Newspapers started reporting that the eclipse was coming months beforehand, giving advice on the best places to travel to catch the “path of totality.” Scientists prepared their experiments, people prepared their travel plans, businesses prepared for a bonanza, and everyone sought a glass they could look through without going blind. And, as the event started to unfold, all the world seemed to stop their business and watch. It was eclipse mania on June 8, 1918.
On July 24, 1304 King Edward I of England captured the last stronghold of resistance against English rule in Scotland, the formidable Stirling Castle. But he did not have to storm the castle to make the defenders surrender. He merely had to threaten them with perhaps the most terrifying siege engine in the era before gunpowder.
The history of Mangoes includes piracy, passion, paisley and a very unfortunate dentist.
The air war in Korea is often remembered for the first jet on jet combats and the dreaded “MiG alley.” But a far less remembered part of the air war, before a MiG entered the fray, represented a key, if almost completely overlooked, moment in one of the hottest times of the Cold War.