The M247 Sergeant York was officially designated as a “self-propelled anti-aircraft gun” but was for all intents and purposes a tank chassis with anti-aircraft guns attached to the top. The vehicle was named for one Alvin York, a famous and highly decorated WW1 hero who captured over 100 German soldiers pretty much single handedly. Unfortunately for the U.S. tax payers […]

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader SHOCK WAVE In September 1949, a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane flying over the North Pacific from Japan to Alaska detected levels of radioactivity in the atmosphere at least 20 times above normal. Other planes in the Pacific reported similar observations in the days that followed; elevated radiation levels were […]

It was presumably a cold, wintry February day in the United States capital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the capital would not move to DC until 1800) when President George Washington put pen to paper and signed the Postal Service Act of 1792.  While a rudimentary colonial mailing service had been around since for nearly a century and a half, this new law […]

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? In 1985, Bary Bertiger, an engineer with the high-tech giant Motorola, had an intriguing idea: If a company could put enough low-orbit satellites in the air to attain direct access to the entire surface of the Earth, and use that network to support a satellite […]