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Hall of fame section upload hove ke nai es site version wich?

Is it just me or in general - We Brown people complain too much?


- By complain - I dont mean complains in complaints in Forums... Its general stuff, every day stuff we do at our homes.. :hehe:


Jidda da marji hovve brown banda.. 24 ghainte rounda he rehda aa.. aa ho geya .. oh ho geya... And when brown kids/people are not in India... they complain the most - No kidding  :hehe: :hehe:

Most of the people in India believe that Major Dhyan Chand has been India’s most brilliant hockey player ever, but he was the product of nineteen twenties, when Olympic competition was not very much tough. But Balbir Singh is the product of Post World War II Olympics, when the Europeans started building up their sports and youth programs in right earnest and the Pakistanis started taking hockey very seriously. Thus India was made to struggle really hard to win an Olympic Gold Medal.



Read on the full article HERE

My Position - PJ VIP
Aukha.... :hehe: :hehe:

 

Terror Attack Kills 17, Wounds Scores in Mumbai

At least 21 killed, dozens "more than 100"injured in Mumbai blasts






 

CTV News.ca Staff
 
Updated: Wed. Jul. 13 2011 3:38 PM ET

India's home minister says terrorists were likely behind three explosions that rocked Mumbai, killing at least 21 people and leaving more than 100 injured.
 
The first blast erupted in the Jhaveri Bazaar at 6.54 p.m. local time, the second struck a minute later in a business district known as Opera House and the third hit the neighbourhood of Dadar less than 10 minutes later.
 
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the timing of the blasts suggests "this was a co-ordinated attack by terrorists." He added that Mumbai has been placed on high alert.
 
Reports from the scene described blood-covered bodies lying in the streets while survivors hugged and wept, while police questioned witnesses.

Police were scrambling to determine the cause and find those responsible, with bomb squad investigators searching vehicles for explosives amid charred remains of motorcycles, shattered storefronts and a demolished bus stop.

One eyewitness at Jhaveri Bazaar described two motorcycles exploding in flames and saw at least six bodies.

"People were shouting 'Help me, help me,"' the man told Headlines Today television.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the bombings and pleaded with residents of the country's financial capital "to remain calm and show a united face."
 
At least 141 people were injured in the attacks, which were the first on Mumbai since November 2008 when armed militants went on a rampage that left 166 dead.
 
Bhupinder Chaubay, a reporter in New Delhi with CNN's IBN Network, said the death toll could have been much higher since the explosions occurred in high-density areas.

"The only silver lining in this entire episode...is the fact this was some kind of a low intensity blast," he said.

Indian officials declined to speculate on who could be responsible for the attacks, and no one claimed responsibility immediately after the explosions.

Past attacks have been blamed on militants based in Pakistan. Indian officials have also charged that Pakistan's powerful spy agency helped carry out and fund previous attacks.
 
Part of the difficulty with determining who carried out the attacks is that there are "a plethora of terrorist groups in India," said security expert Alan Bell.

Whoever is responsible for the bombings likely learned from the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Bell told CTV News Channel, but it appears they had limited resources to work with.
 
"This is probably another group within in India that's trying to make a name for themselves," he said.
 
U.S. President Barack Obama condemned Thursday's bombings, saying in a statement that his country "will stand with the Indian people in times of trial, and we will offer support to India's efforts to bring the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice.
 
"I have no doubt that the India will overcome these deplorable terrorist attacks."
 
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she plans to visit the South Asian country as scheduled next week. Speaking to reporters in Washington, she said "it is more important than ever that we stand with India."

The explosions occurred when the affected neighbourhoods would have been packed with office workers and commuters heading home.

They come on the same day as the birthday of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, the only surviving attacker from the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.
 
During the three-day terrorist siege in 2008, 10 armed men targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre and a railway station.

With files from The Associated Press

Noone made a thread on the Fifa Women World Cup.  :




Alright this is the semifinal set up

France vs USA - Wednesday
Sweden Vs Japan - Wednesday




- Today quaterfinal was stunning... US down to 10 player in 65 as one of the player was RED carded - Brazil gets a penalty - They score. End of regulation 1-1 ...
Extra time ahead...  first min Martha (brazil) scores. 2-1 brazil....
120 min of the Extra time.. US ... 10 player and scored to force the penalties... and in penalties Brazil is eliminated... a WORLD CLASS GAME.

