castle in Austria. I bought it from the town council.” “Things have the longest memories of all,” says the introduction to a recent essay by Teju Cole, “beneath their stillness, they are alive with the terrors they have witnessed.” This is what you feel in the presence of the Wheatcroft Collection – a sense of great proximity to history, to horror, an uncanny feeling that the objects know more than they are letting on.’
17 June 2015
[weird] Has the Internet solved the mystery of this 40-year-old radio signal? … what’s the story behind Russian radio signal UVB-76? … ‘It’s easy to dismiss the signal as pre-recorded, or a looping tone. But what listeners quickly realized was that UVB-76 is not a recording. The buzzer noise is generated manually. The reason for hearing telephone conversations and banging noises in the background of the signal is that a speaker creating the buzzer is constantly placed next to the microphone, giving the world an eerie insight into whatever cavern the signal originates from.’
5 June 2015
[war] Letters of Note: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade… Eisenhower’s Order of the Day On June 5th, 1944 … ‘Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.’
18 February 2015
[war] What ISIS Really Wants … great long read on the ideology of ISIS …

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

27 November 2014
[war] A new report shows nuclear weapons almost detonated in North Carolina in 1961 … Eric Schlosser discusses various nuclear weapon accidents …

The Goldsboro bomb that almost detonated was known as Weapon No. 1. As the plane was spinning and breaking apart, the centrifugal forces pulled a lanyard in the cockpit–and that lanyard was what a crew member would manually pull during wartime to release the bomb. This hydrogen bomb was a machine, a dumb object. It had no idea whether the lanyard was being pulled by a person or by a centrifugal force. Once the lanyard was pulled, the weapon just behaved like it was designed to.

The bomb went through all of its arming steps except for one, and a single switch prevented a full-scale nuclear detonation. That type of switch was later found to be defective. It had failed in dozens of other cases, allowing weapons to be inadvertently armed. And that safety switch could have very easily been circumvented by stray electricity in the B-52 as it was breaking apart. As Secretary of Defense McNamara said, “By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted.” That’s literally correct, a short circuit could’ve fully armed the bomb.

22 November 2014
[war] Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb … an unbelievable true story with video … ‘They wait. There is a countdown; 18,500 feet above them, the missile is detonated and blows up. Which means, these men intentionally stood directly underneath an exploding 2-kiloton nuclear bomb. One of them, at the key moment (he’s wearing sunglasses), looks up. You have to see this to believe it.’
14 July 2014
[war] Burlington Bunker, under RAF Corsham, Wiltshire … a look at a cold war secret hidden underneath RAF Corsham in Wiltshire … ‘ Assembled as an emergency relocation site for the British government if the threat of nuclear war ever became reality. The bunker boasts some impressive ‘sections’ from a BBC broadcasting suite to a Hospital all accessible via 10 miles of ‘road’. Adjacent to Burlington is over 30km of tunnels and passageways belonging to Box Freestone Quarry, part of which taken over by the MOD and turned in to an air inlet. For years, explorers like myself would marvel at the MOD area of Box Mine and the mysterious ‘red door’ that sits at the end of the passage…’
22 June 2014
[war] America’s Nuclear Arsenal Still Runs Off Floppy Disks‘The control room was not what Stahl—or I—expected: There’s no “big button,” but there are floppy disks. Like the old, big 8-inch floppy disks. Like the kind, […] that are often featured in a computer history museum or found in your attic, beneath old DOS manuals. Like, not even the newer, 3.5-inch model of floppy disk. That’s how they control our nuclear missiles. At 23 years old, the deputy missileer said she had never even seen a floppy disk before finding one that can help wreak untold carnage on planet Earth.’
16 May 2014
[comics] Great War was world’s first sci-fi war, says Pat Mills … BBC News discusses Charley’s War. Pat Mills: ‘We often imagine that Armageddon is a horror that awaits us sometime in the future. But Armageddon has already happened. It was World War One.’
28 February 2014
[ships] Russia’s Giant Secret Spy Ship Killed Rats, Ruined Careers and Almost Got Blown Up TWICE … fascinating story of the Russian ship Ural… ‘Ural didn’t just kill turtles. She also became what Russian Navy Blog described as “one of those rare ships free of rats.” When her electronics were all switched on, something—radiation, perhaps—swiftly killed all the rodents aboard. Rats “only reappeared when the ship moored at the pier.”’
24 February 2014
[history] Time travellers: please don’t kill Hitler … Why Killing Hitler is a bad idea … ‘This is overlooked surprisingly often, so it bears repeating: Hitler didn’t win. Whatever you think of the present, we don’t live in some bleak wasteland dominated by a global Reich. Because Hitler and his armies lost. Although it was a costly victory, it was still technically a victory, so why risk going back and interfering with an outcome you favour? And arguably, it was due to Hitler’s incompetence as a strategist that the war panned out the way it did. In a way, Hitler had the perfect combination of drive, charisma, evil and incompetence to unite the world against him and ensure that his forces lost.’
17 September 2013
[history] Early recollections of Adolf Hitler: “Eccentric but quite a pleasant fellow” … a profile of Adolf Hitler published in the New Statesman in 1933 …

