The TASS news agency is reporting comments made today by Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov about the 19th-century armored gunboat The Strelets. The Strelets was a 200ft (61m) Uragan class, armoured monitor. She joined the Baltic Fleet in 1865, and was taken out of active...
The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa will conclude its commemoration of the First World War Centenary with a special exhibition opening today. Victory 1918 – The Last 100 Days, explores the critical role the Canadian Corps played in the series of battles that led to the Allied...
The Stena Jutlandica, which runs between Frederikshavn and Gothenburg¹, has now completed its first month of operation as a battery hybrid vessel, using both generators and batteries to power the ship’s electrical propulsion. Sten’s battery project is being trialled in steps so that the technology can be...
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge is a massive piece of civil engineering comprising a 29.6 kilometre bridge and tunnel crossing of the Pearl River Delta in Southern China. After eight years of construction, the bridge is finally due to open on Tuesday 23rd October, and it is expected...
The Chinese city of Chengdu has announced plans to replace street lighting with the ‘light of a silvery moon’¹ reflected down from a satellite with a large mirror. According to People’s Daily Online, the Chairman of the Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co,...
When the batteries in your flashlight or wireless mouse run out, most people just replace them and throw the old ones in the bin¹, but what do you do with a battery powering a car? This week EDF Energy and Nissan signed an agreement to work together...
West of Pointe du Hoc on the Calvados coast, Maisy Battery is a WW2 German coastal defence gun battery which housed 350 men in the run up to D-Day and had howitzers trained on both Omaha Beach to the east and Utah to the west. Begun in...
Barbados is home to many obvious things; palm trees, beaches, rum and Bajan cuisine, but nobody expects a Cold War relic like the massive HARP space gun. Nor are they likely to stumble across it accidentally. You have to go and find it. The High Altitude Research...
I’d always been aware of the Messerschmitt 410 but had ‘parked’ it in my mind as a mostly developmental aircraft with low numbers going into production for specialised roles, and that’s the way I still thought of it when I found this one a few years ago...
Stena Line is running a pilot study using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology on board its ferries in a bid to reduce fuel consumption. Working with Hitachi, an AI-model is being developed that will help predict the most fuel-efficient way to operate a certain vessel on a specific...
Hardly a month seems to go by without another story of how the preservation of a battlefield site, usually in the USA or UK, is threatened by developers. In Scotland over recent months we’ve seen moves to build houses on part of Culloden¹, to accommodate a road...
Canadian expedition cruise company, One Ocean Expeditions (OOE) in collaboration with The Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) has helped to find the Nova Zembla, a Scottish whaling ship that was wrecked near Buchan Gulf off the coast of Baffin Island in 1902. Dr. Matthew Ayre and Dr....
The Museum of Industry and Railways in Silesia will be hosting its annual ‘Steam Gala’ next week. This will be the 7th Steam Gala featuring historic steam engines from Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. Last year over 15,000 visitors came to see, touch and experience these...
The Blockhaus at Eperlecques is a huge concrete bunker built by the Germans in WW2 as part of its ‘Vengeance’ weapons programme (V1 flying bomb, V2 rocket, and V3 supergun). Now it is a privately owned museum, and a protected building of national historic significance. On 22nd...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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