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During the later months of the Kosovo War, Yugoslav forces discovered that they could modify obsolete Soviet radar systems to detect the modern stealth aircraft used by NATO in the conflict. On 27 March 1999, the 3rd Battalion of the 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade of the Army of Yugoslavia, commanded by Colonel Zoltán Dani, detected a United States Air Force F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter after its bomb bay doors were opened, revealing it to their radar.
Col. Dani ordered his forces to launch surface-to-air missiles, which detonated near the aircraft, causing it to spin out of control and crash into a nearby field. The pilot, USAF Lt. Col. Dale Zelko, was able to eject, and was later found and taken to safety by NATO search-and-rescue helicopters. Much of the wreckage is currently on display in the Museum of Aviation in Belgrade, though a number of critical components "disappeared," along with the fighter's engine outlet heat shield, which now resides in Zoltán Dani's garage. So far, Zelko's F-117 has been the only known stealth fighter to have ever been shot down by enemy forces.
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The F-117 stealth 'fighter' is actually not a fighter and was not fitted with any armament which would allow it to engage another aircraft in flight.
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Kirk Douglas is 100 years old today.
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John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American aviator, engineer, astronaut, and United States Senator from Ohio. In 1962 he became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling three times. Before joining NASA, he was a distinguished fighter pilot in both World War II and Korea, with five Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen clusters.
He was one of the "Mercury Seven" group of military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA to become America's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth person in space. Glenn received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990. Glenn was the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven after the death of Scott Carpenter.
Glenn resigned from NASA in 1964 and announced plans to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio. A member of the Democratic Party, he first won election to the Senate in 1974 where he served through January 3, 1999.
He retired from the Marine Corps in 1965, after twenty-three years in the military, with over fifteen medals and awards, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. In 1998, while still a sitting senator, he became the oldest person to fly in space, and the only one to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs as crew member of the Discovery space shuttle. He was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
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Fufu, the poodle formerly belonging to the new King of Thailand, was an Air Chief Marshal in the Thai Airforce.
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The F-117 stealth 'fighter' is actually not a fighter and was not fitted with any armament which would allow it to engage another aircraft in flight.
Indeed. The F-117's "F" designation was chosen by the development team, ostensibly because highly-skilled pilots were more likely to be interested in flying an aircraft designated "F" (fighter), as opposed to "B" (bomber) or "A" (attack aircraft).
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In the theatrical release of Mel Gibson's 2006 pseudo-historical film Apocalypto, during a scene in which protagonist Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) stumbles into a mass grave of sacrificial victims, a single frame of film shows a corpse dressed as the popular character "Waldo" (of the "Where's Waldo?/Where's Wally?" series of books) lying on a pile of bodies. The frame was removed for the DVD release, but can still be seen in bootleg versions of the theatrical cut.
In addition, a single frame of film in the movie's theatrical trailer shows a smiling, bearded Mel Gibson, dressed in a flannel shirt and smoking a cigarette, leaning on the shoulder of an extra portraying a Mayan worker.
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Prior to post-production and pickup shooting, George Lucas' 2005 film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith reportedly clocked in at over four hours in length. However, the decision was made to cut the film down by over an hour, which required excising many unfinished scenes, as well as removing the bulk of an entire subplot involving the formation of the Rebel Alliance.
Before the film's theatrical release, an additional 20 minutes of finished footage was cut, making the film a more manageable 140 minutes. Some of the deleted scenes were made available for the film's DVD release, but the majority (80-90 minutes' worth of film) are currently unavailable.
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Though George Lucas has received criticism in recent years due to a perceived over-reliance on computer-generated imagery, much of the climactic battle in 2005's Revenge Of The Sith (a lightsaber duel on the volcanic world of Mustafar) utilized real footage of a 2004 flank eruption of Italy's Mt. Etna that was digitally added to footage of the actors performing on a blue screen set. On Lucas' prompting, producer Rick McCallum took a film crew to Italy and filmed the eruption for a week in order to gather enough shots for the nearly ten-minute sequence.