History tends to hide the ufortunate and unmentionable facts relating to people that become heroic or famous.  Fortunately, it is usually possible to find the odd bit here and there – and that is what this list is about.  Below are ten people who are either famous or infamous with obscure or scandalous facts about them.  This is our ten little known (and often scandalous) facts about historic figures.






10 Adolf Hitler
 



Fact: Hitler was a tax evader


Recent research into papers relating to Hitler has uncovered the fact that when he became chancellor of Germany in 1934 he had evaded paying 405,500 million Reichsmarks in tax (6.3 million USD in today’s currency).  Fortunately for Hitler, he was forgiven his tax debts when he was elected. It is believed that he earned 1.2 million Reichsmarks for sales of Mein Kampf alone, and avoided paying 600,000 Reichsmarks in tax on it.  The official who forgave Hitler’s tax debt was “rewarded” with a 2,000 Reichsmarks per month tax free allowance (a huge amount considering teachers at the time were paid 4,800 per annum).




 


9 Winston Churchill





Fact: Churchill was racist


Sir Winston Churchill is so highly regarded for his skills as an orator and statesman that he was voted Britain’s greatest individual by the BBC in 2002.  There is no doubt that his speech writing is a class above virtually every other modern writer of English speeches, and we are all familiar with at least one or two of his famous quotations, but what many people don’t know is that he also had a dark side.  The best way to illustrate that is to let the man speak for himself:




“I do not admit… that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia… by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race… has come in and taken its place.” -Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937


I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes” – Writing as president of the Air Council.




First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life, and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them…In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their fathers…This worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation…has steadily growing” — Writing on ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 1920






8  Gandhi
 



Fact: Gandhi was a dirty old man


At the age of 36, whilst married, Gandhi decided to become celibate in order to achieve a state of enlightenment (through the Hindu religion).  As he got older, he became more and more fascinated with sex to the point that, second only to non-violence, it was the subject he most talked about.  In order to perfect his celibate state, Gandhi would sleep naked with young naked women.  One of the women was the 16 year old wife of his grand-nephew Kanu Gandhi.  When he wanted to share his bed with his 19 year old grandniece Manu Gandhi, he wrote to her father and told him that they were sharing a bed so that he could correct her sleeping posture.  When his stenographer R. P. Parasuram found him sleeping naked with Manu, he resigned in disgust. 

Oh Dear LORD... :hehe:


 
7 George Washington
 



Fact: Washington cleverly tricked congress into paying him obscene amounts of money


First of all, this is what elementary schools teach about Washington: “Later, in 1775, at age 43, Washington was appointed military advisor for New York, defending it from British attack. A few weeks later he was appointed Commander-and-Chief of the entire American army. He did not ask for this position, and did not even ask to be paid for it. [...] The most important reason George was asked to be president was that he was very honest, and people both trusted and admired him. He was the most trusted, admired, and respected man in the whole country.”




Unfortunately what they miss entirely is the fact that he turned down a salary of what would have amounted to a little over 1,000 per month, but said: “Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous employment, I do not wish to make any profit from it. I will keep an exact account of my expenses. Those I doubt not they will discharge, and that is all I desire.”




And then the shopping began:




- To cash paid for Sadlery, a Letter Case, Maps, Glasses, &c &c &c. for the use of my Command… $831.45
 
- To sundry Exp.’s paid by myself at different times and places… on the Retreat of the Army thro’ the Jerseys into Pennsylvania & while there… $3,776
 
- From September 1775 to March 1776, Washington spent over six thousand dollars on liquor




In eight years, by turning down a salary and taking an expense account, instead of being paid around $12,000, he was paid $449,261.51 in 1780 dollars (around $4,250,000.00 in today’s money).




Washington, being a clever man, tried the same ploy when he was elected President but he was turned down and given a set salary of $25,000 per year.  You can view scans of Washington’s expense account at the Library of Congress.




