Free Republic

Republican Rome was pushed to the brink of collapse on August 2, 216 B.C., when the Carthaginian general Hannibal annihilated at least 50,000 of its legionaries at the Second Punic War’s Battle of Cannae.

Patrick N. Hunt discusses his new book on Hannibal and how much of his success was based on solid financing. Audio Player Few military leaders hold as much allure for historians as Hannibal Barca of Carthage (today’s Tunisia). Born in 247 B.C., he is still studied today because of his unparalleled ability to strategize and get inside the mind of his opponent in battle. Archaeologist Patrick N. Hunt, who had been the director of Stanford’s Alpine Archaeology Project, has written a new book about the legendary figure that is simply titled Hannibal. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel...

I went to the most famous battlefield in Western History, and had a surprise. Not a good one. It is a stomp, well off the path, to get to Cannae. The main train lines in Italy run up and down the coasts. Going inland, particularly in southeast Italy, is somewhat more episodic. My train had two cars. At the fourth stop, “Battle”, I got off.

HomeScience NASA’s Eagle Works: The Manhattan project of space travel. Karim Immanuel Chemlal A working microwave thruster would radically cut the cost of satellites and space stations and extend their working life, drive a plethora of suddenly affordable deep-space missions, and take astronauts to Mars in days to weeks rather than months. In 2011 the NASA engineering directorate created the Advanced propulsion team unofficially known as the “Eagleworks”. This rock star team of scientists and engineers are headed by Harold ‘Sonny’ White, engineer and applied physicist of NASA’s propulsion team at the Johnson space centre. The goal of the Eagle...

If the tests of the Cannae Drive technology hold up, a trip to Mars could take weeks instead of months 7 inShare NASA has been testing new space travel technologies throughout its entire history, but the results of its latest experiment may be the most exciting yet — if they hold up. Earlier this week at a conference in Cleveland, Ohio, scientists with NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories in Houston, Texas, presented a paper indicating they had achieved a small amount of thrust from a container that had no traditional fuels, only microwaves, bouncing around inside it. If the results can be...

The History Channel is going to air a new historical series entitled DECISIVE BATTLES including some classic wars between ancient Persian armies and Roman and Greek ones. The History Channel goes on location to the actual battlefields and integrates cutting-edge videogame technology to bring history and imagination together in the new series DECISIVE BATTLES. The half-hour series DECISIVE BATTLES premieres Friday, July 23 at 9-9:30pm ET/PT. The series is hosted by Matthew Settle (Band of Brothers) on location at the ancient battlefields and features expert commentary from the world©s foremost historians. DECISIVE BATTLES is unlike any series The History Channel...