Free Republic

A mysterious object spotted on the South Pacific seafloor has been identified as the bow of a torpedoed World War II ship that famously sailed thousands of miles backwards to avoid sinking, historians say. The nearly 100-foot long section of the USS New Orleans was found Sunday, July 6, by the Ocean Exploration Trust as it searched the seafloor near Guadalcanal with a remotely operated vehicle. A positive identification was made with the help of paint fragments still clinging to the hull, along with an engraved anchor, the trust reported. The bow, which fell to a depth of 2,214 feet,...

One of history’s greatest “what ifs” is the question of what would have happened had the Germans been able to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. The Wehrmacht’s effort to do just that, called the Uranverein, or “Uranium Club,” began in 1939 when German Army physicist Kurt Diebner began to research the potential military applications of nuclear fission. By year’s end, the renowned German physicist Werner Heisenberg had expressed his belief that nuclear fission chain reactions, and thus, eventually, nuclear bombs, might be possible, but only if he had access to enough of a singular substance known as...