6 Martin Luther
 



Fact: Martin Luther was an anti-semite




Martin Luther, the famous Monk who started the protestant reformation, is often touted as a hero for standing up against excesses in the Catholic Church at the time, but what most people don’t know is that he was violently anti-Jewish and he made no secret of it.  In 1543, he wrote “On The Jews And Their Lies”, in which he recommends that Jews be deprived of money, civil rights, religious teaching, and education, and that they be forced to labor on the land, or else be expelled from Germany and possibly killed (sound like someone familiar from more recent times?) He referred to the Jews as a “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.” He said that Jews were “full of the devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine,” and the synagogue is an “incorrigible whore and an evil slut …” [Source]




He also put together an eight point plan to get rid of the Jews:




- “First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. …”
 
- “Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. …”
 
- “Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. …”
 
- “Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. …”
 
- “Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. …”
 
- “Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them. … Such money should now be used in … the following [way]… Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed [a certain amount]…”
 
- “Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow… For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.”
 
- “If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews’ blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country” and “we must drive them out like mad dogs.” [Source: Luther, On the Jews, 47:268-288, 292.]




 
 
         
 
5 Thomas Jefferson



Fact: Jefferson preached against whites having children with blacks, whilst doing that very thing and denying his offspring




Jefferson said “the amalgamation of whites with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of the excellence in the human character, can innocently consent.”  Whilst preaching this rubbish, he had several children with his slave Sally Hemings who happened to be the illegitimate half-sister sister of his wife. While the rumours were around during their lifetime (which Jefferson implicitly denied), it was not until recent times that DNA testing proved that at least one of Hemings’ children was indeed fathered by Jefferson.  In a letter to Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith dated July 1, 1805, Jefferson also admitted to having tried to seduce his married neighbor Betsey Walker.








4 Albert Einstein







Fact: Einstein was a philanderer


Einstein is perhaps the greatest mind of the 20th century and he and his most famous formular E=MC^2 are known by virtually everyone.  Most people know he had a passion for the violin and that he started out life as a clerk in a patent office; but what most people don’t know, is that he cheated on both of his wives repeatedly.  After splitting up with his first wife (because of his infidelity), he married his cousin Elsa.  Shortly after that he had an affair with his secretary Betty Neumann.  In a new volume of letters held by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Einstein described about six women with whom he spent time and from whom he received gifts while being married to Elsa. [Source]






3 Elvis Presley
 



Fact: Elvis was unhealthily obsessed with James Dean


Elvis exhibited many compulsive/obsessive qualities throughout his life which both helped and hindered his personal and public life. One of the areas that Elvis wanted to excel in was acting. He wanted to be the next James Dean and as a result was obsessed with Dean. He anguished over the fact that the roles he was given in movies were not (in his mind) substantial. Elvis knew all the words to “Rebel Without A Cause” that featured James Dean and Natalie Wood. Elvis sought out Wood because of her connection to James Dean. That relationship ended when Natalie came to visit Graceland and Elvis’ mother Gladys (who was domineering and jealous) drove Natalie away. Natalie confided to her sister Lana that “he can sing, but he can’t do much else”. The obsession with Dean led Elvis to intentionally befriend Nick Adams – a very close friend of Dean’s before he died and since his death rumors abound that Adams had a sexual relationship with both Dean and Elvis.












2 Andrew Johnson
 



Fact: Vice-President Andrew Johnson took his presidential oath whilst completely drunk


Andrew Johnson was the Vice-President during Lincoln’s reign.  He had a strong disliking for the aristocracy whom he thought were there by the labor of the poor such as his own family. “Glassy-eyed and smelling of whiskey, he reminded Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, and pretty much everyone within hearing distance that they owed their positions to “plebeians” such as himself, then kissed the Bible and staggered away”.  In response, the New York Times said “To think that one frail life stands between this insolent, clownish creature and the presidency! May God bless and spare Abraham Lincoln!”  History shows us that God didn’t spare Lincoln and Johnson eventually became president. His presidency was such a disaster that congress tried to impeach him twice – successfully on the second attempt!  He avoided being fired by just one vote.








1 Pope Pius IX
 
 







Fact: Pope Pius IX Kidnapped a Jewish child and had him raised as a Catholic


On the evening of 23 June 1858, in Bologna, then part of the Papal States, police arrived at the home of a Jewish couple, Salomone (“Momolo”) and Marianna Padovani Mortara, to seize one of their eight children, six-year-old Edgardo, and transport him to Rome to be raised as a ward of the state. The police had orders from Holy Office authorities in Rome, authorized by Pope Pius IX. Church officials had been told that a 14-year-old Catholic servant girl of the Mortaras, Anna Morisi, had baptized Edgardo while he was ill because she feared that he would otherwise die and go to Hell. Acorrding to Catholic Church doctrine, Edgardo’s baptism, even if illegal under canon law, was valid and made him a Christian. Under the canon law, non-Christians could not raise a Christian child, even their own.  Edgardo was taken to a house for Catholic converts in Rome, maintained at state expense. His parents were not allowed to see him for several weeks, and then not alone. Pius IX took a personal interest in the case, and all appeals to the Church were rebuffed. Church authorities told the Mortaras that they could have Edgardo back if they abandoned their faith and converted to Catholicism, but they refused.