In those days in Munich I lived in the Thiersh Strasse, and I frequently noticed in the street a man who vaguely reminded me of a militant edition of Charles Chaplin, owing to his characteristic moustache and his bouncing way of walking. He always carried a riding whip in his hand with which he used incessantly to chop off imaginary heads as he walked. He was so funny that I inquired from neighbours who he might be: most of them, owing to his Slav type, took him to be one of these Russian émigrés who abounded in Germany at that time, and they freely talked of his being probably a trifle mentally deranged. But my grocer told me it was a Herr Adolf Hitler from Braunau in Austria, and that he was leader of a tiny political group which called itself the “German National Socialist Workers Party”. He lived as a boarder in the apartment of a small artisan, wrote articles for an obscure paper called the Völkischer Beobachter, and orated in hole-and-corner meetings before audiences of a dozen or two. Out of curiosity I bought the paper once or twice, and found it a scatter-brained collection of wild anti-Jewish stories and articles interlarded with panegyrics on the Germanic race. My obliging grocer closed his information on Hitler by remarking that he frequently purchased things in his shop and was, despite his eccentric appearance, quite a pleasant fellow, though inclined to talk sixteen to the dozen about anything and everything.

5 April 2013
[ww2] Hitler’s Food Taster: One Bite Away from Death … The remarkable story of one of Hitler’s team of food tasters who survived the war … ‘Hitler’s thugs brought her and the other young women to barracks in nearby Krausendorf, where cooks prepared the food for the Wolf’s Lair in a two-story building. The service personnel filled platters with vegetables, sauces, noodle dishes and exotic fruits, placing them in a room with a large wooden table, where the food had to be tasted. “There was never meat because Hitler was a vegetarian,” Wölk recalls. “The food was good — very good. But we couldn’t enjoy it.” There were rumors that the Allies had plans to poison Hitler. After the women confirmed that the food was safe, members of the SS brought it to the main headquarters in crates.’
21 January 2013
[war] WWII lard washes up on beach at Angus nature reserve‘Staff at St Cyrus nature reserve said four large, barrel-shaped pieces of lard have appeared on the shore. The fat is believed to have escaped from the wreck of a merchant vessel that was bombed in WW II. Scottish Natural Heritage said the lard was still a brilliant white and smelled “good enough to have a fry up with.” The lard would have originally been stored in wooden barrels, which have long since rotted away.’
17 January 2013
[war] What You Wear to Kill Osama bin Laden … some exhaustive details on what you need to kill the world’s most wanted man …

First he laid out his Crye Precision Desert Digital combat uniform, a long-sleeve, partially camouflaged shirt and cargo pants combo with ten pockets, “each with a specific purpose.” In the pockets he put assault gloves, leather mitts for “fast-roping,” an assortment of batteries, energy gel, two PowerBars, an extra tourniquet, rubber gloves, an SSE (forensic) kit, an Olympus point-and-shoot digital camera, and $200 in cash. The money was for a bribe or a ride, if needed. “Evasion takes money, and few things work better than American cash.”

13 November 2012
[war] Pakistani Boy, U.S. Drone Form Unlikely Friendship: ‘An unlikely friendship has developed between a 9-year-old Pakistani boy and a U.S. MQ-1 Predator drone in North Waziristan. “You’d think they would have nothing in common, and yet you see them together all the time, wandering around the countryside hand in wing,” area merchant Siraj Rahmad told reporters…’
15 August 2012
[war] War Sand … an interesting look at the microscopic remanants of WWII left on the beaches of Normandy …

Archaeology magazine highlights the presence of spherical magnetic shards—remnants of the D-Day operations of World War II—found hidden amongst natural sand grains on the beaches of Normandy. “Up to 4 percent of the sand is made up of this shrapnel,” the article states; however, “waves, storms, and rust will probably wipe this microscopic archaeology from the coast in another hundred years.”

