Free Republic

In 2003, former McDonnell Douglas executive Harry Stonecipher became the CEO of Boeing and described the company as "run like a business rather than a great engineering firm." Stonecipher made the fateful decision to reject proposals to design a clean-sheet airplane to replace the aging Boeing 727, 737, and 757. By 2011, Boeing's aging 737 was losing to rival Airbus's A320neo, but instead of a new aircraft, the decision was made to upgrade the 737 NG to the 737 MAX. This would allow it to stay within the FAA's original type certification and operate with the same flying characteristics. It...

Waymo is hitting the brakes on its robotaxi software and issuing a voluntary recall after school bus safety concerns came to light earlier this year. The recall won’t necessarily pull cars from the road but will instead see them updated. It comes after an investigation by Nexstar’s KXAN found the company’s driverless vehicles illegally passed school buses with their stop arms out in Austin, Texas. The Austin Independent School District said similar incidents occurred at least 19 times this school year, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation in October. In November, cameras captured a Waymo...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy today launched his “Make Travel Family Friendly Again” campaign ahead of a busy holiday travel season. The goal of the campaign is to address a common refrain from the public – it can be challenging to travel as a family. From needing more dedicated spaces for young children and exercise equipment, to finding places for mothers to nurse their children, to staying fit on the go, or struggling to find more healthy food options, the Trump Administration is committed to making every stage of the travel journey more seamless. To improve families’ experiences in...

Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl lays out their timeline for passenger flights and addresses the costs of supersonic travel on 'FOX Business In Depth: The Flight Path Forward.' Boom Supersonic CEO takes on critics: They 'don't invent the future, innovators do' | 5:21 Fox Business | 3.25M subscribers | 17,203 views | November 27, 2025

A team of Italian scientists took the world by storm last March when they announced the discovery of a colossal underground complex plunging nearly 3,500 feet beneath Egypt's Giza Plateau and linking chambers the size of city blocks. Now Filippo Biondi, the radar engineer who developed the imaging method, has gone public with evidence that he said leaves little room for doubt.In a new interview on Jesse Michels' American Alchemy podcast, Biondi revealed that four independent satellite operators, Umbra, Capella Space, ICEYE and Italy's Cosmo-SkyMed, all returned identical raw tomography data showing the same structures.>>>Each shaft has a central column...

The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 was not the only amazing feat of American railroad engineering in history. In 1886, railways in the south managed to convert the gauge on an estimated 11,500 miles of track in a period of just 36 hours. The History Guy remembers the 1886 Southern Railroad Gauge Change, an important moment in railroad history. The Day The Gauge Changed | 10:05 The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | 1.61M subscribers | 1,173,812 views | June 16, 2018

"King Salman International Airport (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)....covers roughly 57 square kilometers....Around 12 square kilometers have already been reserved for residential construction" "Al Maktoum International Airport (Dubai World Central), Dubai, UAE...." "The large-scale Dubai South development program envisions an integrated city with a population of more than one million people that will include housing, business clusters, logistics zones, and technology parks. "According to estimates by analytical agencies, average annual housing price growth in Dubai South is expected to reach 15 to 20 percent in the coming years." "Ho Chi Minh City’s existing airport handles more than 40 million passengers per year...

For years now my local town has had rumours of lost secret tunnels under the ground. So after a curious invote to the local pub I decided it was time to investigate all these claims once and for all. They Said SECRET TUNNELS Don't Exist... So I Went Looking | 13:56 Paul Whitewick | 216K subscribers | 57,776 views | December 7, 2025 00:00 - An Invite 01:43 - Two Maps 02:49 - Rumours 06:29 - Site 1 10:12 - Site 2 12:34 - However

...in the early 1990s two of Mike’s interests, numismatics and astronomy, came together. As Mike explored the astrological iconography on Roman coins he developed a theory for the "Magi's star.” He interpreted this event as a description of a remarkable pair of highly visible eclipses of Jupiter by the Moon. These occurred in the constellation Aries that was associated with King Herod and was likely interpreted as a sign of a major event. He presented his findings in a 1995 paper in The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society and later in his 1999 Rutgers University Press book "The...

What It Is The Chevrolet Camaro was originally created as a Ford Mustang foil. History now appears ready to repeat itself as Chevy prepares to reintroduce the Camaro nameplate to the market. This time, we're hearing from our sources that we should expect the Bow Tie to resurrect the Camaro not as a coupe but as a fastback SUV aimed squarely at the Mustang Mach-E. That is, unless General Motors president Mark Reuss has his way and the Camaro makes its comeback as an electric car. But if it's an SUV, here's what we believe you can expect: Why It...

Sealed beneath a pyramid for 50 years, a forgotten American car has just been unearthed—and it’s nothing like what experts expected. Once mocked, this buried relic has stunned a small town and reignited a national obsession. On Independence Day 2025, a sealed concrete vault beneath a small-town pyramid in Seward, Nebraska opened to reveal an unexpected relic: a 1975 Chevrolet Vega, untouched for 50 years and preserved in striking condition. The unveiling drew thousands, offering a rare collision of automotive history, American nostalgia, and small-town spectacle. The car emerged from what is now being recognized as the largest time capsule...

