Tuesday, August 11, 2009

'Dead' A-Bomb Hits U.S. Town, 1958.


Three years before I was born, an a-bomb happened to fall near my hometown in South Carolina. The pilots did not know that it had fallen until they landed at the nearby airbase and noticed that it was missing. My father took me by there a few times when I was a kid, and then I found this newsreel a few years ago at the Internet Archive (archive.org). One thing I like about the reel is that it is followed by a story about computer-assisted manufacturing, featuring Hughes Aircraft, who may very well have manufactured the bomb mounts in the plane. But not to worry in the computer-assisted factory of the future.
By chance we vacationed on Tybee Island last year, and I ran across this little story about another lost a-bomb somewhere just off the coast there. It seems that the proper authorities have never found this one!
It makes for a good reason to show Dr. Strangelove to my Intro. Cultural Studies students.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

"Exhuming Rwanda's Gorillas: Fossey's Legacy"

NPR is currently running this series on its website. Researchers are at work ehuming the remains of the gorillas that were studied by Dian Fossey. Erin Marie Williams records the field dispatches available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106843731