by Gordon | Mar 21, 2013 | Alamein (battles)
The British position in Egypt was at its most perilous during the final days of June, 1942. On the 21st, Rommel captured Tobruk and drove the British out of Libya. On the 28th, he outflanked the British defences at Mersa Matrouh. By the 30th, he had arrived at the...
by Gordon | Mar 7, 2013 | Solar system
This year, in the early morning of 15th February, an asteroid, 20 metre across with a mass of 11,000 tonnes, exploded in an airburst 23 km above the southern Urals just 40 kilometres from Chelyabinsk, a city of 3.5 million people. For 5 seconds the explosion flared up...
by Gordon | Feb 21, 2013 | Alamein (battles)
The July battles had finally brought a stop to Rommel’s advance and left him with his forces depleted and his supply lines overstretched. The port of Alexandria was only 100 miles away but beyond his grasp. Tripoli was behind him but further away than Berlin from...
by Gordon | Feb 9, 2013 | Alamein (battles)
Throughout 1941 and 1942, the North African campaign had been characterised by opposing armies manoeuvring across vast swathes of territory, each trying to outwit the other, more like a naval campaign than a land battle, the aim being to seek out and destroy the enemy...
by Gordon | Jan 31, 2013 | Culture and astronomy
The blue skinned race of aliens that fought for their survival in the film “Avatar” lived on a moon of the gas giant Polyphemus that orbited α-Centauri A, one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Well, in October 2012, using data from the 3.6 m telescope at La...