2 April 2012
[war] 30 Years Since the Falklands War … some fascinating pictures from the Falklands War – and not just the usual ones you see published in British Newpapers.
14 March 2012
[terrorism] The Dubai Job … a fascinating look at a semi-botched assassination of a high-ranking Hamas leader by Mossad…

‘The rest of the investigation that Tamim conducted, however, was meticulous and efficient in a way that no one, least of all the Mossad, had expected. A source close to the investigation said that the moment Tamim concluded that Al-Mabhouh had not died of natural causes, he ordered his people to search Dubai’s extensive databases and identify everyone who had arrived in the emirate shortly before the killing and left soon after. This list was then cross-referenced against the names of visitors who had been in Dubai back in February, March, June, and November of 2009, all the times of Al-Mabhouh’s previous visits. The short list that emerged was then checked against hotel registers, and footage from hotel security cameras at the times these individuals checked in made it possible to put a face to each name. Tamim then compared these visual identifications to the footage from the Al Bustan Hotel at the time of Al-Mabhouh’s death, which gave him the names of the assassins. And searching databases of financial transactions gave him the identities of the rest of the team, all of which Dubai authorities posted online for the world to see.’

28 February 2012
[war] Never Surrender: The Lonely War Of Hiroo Onoda … the story of the last WW2 Japanese soldier to surrender… in 1974! ‘Onoda was officially relived from military duties and told to hand over his rifle, ammunition and hand grenades. He was both stunned and horrified. ‘We really lost the war!’ were his first words. ‘How could they [the Japanese army] have been so sloppy?” [via YMFY]
21 February 2012
[history] BBC Transcript To Be Used In Wake Of Nuclear Attack‘Meanwhile, stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm and stay in your own homes. Remember there is nothing to be gained by trying to get away.’
20 December 2011
[books] The War for Catch-22 … A look at the genesis of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 … ‘The Czech writer Arnošt Lustig claimed that Heller had told him at a New York party for Milos Forman in the late 1960s that he couldn’t have written Catch-22 without first reading Jaroslav Hašek’s unfinished World War I satire,The Good Soldier Schweik. In Hašek’s novel, a mad state bureaucracy traps a hapless man. Among other things, he stays in a hospital for malingerers and serves as an orderly for an army chaplain.’
25 October 2011
[war] Last Nuclear ‘Monster Weapon’ Gets Dismantled‘[The B-53 Bomb is] the ultimate Cold War weapon, the one that Major Kong would have ridden into Armageddon at the end of Dr. Strangelove. And on Tuesday, it will no longer exist. Out at the Energy Department’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, the last of America’s B-53s is in storage. Come Tuesday, it will be dissected: The 300 pounds of high explosives will be separated from its enriched uranium heart, known as a “pit.” The pit will be placed into a storage locker at Pantex, where it will await a final, highly supervised termination.’ [via jwz]
12 February 2011
[history] The London Pedestrian Crossing of Doom … the place where one man’s thoughts later caused the deaths of a quarter of a million Japanese citizens …‘We’re on the corner of Southampton Row and Russell Square in leafy Bloomsbury. There’s no plaque to mark the event but this is the unlikely spot where the nuclear chain reaction was first conceived.’
26 December 2010
[tv] Christmas Night Fail From Yesterday TV – Nazi Collaborators All Nighter … a history TV channel’s idea of Christmas entertainment!
20 December 2010
[history] Probably The Most Inappropriate Christmas Card Ever Sent‘The year is 1938, and you’re looking for a suitably seasonal picture for the front of your Christmas cards. A festive image which will convey seasonal goodwill to all humanity. What could better symbolise those eternal truths than an international peace treaty signed by the two major European powers which had once been at war?’ [thanks Phil]
9 October 2010
[comics] Were The Wartime Beano And Dandy Editors On A Nazi Death List?‘Seventy years ago this year, the Nazi’s were working on the details of Operation Sealion, their planned invasion of mainland Britain. These plans included a list of people who were to be rounded up by, or handed over to, the Nazi security forces once they were in control of the United Kingdom. It has been said that the editors of the Beano and Dandy were included on this list due to the humorous, and therefore disrespectful, attitude that the two comics had towards Adolph Hitler…’
27 September 2010
[war] Go Look: Photo Of A Improvised Nokia Bomb Detonator In Iraq: “01 Call Missed”(more…)
29 August 2010
[war] Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant‘He gave his superiors a briefing on “proven organizational methodologies” to streamline IJC, but it went nowhere. “It was only my rant that everyone read,” he says. “My hope is that after they stop being angry at me, maybe they will take a serious look at how they operate.” The irony? His briefing was a five-slide PowerPoint. ‘
24 August 2010
[blogs] World War II Today … blogging World War II one post at a time.
24 May 2010
[people] The Reporter Who Time Forgot … Remembering Cornelius Ryan the author of The Longest Day and A Bridge To Far

He had sold, he believed, between 25 and 35 million copies of The Longest Day and 400,000 hardcover copies of The Last Battle in the United States alone. Yet each book had cost him some $150,000 to research. “I have no less than 7,000 books on every aspect of World War II. My files contain some 16,000 different interviews with Germans, British, French, etc,” he wrote. “Then there is the chronology of each battle, 5×7 cards, detailing each movement by hour for the particular work I’m engaged in. You may think this is all a kind of madness, an obsession. I suppose it is.”

