History on Air

Everyone is talking about: Yuri Gagarin

Today marks the 50th anniversary that humankind put a man in space. Everyone is writing about this online. I mean everyone. This is your one stop shop for everything online that is Gagarin. Jalopnik, a car blog, even has an extensive feature on their blog. National Geographic has a huge slideshow with really fantastic photos you need to check out. Boing Boing posted the below video with a link to NASA’s website where there is a feature on Gagarin too. Gizmodo did a great job with their article online too, maybe the best one I read today. Wired did a post about the photos that were altered of some of the soviet astronauts. Google of course jumped in and created a custom image for Gagarin.

Yuri Gagarin carried two personal items with him on his historic first spaceflight. First, cognac. Second, shark repellant. The shark repellant was in case he landed in the sea. Mary Roach via Twitter

Then there is the movie. Metafilter mentions it on their site. We touched on it briefly a few posts ago. The best site to learn about the movie is GeekDad. I’ll post the movie below.

Other articles found online:
Wired
C|Net
C|Net Photo Slideshow

Also, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin the book came out today. I want to read this really bad, but for now I think I will just watch the movie. Enjoy everyone!

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Book Review: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

I read The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood mostly because it was on the non-fiction bestseller’s list and I thought it might be interesting to read about the history of information. But this book is not just the history of information but also the communication of that information. Actually, I think the book might be miss named. Maybe it should be named the History of Communication. After all, the author first starts out with discussing the use of drums to convey messages, then he moves on to smoke signals and this theme is returned to throughout the book. He even covers (quite extensively) the history of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which I had just read a full history of and will have to post a seperate review here later.

After the OED, he covers the interesting history behind the telephone, computers, Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), wikipedia, domain names, photography, printing press, email, microfilm, twitter, and google. During all this discussion he also takes time to discuss information theory, information overload, and too much information (TMI) e.g. noise.

All these topics and more are covered extensively in the book. I found that in places he was a bit over verbose, but that may be because I had just read all about the OED and was really bored through this section, because I already knew the history of this monumental work.

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Rwandan Holocaust

Back in 2006, I did a podcast episode on the Rwandan Holocaust.  You can play the episode below:

The Rwandan Holocaust began on this day in 1994.  You can read more about it at the links below:

Wikipedia Article

United Human Rights Council

Rwandan-Genocide.org

Books on the subject:

Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust – I read this back when I did the podcast on the subject. It is a very graphic and disturbing book, but true to the event.

The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda (Bestselling Backlist)

Watch the rest of this documentary after the jump…
Read more…

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Top 5 topics last month

Time for a short re-cap of last months top topics:

Texas City Disaster – A 1947 harbor explosion in Texas City.

Congress of Vienna – A 1815 congress that divided up the different areas of Europe.

London Bridge sold to an American – in 1968 a oil tycoon bought the London bridge.

Vladimir Komarov & Yuri Gagarin – The mystery of what really happened to these two astronauts may soon be revealed.

Cleopatra – Learn about one of the most famous women in history.

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Khan Academy

Every once and a while I try to stop by TED because they have really cool presentations there and you can watch them for free. One day a few weeks ago I did that and I stumbled upon this:

I thought this was very cool. He has some great videos up on youtube here are just some of them. Never mind, I can’t embed it here so you will have to use the link above to check it out.

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Book Review: Churchill: A Life

I don’t read a lot of biographies like Winston Churchill: A Life, mostly because I find them a little dry even if the person themselves was interesting. As a historical figure Churchill is very interesting. The man did have one of the most famous quotes about history:

Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. – Winston Churchill

On with the review though. Churchill was raised mainly by his nanny not his parents. That was the way it was for his generation and class. His mom had lots of affairs throughout her life. His dad was just as ruthless in politics as he was. He must have received his political ambition from him. He had poor grades, but Keegan attributes this to Churchill not being a good test taker. The one thing at school that he was good at was fencing. One of the places he did the worst in his studies was in languages, he just couldn’t get them. He did however (yea!) like history. He got around a lot when he was younger and even dated Ethel Barrymore of the famous Barrymore’s. Ethel would have John, whom had John Jr. who had the famous Drew Barrymore that we are all familiar with.

I liked this biography and thought it did a very good job covering the life of Churchill. I could tell that Keegan had a genuine interest in in Churchill. The came across in his writing. If you want to learn about Churchill this is a good book to start with.

