Florida’s Terror Birds

Most people today know that modern birds are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs, and survived the great mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period that killed off all the non-avian dinos. But few people know that, for a brief time in what is now the Americas, after the dinosaurs were wiped out, it was birds that assumed their position as super-predators at the top of the food chain.

Titanis skeleton at the Florida Museum of Natural History

Icons of Aviation History: MiG-17

Outwardly, the MiG-17 looks like a slightly larger MiG-15. But in reality it was a completely different aircraft.

MiG-17A on display at the Museum of the Mighty 8th Air Force in Savannah GA

Japanese Type A Midget Submarine

The Japanese Type A midget submarine on display in Groton CT is one of only four left in the world.

Midget submarine on display

Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire

Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire was a hub for Strategic Air Command Nuclear bombers during the Cold War. Today it is part of a national wildlife refuge, and some remnants of the former base can still be seen there.

Front gate of the abandoned air base

Florida Bushcraft Arrows

Like Native American tribes everywhere, the people who lived in Tampa Bay before European contact (the Tocobaga) had to meet all their needs from locally-available natural materials.

Icons of Aviation History: The A-1 Skyraider

Intended as a World War Two carrier bomber, the Skyraider was introduced too late to see action in the Pacific.

A-1 Skyraider on display at the Pensacola Naval Air Museum

A Shameless Plug

As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on.

Some of these are now available:

The Moon Buggy

The Lunar Roving Vehicle, or “moon buggy”, was used in several Apollo missions to the Moon.

Moon Buggy on display at Marshall Space Flight Center, AL

The Davy Crockett Nuclear Weapon

The Davy Crockett recoilless rifle was the smallest nuclear weapon ever deployed by the US.

Davy Crockett warhead on exhibit at the National Museum of Atomic Testing in Las Vegas. My hand shows the scale.

Icons of Aviation History: X-85 Goblin

The tiny little Goblin fighter was intended to be carried inside a bomb bay.

XF-85 Goblin “parasite fighter” on display at the SAC Aerospace Museum

Florida Bushcraft: Bone and Antler Tools

Like Native American tribes everywhere, the people who lived in Tampa Bay before European contact (the Tocobaga) had to meet all their needs from locally-available natural materials.

Because Florida is mostly sand and lacks widespread deposits of stone like chert or flint that are useful for toolmaking, the Tocobaga made many of their everyday tools and implements from alternative materials like bone or shell.

Some alternative materials for tools: antler, oyster shells, and bone

The MX Missile

The Peacekeeper nuclear missile, more commonly known by its pre-deployment designation MX (for “Missile Experimental”), provoked a bitter controversy during the Reagan Administration.

MX Peacekeeper MIRV warhead, at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton. Each cone carries a separate nuclear weapon.

The Attempted Assassination of Richard Nixon

In 1974, a man tried to kill President Richard Nixon by hijacking an airliner and crashing it into the White House.

Byck’s target

The Hawaiian Game of Lu-Lu

Lu-Lu, or Hawaiian Dice, was an ancient Polynesian gambling game.

Hawaiian dice

Chicago’s “Owl Man”

Chicago is known as the “Windy City”. As any resident will tell you, the reference comes from a witticism aimed at the long-winded oratory coming from the city’s often-corrupt politicians, not from the weather. But in the year of 2017, according to some reports, a mysterious creature called the “Chicago Owlman” (or sometimes the “Chicago Mothman”—and some wags called it “Batman”) was using the city’s winds in quite a different way.