23 February 2010
[war] Lost Nazi nuke-project uranium found in Dutch scrapyard‘Forensic nuke scientists at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) traced two pieces of metal – described as a cube and a plate – back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the “Joachimsthal” mine in what is now the Czech Republic, though the two are from different production batches.The cube, according to specialists at the JRC’s Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU), was produced in 1943 for the Nazi nuclear programme and was used in the lab of famous boffin Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle fame).’
1 November 2009
[war] Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine … fascinating look at the dead-man’s switch the Soviet’s have deployed as part of their strategy of nuclear deterrence … ‘Perimeter was never meant as a traditional doomsday machine. The Soviets had taken game theory one step further than Kubrick, Szilard, and everyone else: They built a system to deter themselves. By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from launching prematurely during a crisis.’
31 October 2009
[war] Secrets Hope As Hitler Aide Dies … [via Warren Ellis]

He also told the German newspaper how he was dismissed by Hitler over a bizarre incident involving a fly.

The fly had been buzzing around the room during a strategy conference in July 1944, irritating the Nazi leader.

Hitler ordered Mr Darges to get rid of it, but the SS adjutant suggested that as it was an “airborne pest” the job should go to Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below.

He said Hitler then flew into a rage and dismissed him, saying: “You’re for the eastern front.”

20 August 2009
[war] The Wandering Soul Psyop Tape Of Vietnam‘Listen to the eerie sounds of “The Wandering Soul” – also known as “Ghost Tape Number 10” – that was broadcast by loudspeakers installed on Swifts and other units during “Chieu Hoi” and Psychological Warfare missions to “taunt” the enemy.’
10 June 2009
[computers] The Register makes a good case for the Minuteman 1’s nuclear missile guidance computer being the first truly portable computer‘We should celebrate this wonderful nuke. Oh sure, the computer system couldn’t run “Wordstar” or a game of “Colossal Cave,” like the Osborne 1, but how many computers do you know that can destroy the world? That feature offers some serious LAN-party cred right right there. And with a three-stage, solid-propellant rocket build in, travel is a breeze.’
21 May 2009
[war] MI6 urged Churchill to nuke Berlin‘The proposal was discussed in August 1944, when British agents were reporting that Hitler was poised to launch the supersonic V2 rockets, armed with 2,000lb warheads, at London. Britain had no effective counter-measures against the 46ft-long rocket-propelled V2s and because they travelled faster than the speed of sound, they detonated without warning. An alarmed Liddell asked Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, if a nuclear threat could be used against Hitler…’ [via Warren Ellis]
18 February 2009
[history] The greatest motivational poster ever? … BBC News on the Keep Calm and Carry On Poster … ‘One company has given it a twist, replacing the original slogan with “Now Panic and Freak Out”.’
26 January 2009
[war] Atomic John … New Yorker article on one man’s obssesive search to find the secrets behind the first Atomic Bombs … [via qwghlm]

‘Human beings are proud of what they create—no matter how controversial or deadly. Edward Teller revealed the essential secrets of the hydrogen bomb in a popular encyclopedia article. In 1995, Robert Henderson, the chief engineer for the Manhattan Project, sent back to Coster-Mullen an early version of the “Atom Bombs” manuscript, with comments such as “shit” and “pure shit,” and then went on to explain the exact (and still classified) process by which engineers made the lens molds that cast the explosives that squeezed the core of Fat Man until it achieved critical mass. Reading through President Truman’s diaries, at the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri, Coster-Mullen found an entry dated July 25, 1945, in which the President marvelled that “13 pounds of the explosive” had made the shot tower at Alamogordo, New Mexico, disappear—a pretty accurate estimate of the amount of nuclear material contained in Fat Man.’

22 January 2009
[war] Rocket Strikes I Am Near … type in a London postcode and get a list of V2 rockets strikes in that area. Londonist: ‘V-2 explosions devastated Selfridges, Speakers’ Corner and Holborn. That isolated Caffe Nero near the mural on Tottenham Court Road stands on the still-undeveloped site of a blast that killed nine.’
18 July 2008
[movies] Peter Bradshaw reviews Errol Morris’s documentary Standard Operating Procedure: ‘The Abu Ghraib scandal was a product of the digital age: ordinary roll-film cameras or Polaroids might have been too conspicuous, there would be no facilities for development, and any resulting prints might have been confiscated or lost. But digital images, immediately accessible and so easily transferable and reproducible, and with ineradicable date and time stamps, were the captors’ undoing. Watching this film is the grimmest experience imaginable…’