Podcast Transcript In 1914, Erwin “Cannon Ball” Baker crossed the United States on a motorcycle in 11 and a half days. Fifty-seven years later, a writer and editor for Car and Driver magazine set out to honor his trip by driving from Manhattan to Los Angels. Ever since, people have been trying to replicate their …
Podcast Transcript Ancient astronomers from almost every culture knew of seven things in the sky that moved. the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. The seventh and slowest moving of those was the one named after the Roman god of time: Saturn. For centuries Saturn was a dot in the sky. Then when …
Podcast Transcript The United States and Canada are like two siblings. They live next to each other, have the same parents, and are a lot alike. However, the way they both grew up was very different. The United States achieved its independence through a revolution. The Canadians, however, didn’t join the American Revolution even though …
Podcast Transcript From July 1 through the 3rd, 1863, the largest battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere took place in southern Pennsylvania. After the battle, tens of thousands of dead were laid to rest, and an official national cemetery was established to honor the war dead. The cemetery was consecrated on November 19, …
Podcast Transcript If you go through the history of ancient Rome, you will find the stories of many important men. What you won’t find are the tales of many great women. Women in Roman history are given little to no mention. There is one major exception to this, however: Livia Drusilla. Learn more about the …
Podcast Transcript Once humans managed to put artificial satellites into orbit, the next question was, “what can we do with this?” One of the first applications of satellites, and still one of the biggest uses still today, has been for communications. Using satellites for communications requires cutting-edge technologies in space flight, solar power, radio engineering, …
Podcast Transcript Introduced in 1968, the Boeing 747 totally revolutionized commercial air transportation. It was more than twice the size of the next closest passenger plane, and it brought air travel to a much wider audience. Not only did it help democratize air travel, but the plane’s unique features also added a new element of …
Podcast Transcript At the end of the second world war, a Captain in the United States Navy had a radical idea about the future of the American fleet. He felt that the largest American naval vessels, especially submarines, could be powered by the newly discovered energy from nuclear fission. His ideas, and his personality, radically …
Podcast Transcript One of the most important inventions of early humanity was the compass. The compass has aided human navigation around the Earth for centuries. Despite being a critical technology in the development of transportation, it actually took centuries between the discovery of its underlying principles and its eventual use as a practical tool for …