Despite international protests (including those from the United States government), Pope Pius IX did not relinquish Edgardo who eventually went on to become a priest.  He was also a vehement supporter of the Vatican taking the first steps towards making Pius IX a saint.  You can read his testimony here and you can see the incorrupt corpse of Blessed Pius IX here (his face has a protective mask of silver on which is removed for veneration).

Apde subbe, ilake da, desh da.. Jhanda ethe pavvo ji






Ontario, Canada

10  Project Nutmeg


Project Nutmeg has historical significance because it was the top-secret project that gave birth to the Nevada Test and Training Range. Prior to testing atomic devices on US soil, nuclear bombs were tested in the Pacific Ocean at what was called the Pacific Proving Grounds. While this afforded the US a remote (and huge) area to test secret atomic devices, the cost involved in sending men, materials and equipment half way around the world, was staggering. America felt it had to find someplace secure, yet within its borders that was reasonably close to where most atomic scientists were working at that time (such as Los Alamos, New Mexico). Project Nutmeg was authorized by the President to locate such an area. An ideal location was a region of desolate desert that had been a wildlife reservation. This area also had the benefit of already having a landing strip nearby, left over from military training exercises during WWII. The selected site in Nevada became 687 square miles of government-controlled land, and what we know today as the Nevada Test Site (of which Area 51 is the most well know, and most secret, parcel of land).
 
9 Project Aquiline

This project began sometime in the late 1960’s and involved some of the first remote controlled aircraft experiments that would later become the Predator drones that are operating in the Middle East, today. It was a six-foot remote controlled drone designed to look like an eagle or buzzard in flight. It carried a television camera in the nose, as well as sensors and electronic surveillance equipment.
The project began as an attempt to investigate a mysterious watercraft the Soviet Union had constructed and was spotted testing (by satellite reconnaissance) on the Caspian Sea (that they later nicknamed the Caspian Monster). The project remains classified today, but a British documentary uncovered what is thought to have been the target for the Aquiline drone – a Soviet hydrofoil called Ekranopian. The Aquiline drone was designed to track in on its target following established communication lines in foreign countries, and be launched from a submarine. The Aquiline drone was built and tested (it crash landed often) but the CIA eventually canceled the program.
 
8 Project Ornithopter and Insectothopter

Similar to the Aquiline project, this was another attempt by the CIA to mimic the animal kingdom in the development of remote controlled aircraft. Project Ornithopter involved a birdlike drone designed to blend in with nature by flapping its wings. Another even smaller drone was designed to look like a crow that would land on window ledges and photograph, through the window, what was going on inside the building. Project Insectothopter took the concept to an even smaller animal – a drone designed to look like a dragonfly. Insectothopter was a green drone that flapped wings powered by miniature gas engines.

Not satisfied with mimicking mother nature – the CIA also used actual animals to do surveillance, including pigeons with “pigeon-cams” attached to their necks. Unfortunately, the birds were tired out by the extra weight of the cameras and returned to the CIA base on foot – too tired to fly (the project was abandoned). Maybe the strangest project of all was Project Acoustic Kitty, which placed acoustic listening devices on household cats. That project was abandoned when the cats strayed too far off target searching for food, and one was run over by a car.
 
7 Project 57

This was a “safety test” conducted at the Nevada Test Site to simulate what would happen if an airplane carrying an atomic bomb crashed and released radioactive material into the environment. In this way, Project 57 would become America’s first “dirty bomb” experiment. Scientists theorized that the detonation of the high explosives surrounding a nuclear warhead (but that did not initiate a full chain reaction) would release plutonium into the environment. But they did not know for certain, nor did they know how much plutonium would be released, how far the plutonium would travel, etc. The military and CIA felt the test was needed because more and more American nuclear warheads were being carried by more and more aircraft. Sooner or later (and it would come sooner than anyone thought), an airplane accident was bound to happen when the aircraft was carrying live nuclear weapons.

A part of the test site called Area 13 was selected and workers began to set up thousands of “sticky pans”, steel pans sprayed with a sticky resin that would capture and hold plutonium particles released into the air by the explosion of the bomb. Mock cities were set up to determine what would happen if the explosion occurred in an urban area. Fourteen hundred blocks of asphalt streets were laid, and cars parked at various locations on the asphalt. Nine burros, 109 beagles, 10 sheep and 31 rats were placed in cages to measure the physical impact of the plutonium release. At 6:27 AM on April 24, 1957, the nuclear warhead was fired in such a way as to mimic a plane crash. When the radioactive dust settled, 895 square acres had been contaminated.

Plutonium is one of the most deadly substances known to man; one millionth of a gram of plutonium is lethal if it is inhaled. Plutonium remains deadly for 20,000 years. Scientists learned much about how plutonium acts by studying the effects on the test animals, but the actual data is still classified. They also found that the plutonium did not move far – it tended to settle on the top of the soil and stay there. After a year of study, Project 57 was shut down and the area never cleaned up. It was fenced off, the material (including the cars) were buried. That was it, or so the scientists thought, until the following year when another scientist authored a paper theorizing that earth worms passing through the contaminated area would move the plutonium with them, out of the restricted zone (as would birds which ate the worms and flew off with the radioactivity in them).
 
6 Dr Freezelove

Not a project really but a mission. On January 21, 1968, a fire started on board a B52G bomber during a secret mission over Greenland. Most of the crew bailed out and the aircraft smashed into the Greenland ice sheet. On impact, the high explosives in at least three of the atomic bombs on board exploded. This spread radioactive plutonium, tritium and uranium over a large area. The CIA and US military now had a real Project 57 on their hands. The fire melted the ice and at least one atomic bomb fell into North Star Bay and below the ice covered sea. Apparently the US tried to recover the bomb but was unsuccessful.

Even though project 57 had provided lots of data about what happens when a nuclear warhead explodes and spreads radioactive contamination over a wide area, the military and CIA still did not have a permanent emergency response unit dedicated, equipped and trained to respond to these dirty bomb like disasters. So an ad-hoc group of scientists and military people were put together and sent to Greenland for what would become the toughest dirty bomb clean up operation in history. With temperatures dropping to – 70 F and winds up to 100 mph, the conditions made it all but impossible for the men to clean up all of the radioactive contamination. Less than 50% of the radioactive material was recovered. The crew cleaned and froze for eight months and when they were done had cleaned up 10,500 tons of radioactive ice, snow and crash debris, which was flown to South Carolina for disposal. The crew would call themselves “Dr Freezelove”.
 
 
5 Operation Morning Light

This was another secret clean up of radioactive material but this time not American radioactive material – Russian. On September 18, 1977, the Soviet union launched Cosmos 954, a nuclear-powered spy satellite. The satellite was 46 feet long and weighed over 4 tons. Within months of its launch, the US knew the satellite was in trouble. In December of 1977, analysts determined Cosmos 954 was slipping out of orbit and unless the Soviet Union took action, it would plummet to Earth. They further determined that if the Soviets could not gain control of the satellite it would reenter the atmosphere and crash somewhere in North America. Pressed by the Carter Administration to divulge what exactly was on board the satellite, the Soviets admitted it carried 110 pounds of highly enriched uranium.

At the direction of the CIA – the decision was made by the US government not to inform the public. The CIA knew a satellite carrying a live nuclear reactor was going to crash somewhere in North America, but believed that “a sensationalized leak would disturb the public in unforeseeable ways”. So the public was kept in the dark.

Fortunately by 1978, the US had a trained team to respond to such emergencies – the Nuclear Emergency Search Team or NEST. The NEST team stood by, waiting to deploy the minute the satellite crashed (no one could predict exactly where it would land). Eventually, national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski did tell the public that America was experiencing “a space age difficulty”.

When Cosmos 954 crashed it struck across a large swath of ice in the Canadian tundra, 1000 miles north of Montana near the Great Slave Lake. The NEST team vans carrying the specialists were dispatched by C130 transport to the crash scene. The vans were disguised as bakery vans. As part of Operation Morning Light – the NEST team members searched over a fifty by eight hundred mile corridor for radioactive debris. After several months, 90 percent of the debris from Cosmos 954 was recovered. After the crash, officials calculated that if Cosmos 954 had made one more orbit of the Earth before it crashed, it would have landed somewhere over the populated American East Coast.
 
4 Kiwi

In the 1960’s, the US was on its way to the moon. Lesser known is the fact that, at area 25 (a sister top secret site to Area 51) of the Nevada Test Site, NASA and AEC scientists were working on something even more ambitious – a trip to Mars on a nuclear powered rocket. This was called project Nuclear Engine Rocket Vehicle Application or NERVA. Sixteen stories tall, the rocket ship, called Orion, would send 150 men to Mars in only 124 days. Orion would blast off from eight 250-foot-tall towers out of a cloud of radioactivity generated by a powerful nuclear reactor and engine aboard the ship. When running at full power the nuclear engine operated at 3,680 degrees Fahrenheit; it had to be cooled by liquid hydrogen gas. To test such a monster engine and reactor it had to be bolted down to the earth. When tested, the NERVA engine would shoot into the atmosphere a plume of hydrogen exhaust that had passed through a superheated uranium fission reactor.

The Los Alamos scientists then decided they wanted to know what would happen if scientists lost control of one of these nuclear engines, and it exploded. Thus was born Kiwi – a test to deliberately blow up one of these reactor/engines. On January 12, 1965, a nuclear rocket engine, codenamed Kiwi, was allowed to overheat. At a temperature of 4,000 degrees Centigrade, the reactor burst – shooting radioactive fuel skyward, glowing every color of the rainbow. The explosion blew a 100-pound chunk of radioactive fuel a quarter mile away. The radioactive plume rose to 2,600 feet, and the wind eventually carried the radioactive cloud west, passing over Los Angeles and out to sea. Scientists were airborne with instruments measuring the amount of radiation that was released into the atmosphere, but as of today that data remains classified.

Though this was passed off as another “safety test”, the release of so much radiation into the atmosphere possibly violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, that banned the airborne explosion of atomic bombs. But scientists now knew what they needed. If the rocket engine exploded on the launch pad – anyone standing within 100 feet would die almost immediately from radiation exposure. Anyone within 400 feet would receive a serious does of radiation that could be fatal, and anyone within 1000 feet would be overexposed to radiation.

Five months later, the real thing took place when another design of the nuclear rocket engine, code named Phoebus, did overheat. It exploded when one of the liquid hydrogen cooling tanks accidentally ran dry.
 
3 Project Kempster-Lacroix


In the development of America’s first stealth aircraft, dubbed “Oxcart”, all manner of new technology was created at Area 51 to make the aircraft invisible to radar, or at least as small a radar image as could be achieved. Materials that would absorb radar, space age design and electronic counter measures were all employed. Yet when President Kennedy gave Oxcart it’s mission to fly surveillance over Cuba to look for nuclear missiles being secretly installed there by the Soviet Union, the aircraft was still not quite ready. Researchers and scientists redoubled their efforts, but it was decided that Oxcart was still not stealthy enough. Some other way had to be found to make it all but invisible to enemy radar.

Project Kemper-Lacroix was one possible solution. At Area 51, scientists came up with the idea of attaching two giant electron guns, one on either side of the aircraft. The guns would shoot out a 25-foot wide ion cloud of highly charged particles in front of the aircraft (an aircraft which was already moving at speeds above Mach 3). The ion gas cloud would further absorb enemy radar waves coming up from the ground, providing the plane with more stealth.

Testing on scale models of the Oxcart aircraft showed the theory would work. Testing the electron beam guns on the full scale Oxcart aircraft, the researchers soon discovered the radiation given off by the guns would kill the pilot. So more engineers worked on developing an x-ray shield the pilots could wear to protect them from the radiation. But the first test pilot to wear the shield said it was too cumbersome to allow the pilots to fly the aircraft. Project Kemper-Lacroix was abandoned.
 
2 Project Teak and Orange

Perhaps the most wrong-headed, ill-advised and dangerous of all the atmospheric nuclear explosions by the US, Projects Teak and Orange were right out of a science fiction story about mad scientists and their crazy experiments leading to the destruction of the planet.

