Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered"
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IBM made one of the best M2 .50 BMG machine guns I ever fired!
I'm literally not joking. In that era, IBM did calculating machines, the old crank calculators you see in ancient B&W movies. So, having the capability to cast thick sheet metal, IBM did have the contract for the outer cast casing of the M2 .50 BMG machine gun, aka Ma Deuce.
Welcome to history! :)
Many of those guns, albeit modified, are still in service!
Singer Sewing Machine Company also made many, fired a few of those as well.
And in basic training, back in early 1982, I handled handguards of an original M16, modded to A1 model, with original Mattel handgrips and still had the open front, tri-slot flash suppressor.
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In those days, one paid to be commissioned in the British military forces. US forces commissioned directly early on, but began to add educational requirements for one to be commissioned.
Although, WWII did kind of knock that into a cocked hat with battlefield commissions and one of my uncles was offered a direct commission had he remained in the Army, which he declined.
Still, you'd have had to pay for your own uniforms and that swill you ate in the chow hole would be paid for by you as well.
Something I frequently reminded my commissioned officers of when our cooks yet again outdid their infamous best, "Well Sir, they pay me to eat this shit, alas, you get to pay for that privilege".
Yeah, the reply, regardless of rank was predictable.
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I've been through the Wyoming Valley and frankly, never even realized it.
Which makes it my kind of place. Noteworthy places, well, look at Philadelphia. Need I say more?*
*I was born in Philly, raised in Philly, then Delaware County. We boo our own teams, we throw rocks at people we *like*. People we don't like, well, we don't talk about that.
Although, my company is sponsoring a contest. First prize is a week in Philadelphia. Second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia.
Thank you, W.C. Fields.
But then, it's easy to pick on Pennsylvania's only first class city. Why pick on Pittsburgh when Philly's lower hanging fruit?
I'd insult Dauphin county, but containing Harrisburg, my current residence, that's insult enough.
Did I miss anybody? :P
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@ronfullerton3162 it's a standing family joke, not only do I have a green thumb, but it's likely that were anyone to plant a pebble, it'd grow in soil that I prepared into a boulder.
In the Persian gulf, I moved into a villa that had a nice large garden. Well, it would, were it not just a hole in the ground with a curb in place to contain the hole - I mean garden.
Got local "soil" from the livestock market, mostly with sheep, goat and camel droppings heavily present. Mixed in peat moss and cat litter until it became a real soil, even if the "sand" was fairly high in calcium carbonate. Despite the insane desert sun, that garden looked like the garden of eden!
I also learned then, never, ever, ever put basil and mint where pollinators can find both at once or, being closely related, you'll get a mint flavored basil or vice versa. Made for an interesting spice with mutton, with injected tomato sauce to cut the gamey taste out (acids marinade, even while cooking and remove any gamey flavors from meat).
The watermelon grew near the pool, watered a bit more by the splashes from the pool, the cucumbers near the wall, so that the concrete blocks and mortar would hold and slowly release the moisture into the soil.
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PoliceManHat nope, both were precisely the same, which is why both sites looked precisely the same.
After all, every Empire State Building construction worker saw double images on holiday weekends or something! ;)
Endoskeleton and exoskeleton are the same too, after all, PoliceManHat's old lady has bony tits or something.
Yeah, that shit's gotten seriously old, way back in 2001. Especially with anyone who's worked with explosive demolitions. Listen to the bozo brigade, molten iron is antigravity and goes sideways or even up.
No, only fucks go up, hence, fuck up. :P
I'll not even go into high octane rating fuels burn colder than low octane fuels, like Jet-A kerosene, vs 130 octane antique bomber fuel.
Low octane brains produce low octane flashes in the pan notions.
I'll not even go into how leaky our government is, as to juicy classified events...Well, save the mythical event, which literally would require at least 10k participants, none of whom ever talked...
Maybe give them a beanie with a propeller to go away?
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One critical advance in first aid being the reintroduction of the tourniquet. Initially, service members were trained that the use of a tourniquet doomed the limb it was utilized on, thus its use should be avoided in favor of pressure dressings. One new lieutenant, a physician just out of residency, mentioned how orthopedic surgeons use tourniquets for the better part of a day during surgeries and obviously don't lose the limb, so WTH were we training people in? Needless to say, that swiftly changed policies and procedures.
Then, we moved into the 20th century and put coolers with blood on the MEDEVAC flights. Another odd hint needed to be made, blood replaces blood better than salt water replaces blood, what with all of that necessary red stuff inside of the blood, clotting factors, proteins, etc.
Next thing you knew, we got nearly into the 21st century!
For a chuckle, for some specific injuries, we still use leeches for the only effective treatment and maggot debridement of really stubborn wounds has been reintroduced. Sometimes, old is the new new.
And sometimes, new treatments are ignored, like when we flew a specialist team from Germany to train treatment staff in treating injuries from RPG's striking the FM-200 fire extinguishing system on the mine resistant vehicles, causing hydrogen fluoride inhalation injuries and death. The treatment was highly successful, with a powdered inhalation agent administered on scene before evacuation to limit injury. Said entire protocol was rejected by the medical command in Afghanistan. With predictable results in deceased service members. I'm sure that Colonel got promoted...
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@timmoles9259 because, 200 MPH bomber, much lighter than a jumbo jet flying 400 - 500 MPH carrying kerosene are precisely the same, exact thing.
After all, throw a feather at you and an anvil, both will go clean through you, right?
Oh, hint, the higher the octane rating, the cooler the flame is.
Nope, it was thermite or thermate, to listen to the moron militia, antigravity iron or other heavy metal burning went sideways, rather than down, precisely as a brick dropped goes up every time on days ending in Z.
Or some other fucktard notion.
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There were a number of personnel from the Manhattan Project that had detectable amounts of plutonium in their urine for the remainder of their lives, amazingly, dying largely of old age.
There's another lost warhead off the coast at Cape May, NJ.
When the explosives detonated in Spain, the tamper should've also been burned and ejected, it's made of depleted uranium and is the final fission stage, right after the fusion stage liberates tons of neutrons, providing the majority of the actual yield of the device.
The tamper being replaced with aluminum (or at one point, lead), sacrificing explosive yield in favor of a blast of neutrons, aka a neutron bomb.
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