Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Dec 18, 1950: Pres. Truman authorized the establishment of a 680-square-mile portion of the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range as the Nevada Proving Ground, which later grew larger and was renamed the Nevada Test Site in 1955 and then renamed again in 2010 as Nevada National Security Site.



The first test, shot ABLE as part of Operation Ranger happening just 45 days later on January 27, 1951. Shot ABLE was a tiny nuke cracker of only 1 kt airdropped by a B-50 Superfortress strategic bomber from the 4925th Special Weapons Group known as "The Megaton Blasters" assigned to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, which detonated at 1,060 feet above ground.


ATOMIC TELEPHONE (1951) by the Spirit of Memphis Quartet






Dec 18, 1958: Project SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), the world's first communications satellite, is launched aboard an Atlas 10-B rocket as a response to the Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 satellites. It carried messages on a tape recorder which was used at one point to carry a Christmas greeting from President Eisenhower. The satellite was popularly dubbed "The Talking Atlas" as well as "Chatterbox". The performance was nominal with experiment operation for 12 days, planned orbit lifetime 20 days, and burned up in space after 34 days.


The SCORE communications package was designed and built by Kenneth Masterman-Smith, a military communication research engineer, along with other personnel with the U.S. Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory (SRDL) at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

According to an official history of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), SCORE was originally programmed to broadcast a voice message from Army Secretary Wilber M. Brucker. When the President learned this fact, hours before lift-off, he said he would like to provide the message. His tape-recording was hand-carried to Cape Canaveral, but by then the payload was locked and ready for launch. The ARPA program director decided to launch with the Army message, then erase it while in space, and upload the President's message to replace it. This effort was successful, and accordingly SCORE's transmitted message from space to Earth was as follows:


The Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1958–1974, Barber Associates, December 1975, pages 126-127. If you want to know the juicy details about ARPA before the name change to DARPA, this is the doc to read.

The broadcast signal for Eisenhower's greeting was fairly weak, and only very sensitive radio receivers were able to detect it. Most Americans heard the message as it was rebroadcast on commercial news programs.



Dec 18, 1958: Christmas greeting from President Eisenhower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NymfnnK4dyE



Dec 18: 1958: NATO Christmas Spirit... "NATO foreign ministers affirmed today their manifest will to use nuclear retaliatory forces to repel aggression."




Dec 18, 1975: Barry Lyndon, a new Stanley Kubrick epic 3-hour historical film, premieres in theaters. An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's aristocratic position in 18th-century England. The filming of the movie ran over-schedule and way over budget.  Warner Bros. would only finance this movie on the condition that Kubrick cast a Top 10 box-office star in the lead. Ryan O'Neal was the number two box-office star of 1973, topped only by Clint Eastwood.


At one point the IRA threatened Kubrick’s life because he was featuring English soldiers and was forced to flee Ireland. Consequently, several scenes were dropped. The lack of financial success at the time factored into Stanley Kubrick's decision to make The Shining (1980).

Leon Vitali, who played the older Lord Bullingdon, went on to become Stanley Kubrick's personal assistant and would remain in that role until Kubrick's death.




If you can eat an entire nuclear warhead at the Pantex plant, it is free. Part of the big Texan initiative but if you can’t then you get sent to a hole in Nevada run by Lawrence Livermore where they’ll make you into a mothman so choose wisely.




Peter Arnett, a New Zealand-born American journalist has died at 91. He was known for his coverage of the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars. He was awarded the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for his work in Vietnam from 1962 to 1965, mostly reporting for the Associated Press. In March 1997, he interviewed Osama bin Laden.

Arnett: "What are your future plans?"

Bin Ladin: "You'll see them and hear about them in the media, God willing."



AP News

Peter Arnett at CNN Broadcasts the First Live Television Coverage of War

CNN's Operation Desert Storm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn8mfg_oEz4

CNN See how the Gulf War began: 'The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYURE58xBPE

Anyone remember that CNN clown reporter Charles Jaco? You can watch the takes here: