The Sentinel Man 🚀

Arthur C Clarke's 3rd Law - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[Today In History @historigins]

A brand-new 1941 tractor, once chained to the USS Hornet, which sank in 1942, now rests permanently on the ocean floor at 17,500 ft (5,300 m) deep.

[Aviation @xAviation]

A 747 landing at Kai Tak Airport, 1988 flying this low over the city was normal.

[Aviation Archive - Tim Farmer @aviationarchive]

Ok, I did not know that the Space Shuttle Columbia used modified Lockheed SR-71 ejection seats for the commander and pilot in its early Approach/Landing Tests and STS-1 to STS-4. They were removed later as they couldn't fit bigger crews and proved useless during most of ascent👀

[Classic Horror Films @HorrorHammer1]

Happy 100th Birthday to Mel Brooks! 🥳

[Aviation @xAviation]

Good ol’ Hercules handling business!

📹: tashabrao

[Karen Tennents girl 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 💙 @karen_flynn]

🤔

[VisionaryVoid @VisionaryVoid]

The Fake Cities Britain Built to Be Bombed Instead

After the Luftwaffe obliterated Coventry on the night of November 14, 1940, killing 568 people and flattening the city center, British engineer Colonel John Turner had one mandate: make sure it never happened again.

His answer was to build fake Coventrys. Starting in 1940, Turner's team constructed "Starfish" sites across Britain's countryside, elaborate decoy installations positioned four miles outside real cities. Creosote-and-water fires simulated incendiary bombs. Diesel tanks atop 20-foot towers reproduced burning factories. Strings of dim bulbs, powered by underground generators, mimicked the blacked-out streets of a British city. The hardware was designed by film technicians borrowed from Shepperton Studios.

The mechanics: German pathfinder planes marked a real city with flares, then the main bomber wave followed minutes behind. The moment those flares dropped, the Starfish crew lit their fires, so that the second wave would see what looked like a city already burning and drop their loads on the field instead.

The people running these systems sat in brick-and-concrete bunkers in the middle of empty farmland, watching German planes overhead, deliberately trying to attract bombs onto themselves.
At Uphill in Somerset, the electrics failed mid-raid. One operator crawled out of his bunker on his hands and knees and lit the fires manually, in the open, under an active raid, until the bombers redirected. He was awarded a gallantry medal. By 1945, there were 237 Starfish sites protecting 81 cities, towns, and factories. Official records counted 730 bombing raids diverted. An estimated 968 tons of German ordnance fell on empty English fields.

Their job was to sit in the dark and hope the bombs found them. Success felt exactly like failure.

[Johnny Midnight ⚡️ @its_The_Dr]

😂🤣😂🤣 British Comedy.

[The Emilia Show @Latenitemusic1]

Red Dwarf

Auto Destruct Sequence initiated

[The Emilia Show @Latenitemusic1]

Um Bongo Advert - 1984

[The Emilia Show @Latenitemusic1]

Fruit & Nut Advert with Frank Muir - 1975

[The Sentinel Man 🚀 @Sentinel2001]

@Thankyyi St Mirren

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Full duration single-engine static fire test of Starship

[EuroFoot @eurofootcom]

🇳🇱🪄 38 years ago today, Marco van Basten scored that ICONIC volley in the EURO '88 final for Netherlands. 😍

[Ross Muir @Rossmuir_Art]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Physics In History @PhysInHistory]

First photograph of Earth from space, by V-2 rocket taken on 24 October 1946. ✍️

[Shutts 🇲🇽 🇨🇼 🇺🇾 🇳🇴 @Shuttsapalooza]

By far my favourite Scotland vs Brazil story is the referee saying “Good luck, may the best team win” to both captains before the game in 1982 and Graeme Souness replying “I fucking hope not”