A lost 16th-century ship buried deep in a Namibian desert has stunned archaeologists with a treasure haul that rewrites the story of early global trade. In Namibia’s remote Sperrgebiet—a name that translates from German as “forbidden zone”—miners looking for diamonds stumbled upon something far more valuable: the buried wreck of a 16th-century Portuguese carrack, laden with gold, ivory, and copper. Preserved beneath the hyper-arid sands of the Namib Desert, the ship, identified as the Bom Jesus, disappeared in 1533 while en route to India. Discovered in 2008 within a high-security mining concession near Oranjemund, the site quickly drew attention from...

A remarkable resistance to venom has been discovered in a frog that feasts on hornets despite their deadly stingers. This frog could potentially serve as a model organism for studies on mechanisms underlying venom tolerance. Image: Kobe University ecologist SUGIURA Shinji discovered that the black-spotted pond frog seems to be unharmed and undaunted by venomous stings from hornets such as the Asian giant hornet, the largest in the world. ============================================================== While just the sight of a hornet’s stinger is enough to fill many of us with dread, some animals, such as some birds, spiders and frogs, are known to prey...

A norovirus outbreak has affected the German cruise ship AIDAdiva, with 95 passengers and 6 crew members reporting symptoms of the highly contagious gastrointestinal illness. The cases were first reported to health authorities on November 30, making this the eighth day of active infection on board as of December 7, and ruining a holiday of a lifetime for many. The ship, operated by AIDA Cruises (a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation), is carrying 2,007 passengers and approximately 640 crew members. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the infected individuals represent fewer than 6 per cent of...

Before WiFi or Morse code, ancient civilizations used fire to send messages across empires. From China’s Great Wall to Byzantium’s time-coded relays, each era made the system faster and smarter. Featuring Lance Geiger of The History Guy, The Rise of Civilization is a documentary series that combines expert interviews with cutting-edge photorealistic AI recreations to reveal how the inventions, systems, and ideas of the ancient world shaped the foundations of our modern one. The Rise of Civilization | 12,413 views | November 5, 2025

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered 225 shabtis -- figurines meant to act as servants for the deceased in the afterlife -- that belonged to the pharaoh Shoshenq III inside a tomb of a different pharaoh.The figurines were found at the site of Tanis, in northern Egypt, in the northern chamber of the tomb of Osorkon II, near an unmarked sarcophagus. Hieroglyphs on the shabtis allowed the team to identify who they belonged to.Although the tomb and sarcophagus were discovered in 1939, the shabtis were recently found by an Egyptian-French team that is conducting conservation work, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism...

Archaeologists are peeling back the myth of the Roman Legionary, using incredible new discoveries from Britain's Vindolanda and Gaul's Lugdunum. By excavating 2,000-year-old barracks, sewers, and mass graves, they uncover perfectly preserved artifacts, from intimate letters and children's shoes to macabre human remains. This documentary reveals a vibrant, human side to the Roman soldier while exposing the brutal reality and fratricidal violence of life on the empire's frontier and in its great cities. Recovering Lost Artifacts From An Ancient Roman Mass Grave | 52:13 Unearthed History - Archaeology Documentaries | 242K subscribers | 19,297 views | November 30, 2025

At an off-the-record meeting held on November 21, 1962 with NASA Administrator James Webb, NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans, and Special Assistant to the President Jerome Wiesner, President Kennedy states clearly that his administration's priority is for the United States to land on the Moon before the Soviet Union. Listening In: JFK on Getting to the Moon (November 21, 1962) | 4:04 John F. Kennedy Library Foundation | 136K subscribers | 931,620 views | October 11, 2012

Beijing’s epic military parade in early September triggered Western anxiety over China’s mounting hard-power potential. Indeed, the weapons trotted out were fearsome... But there’s a danger in fixating on China’s military upgrades. In fact, the country is fast eclipsing liberal democracies in more pragmatic ways — or already has. Grand set pieces of military theatre highlight combat threats to be taken seriously. Yet the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is positioning the nation as a twenty-first-century leader for different reasons. Among these are China’s near monopoly on critical mineral processing and refinement, its application-centric approach to artificial intelligence (AI), and...

Around 8,000 years ago, a vast stretch of land connected Britain to mainland Europe. This lost world, known as Doggerland, was a thriving Mesolithic landscape teeming with mammoth, deer, and human communities. But everything changed with a catastrophic event that submerged this Stone Age Eden beneath the rising waters of the North Sea. In 1931, fishermen accidentally pulled prehistoric bones and tools from the seafloor, marking the first modern discovery of Doggerland. Since then, especially from the 1990s through 2019, archaeologists and scientists have used sonar scans, seabed sampling, and digital reconstructions to piece together what life was like in...