Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean. Several groups claim that the military base on Diego Garcia has been used by the U.S. government for transport of prisoners involved in the controversial extraordinary rendition program.
Muzil is a 180 hectares big location which still has the status of the military area closed to citizens. Army has left this base two years ago but it remained closed. Government and the municipality intend to privatize the area and official plans had been made for it to become an exclusive golf resort thus closing the territory for wider public.
Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known by his nom de guerre General Butt Naked, was originally a tribal priest before becoming a Liberian warlord-turned-preacher. He was a fiercely violent and eccentric leader on the side of Roosevelt Johnson in the First Liberian Civil War in the first half of the 1990s. At age 11, he claims, he was initiated as a tribal priest and participated in his first human sacrifice. During the course of the three day ritual that followed, Blahyi says that he had a vision in which he was told by the Devil that he would become a great warrior and that he should continue to practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power. Blahyi has said he led his troops naked except for shoes and a gun. Apparently, he believed that his nakedness was a source of protection from bullets.
Greek fire was an incendiary weapon used by the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines typically used it in naval battles to great effect as it could continue burning even under water.
Simo Häyhä, nicknamed “White Death” by the Red Army, was a Finnish sharpshooter. Using a standard iron-sighted, bolt action rifle in the Winter War, he has the highest recorded number (505) of confirmed kills in any major war.
Founded in Dublin, Ireland, in 1735, John Rigby & Co. has forged an enduring history of manufacturing excellence and design innovation that is unequalled in the annals of rifle and shotgun manufacturing.
The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a single-seat, twin-engine stealth ground-attack aircraft. The F-117 was born after combat experience in the Vietnam War when increasingly sophisticated Soviet surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) downed heavy bombers. It was a black project, an ultra-secret program for much of its life, until the late 1980s. The project began in 1975 with a model called the “Hopeless Diamond”(a wordplay on the Hope Diamond due to its appearance).
Since 1976, it has held the world record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft
Today Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast is known as an internationally renowned nature reserve, but its history is shrouded in secrecy and tales of military testing.
Camp Century was a nuclear powered research center built by the Army Corps of Engineers under the icy surface of Greenland. It was occupied from 1959 to 1966 under the auspices of the US Army Polar Research and Development Center. Its climatically hostile environment was located a mere 800 miles from the North Pole.
A railway gun is a large artillery piece, often surplus naval ordnance, mounted on, transported by and fired from a specially-designed railway wagon. Many countries have built railway guns, but the best known are the large Krupp-built pieces used by Germany in World War I and World War II.
Rafael Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. His 30 years in power, to Dominicans known as the Trujillo Era (Spanish: La Era de Trujillo), is considered one of the bloodiest ever in the Americas, as well as a time of a classic personality cult, when monuments to Trujillo were in abundance. It has been estimated that Trujillo’s rule was responsible for the death of more than 50,000 people. At the suggestion of Mario Fermín Cabral, Congress voted overwhelmingly in 1936 to rename the capital from Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo. The province of San Cristobal was created as “Trujillo,” and the nation’s highest peak, Pico Duarte, was renamed in his honor. Statues of “El Jefe” were mass-produced and erected across the Republic, and bridges and public buildings were named in his honor. The nation’s newspapers now had praise for Trujillo as part of the front page, and license plates included the slogan “Viva Trujillo!” An electric sign was erected in Ciudad Trujillo so that “Dios y Trujillo” could be seen at night as well as in the day. Eventually, even churches were required to post the slogan, “Dios en cielo, Trujillo en tierra” (God in Heaven, Trujillo on Earth). Trujillo was recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize by his admirers, but the committee declined the suggestion. When he received (or summoned) a visitor, his four bodyguards would have submachine guns trained upon the “guest” during the meeting.
The speed of the VA-111 far exceeds that of any standard torpedo currently fielded by NATO. This speed is a result of supercavitation: the torpedo is, in effect, flying in a gas bubble created by outward deflection of water by its specially shaped nose cone and the expansion of gases from its engine. By keeping water from coming into contact with the surface of the body of the torpedo, drag is significantly reduced, allowing extremely high speeds. In effect, the Shkval is an underwater missile.
Wake Island is a coral atoll having a coastline of 12 miles (19 km) in the North Pacific Ocean. Access to the island is restricted, and all current activities on the island are managed by the United States Air Force. There is also a missile facility operated by the United States Army.
In the 1940s, the Polish army bought a bear cub from a small boy, who looked after it by feeding it condensed vodka bottle. As time went on, Wojtek the bear became a mascot of, and officially a member of, the Polish Army. Wojtek died in 1963, presumably from his diet which included honey, syrup, beer and cigarettes.
The Zubr class is a class of air-cushioned landing craft of Russian and Ukrainian design. This class of military hovercraft is currently the world’s largest hovercraft. There are currently nine ships in active service in the world.