Teak and Orange were two massive, 3.8 megaton nuclear devices which would be detonated in the Earths upper atmosphere over the Johnston Atoll, 750 miles west of Hawaii. Teak was exploded at 50 miles and Orange was exploded at 28 miles in the upper atmosphere. The purpose of these tests was to give the US a measuring stick to use so as to determine if the Soviet Union did the same thing (exploded a nuclear device high in the Earths atmosphere). As if such an explosion would be difficult to detect? It seems mad now, looking back, that such tests were green-lighted, but that was the mood of the Cold War in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Test first, ask questions later.

How obvious is it to explode a 3.8 megaton nuclear device 28-50 miles up? The fireballs produced burned the retinas of any living thing within a 225 mile radius of the blast. Anything that had been looking at the sky when the blast occurred, without protective goggles was blinded. This included hundreds of monkeys and rabbits flown in aircraft nearby. The animals had their heads locked into devices that forced them to look at the blast. From Guam to Wake Island to Maui, the blue sky turned red, white and gray, creating an aura over a 2,100 mile section of the meridian. Radio communication throughout a huge part of the Pacific went dead. One of the weapons test engineers stated it chillingly – “we almost blew a hole in the ozone layer”. In fact, prior to the explosions scientists had warned that it would be possible to blast a hole in the Earths protective ozone layer, but Teak and Orange went ahead regardless.
 
1 Operation Argus


Not to be outdone, even higher high-altitude nuclear tests were conducted, these under Operation Argus. Nuclear tipped missiles were fired from ships for the first time as part of Argus. On August 27, 30 and September 6, 1950, nuclear warheads were shot into space by X-17 rockets from the deck of a US warship anchored off South Africa. These missiles went 300 miles out into space. The reason for these nuclear tests in outer space? One scientist theorized that exploding nuclear bombs in the Earths magnetic field (but above the Earth’s atmosphere) could create an electronic pulse that would render incoming Russian ICBM’s inoperative. Though a magnetic pulse was created by the nuclear explosions, the pulse was not large enough to have any affect on the ICBM’s. The project was another dangerous, and ultimately futile, experiment.
 
Bonus Sigma-Four


In July 1947, the US military and Army intelligence recovered something that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico. The initial report was it was a crashed flying saucer and the bodies that were recovered were alien. The military quickly changed this story to it being a weather balloon, and so began the mystery of what really happened at Roswell, and the most famous UFO incident in American history.

The author of “Area 51” postulates that it was what was really recovered at Roswell that led to the creation of Area 51, in 1951. Something so stunning that an entire secret area had to be established for it to be studied. Immediately after the crash, the recovered material and bodies were sent to Wright Field (later called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Ohio. The Atomic Energy Commission, under the direction of Vannevar Bush, then took over, created Area 51 and moved it all to Area 51, in Nevada.

According to the author, what the US really recovered at Roswell was not a spacecraft with aliens from outer space, but a Soviet aircraft with unknown and mysterious flying capabilities. The US knew the crashed aircraft was of Soviet, and not other-worldly, design because Russian language lettering had been found on the crashed remains. The aircraft had capabilities no one in Area 51, or anyone else, had ever seen. The aircraft could both hover and fly. No US technology at the time could do such a thing. Vannevar Bush ordered six selected engineers, working in total secrecy, to reverse engineer it and figure out how it worked. The project would be so secret, it would remain black forever, it would never be known outside a mere handful of people, such as Bush. The operation would have no name, it would simply go by a letter-number designation, S-4 or Sigma-Four. But there was more……..

The engineers also had to reverse engineer the bodies recovered from the crash scene. Not alien bodies, human bodies. But human bodies like none ever seen – mutated, surgically altered children. Two of the child-size aviators were still “alive”, but not conscious, in a comatose state. They were kept alive in life-support chambers at Area 51, so they could be studied. They were tiny even for children, and had very large heads compared to the rest of their bodies. They were estimated to be thirteen years old, and also had oversized eyes. The engineers who would experiment on these aviators were told it was possible Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele had operated on them (in exchange for a promise by Stalin to get his own laboratory in Russia, a promise Stalin did not keep) before he escaped Europe for South America.

But why would the Soviet Union send their cutting edge technology aircraft, with their biologically/surgically modified alien looking tiny human children, to the US? The author states the engineers were told Stalin believed the craft would land, and the children-aliens would emerge and send the US into a panic far worse than had occurred only a decade earlier, with the fake alien attack during the radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds”. Stalin believed the US populace would panic at the sight of “real aliens”.