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The Heisman Memorial Trophy (usually known colloquially as the Heisman Trophy or The Heisman), is awarded annually to the most outstanding player in college football in the United States whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and hard work. It is presented by the Heisman Trophy Trust in early December before the postseason bowl games.
The award was created by the Downtown Athletic Club in 1935 to recognize "the most valuable [college football] player east of the Mississippi." After the death in October 1936 of the Club's athletic director, John Heisman, the award was named in his honor and broadened to include players west of the Mississippi. Heisman had been active in college athletics as a football player; a head football, basketball, and baseball coach; and an athletic director. It is the oldest of several overall awards in college football, including the Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Award, and the AP Player of the Year. The Heisman and the AP Player of the Year honor the most outstanding player, while the Maxwell and the Walter Camp award recognizes the best player, and the Archie Griffin Award recognizes the most valuable player. The most recent winner of the Heisman Trophy is University of Alabama running back Derrick Henry.
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In one of the greatest coincidences in comics history, two comic strips titled Dennis The Menace were released within a week of each other in 1951. On 12 March 1951, American artist Hank Ketcham debuted his Dennis The Menace strip to US newspapers, and on 15 March, Scottish artist David Law released his strip of the same name, which debuted in the British weekly comic strip anthology The Beano.
Both strips had been conceived independently of each other-- Law had gotten the idea from a music hall song that included the lyrics "I'm Dennis the Menace from Venice," whereas Ketcham had based his character on his misbehaving four-year-old son, Dennis Ketcham. Because of the potential confusion due to the strips' titles, the American strip is published in the UK as Dennis, and the British strip is published in the US as Dennis And Gnasher.
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That in addition to James Montgomery Scott, James Doohan also played the part of the first captain of the Enterprise, Robert April.
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That in addition to James Montgomery Scott, James Doohan also played the part of the first captain of the Enterprise, Robert April.
Aside from his roles as Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott and Commodore Robert April, Doohan also provided the voice of 49 additional characters on Star Trek: The Animated Series, including Engineer Gabler, the White Rabbit, and the Klingon warriors Koloth and Kor. Doohan also performed four additional voice roles on the original live-action Star Trek, including M-5 and Sargon.
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American journalist and radio personality Dan Carlin (of Hardcore History fame) is the son of actress Lynn Carlin, best known for her Oscar-nominated role as Maria Forst in the 1968 film Faces. Lynn Carlin is also known for her starring role as Meg Hunter on the television series James At 16 (1977-1978), a recurring role as Sara Griffith (Bridges) on TV's The Waltons (1977), and most importantly , her role as Nell ("I'll surrender, you sorry son of a mutant!") in the 1980 film Battle Beyond The Stars.
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Jeffrey Allen "Skunk" Baxter is an American guitarist, known for his stints in the rock bands Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers during the 1970s and Spirit in the 1980s. More recently, he has been working as a defense consultant and chairs a Congressional Advisory Board on missile defense.
Baxter fell into his second profession almost by accident. In the mid-1980s, Baxter's interest in music recording technology led him to wonder about hardware and software that was originally developed for military use, specifically data-compression algorithms and large-capacity storage devices. His next-door neighbor was a retired engineer who had worked on the Sidewinder missile program. This neighbor bought Baxter a subscription to Aviation Week magazine, provoking his interest in additional military-oriented publications and missile defense systems in particular. He became self-taught in this area, and at one point he wrote a five-page paper that proposed converting the ship-based anti-aircraft Aegis missile into a rudimentary missile defense system. He gave the paper to California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and his career as a defense consultant began.
Backed by several influential Capitol Hill lawmakers, Baxter received a series of security clearances so he could work with classified information. In 1995, Pennsylvania Republican congressman Curt Weldon, then the chairman of the House Military Research and Development Subcommittee, nominated Baxter to chair the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense.