Thanks to youtube here is a whole movie on Churchill. There are at least 6 parts, so you will have to follow the links on youtube if you want to watch the whole thing.

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Reagan Assassination Attempt

29 years ago today, John Hinckley, Jr. fired six shots at Reagan. Fortunately for Regan he was a terrible shot. I had known about an assassination attempt on Reagan before, but since it happened when I was 2 years old, I never really learned the details about it. So I was shocked when I learned the Hinckley was infatuated with Jodi Foster. Apparently, he was obsessed and had followed (stalked) her for a long time. He watched Taxi Driver 15 times in a row. Foster played a child prostitute in the movie. Robert De Niro’s character in the movie plots to assassinate the president. So, Hinckley thought that would be a good way to get Foster’s attention and affections.

Three people were wounded when Hinckley fired his shots, but no one died. An insanity defense kept him out of the electric chair. He is currently 55 years old and still locked up in a psychiatric ward. He is expected back in court in the Spring of 2011, to see if he will be released on his own at that time. In 1985 Hinckley’s parents wrote a book about their son’s mental condition called, Breaking Points.

Further Learning:
Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan
In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect
The Reagan Diaries
The Day Reagan Was Shot

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Vladimir Komarov & Yuri Gagarin

Here is a new category on the blog. Movie reviews! So, Christian (a long time supporter of the website and podcast) sent me a link to an article about the astronaut Vladimir Komarov. So I was reading this and thought really? I guess I wasn’t the only one because quickly after the original post the put up another post addressing all the questions the first one created in the comments section.

So, now we don’t know what happened at all. But one of the comments on another site, I think digg, but I’m not sure said that the whole thing was debunked in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. So I rented this from Netflix and they didn’t mention a single thing about Vladimir Komarov. Totally bummed, but on the bright side it was a really good documentary that featured interviews with American astronauts. So, it wasn’t a total loss.

And as mentioned in the NPR articles there is a book coming soon that may unveil some of the questions that we are seeing pop up. I myself, would really like to know what happened. Hopefully, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin will provide some answers, or at least give us some interesting history. In the mean time I think I will break out some blu-rays that I have had for a while but have not had the chance to watch, When We Left Earth – The NASA Missions [Blu-ray]. Anybody see this yet?

Oh, and one more thing, on April 12, there is supposed to be a film coming out on youtube that will tell us more. See the link here.

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Meltdown at Three Mile Island

Today marks the 32 year since the accident in the very early hours of March 28th at Three Mile Island. I have in the past done a podcast on the subject.

There are a bunch of books on the subject, here is just a few:
Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective
The Warning: Accident at Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Omen for the Age of Terror
TMI 25 Years Later: The Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Accident and Its Impact
Meltdown: A Race Against Nuclear Disaster at Three Mile Island: A Reporter’s Story

A cool youtube video series on Three Mile Island:

Read more…

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Happy Birthday Danica Patrick

Today we continue the theme of beautiful women on historyonair.com. Yesterday we mourned the loss of the beautiful and talented Elizabeth Taylor. Today we celebrate the birth of Danica Patrick who today is 29. Why am I writing a post about her? Have you seen her? No, but really she is a very talented woman. She has broken through many barriers to get to where she is.

In 2005, which was her debut season, she won the award for IndyCar Rookie of the Year. From 2005 to 2007 and again in 2009 she won IndyCar Most Popular Driver.

Today she will turn 29. She was born in Beloit, Wisconsin. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona with …her husband, sorry guys. She started racing professionally in IndyCar, but in February 2010, she had her first professional nascar race. Patrick has hosted several TV shows on SpikeTV. She was featured on Sports Illustrated on June 6, 2005 (image below). That was the first time that a Indianapolis 500 driver on the cover since Al Unser in 1987.

She was (of course) a cheerleader in high school, but later dropped out. She did later get her GED. Interesting side notes: Patrick owns a Mercedes-Benz ML 63 AMG, and a Lamborghini Gallardo. She has received two speeding tickets in her hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona. The first, in 2007, was for driving 57 mph in a 40 mph zone, for which she was ordered to attend traffic school; the second, in 2008, was for going 54 mph in a 35 mph zone, and she paid a $196 fine.

Further Learning:

Danica–Crossing the Line

FAME: Danica Patrick

Ah, the benefits of having your own blog and choosing the history you want to cover! This was a fun one to cover for a Friday. Happy Birthday Danica and thanks for making my Friday a bit brighter!

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