December 2008

Forty Minute War

December 18, 2008

Elsewhere, I wrote about the three hundred and thirty-five year war(1). To fill in the opposite end of the spectrum, I now present to you the “Forty Minute War” otherwise known as the Anglo-Zanzibar War(2). It began something like this: The Anglo-Zanzibar War was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar on 27 August 1896. [...]

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The Bhopal Disaster

December 17, 2008

China has been in the news a lot recently for its poor health record. It is a sad fact that they are not the only country with this problem, and that this is not a new problem. Let me take you back to Bhopal, India in December 1984. According to the Wikipedia article(1): The Bhopal [...]

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World’s Largest Conventional Explosion

December 16, 2008

Thirteen miles away (source) A bit of grim history for you. The world’s largest conventional explosion (that status a bit disputed) occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with [...]

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