Baxter's work with that panel led to consulting contracts with the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He now consults to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community, as well as for defense-oriented manufacturers including Science Applications International Corporation ("SAIC"), Northrop Grumman Corp., General Dynamics, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. He has been quoted as saying his unconventional approach to thinking about terrorism, tied to his interest in technology, is a major reason he became sought after by the government.
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Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) was released in Poland in winter 1981. Its release coincided with introduction of Martial Law (13th Dec 1981) by military communist junta that replaced previous government earlier that year to curb the growing anti-party, liberal worker movement.
The movie became instant hit.
It also provided us with this pearl of photography by Chris Niedenthal. It's "Cinema Moscow" showing "Apocalypse Now".
EDIT: Polish title is literally "Time (Of) Apocalypse", equally if not more fitting for the timing in the hindsight (as Martial Law lasted for a year and a half).
Regretfully I was much too young to see it in cinema.
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Jeffrey Allen "Skunk" Baxter is an American guitarist, known for his stints in the rock bands Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers during the 1970s and Spirit in the 1980s. More recently, he has been working as a defense consultant and chairs a Congressional Advisory Board on missile defense.
Baxter fell into his second profession almost by accident. In the mid-1980s, Baxter's interest in music recording technology led him to wonder about hardware and software that was originally developed for military use, specifically data-compression algorithms and large-capacity storage devices. His next-door neighbor was a retired engineer who had worked on the Sidewinder missile program. This neighbor bought Baxter a subscription to Aviation Week magazine, provoking his interest in additional military-oriented publications and missile defense systems in particular. He became self-taught in this area, and at one point he wrote a five-page paper that proposed converting the ship-based anti-aircraft Aegis missile into a rudimentary missile defense system. He gave the paper to California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and his career as a defense consultant began.
Backed by several influential Capitol Hill lawmakers, Baxter received a series of security clearances so he could work with classified information. In 1995, Pennsylvania Republican congressman Curt Weldon, then the chairman of the House Military Research and Development Subcommittee, nominated Baxter to chair the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense.
Baxter's work with that panel led to consulting contracts with the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He now consults to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community, as well as for defense-oriented manufacturers including Science Applications International Corporation ("SAIC"), Northrop Grumman Corp., General Dynamics, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. He has been quoted as saying his unconventional...
So he's the guy responsible for us wasting billions upon billions in Star Wars type boondoggles? When we still can't reliably intercept a missle launch WE KNOW OF IN ADVANCE?
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Yeah, but he was great on the song "Black Water".
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Yeah, but he was great on the song "Black Water".
Sounds like he should have stuck to his night job.
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In 1998, while still a sitting senator, he became the oldest person to fly in space, and the only one to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs as crew member of the Discovery space shuttle. He was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
It was a pretty controversial thing to do, as Glenn was clearly over the age of who should be flying, was decades out of practice in being an astronaut, and had no particular purpose being on the flight.
However Glenn was a key voice in determining NASA's budget, and essentially extorted his way onto a seat. Not one of his shining moments as a Senator.
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Yeah, but he was great on the song "Black Water".
Damnit, man! Now I'm going to have that absolutely awesome song stuck in my head for the rest of the day!!
Well, I built me a raft and she's ready for floatin'
Ol' Mississippi, she's callin' my name
Catfish are jumpin'
That paddle wheel thumpin'
Black water keeps rollin' on past just the same
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Yeah, keep on shinin' your light
Gonna make everything, pretty mama
Gonna make everything all right
And I ain't got no worries
'Cause I ain't in no hurry at all
Well, if it rains, I don't care
Don't make no difference to me
Just take that street car thats goin' up town
Yeah, I'd like to hear some funky Dixieland
And dance a honky tonk
And I'll be buyin' ev'rybody drinks all 'roun'
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Yeah, keep on shinin' your light
Gonna make everything, pretty mama
Gonna make everything all right
And I ain't got no worries
'Cause I ain't in no hurry at all
I'd like to hear some funky Dixieland
Pretty mama come and take me by the hand
By the hand, take me by the hand pretty mama
Come and dance with your daddy all night long
I want to honky tonk, honky tonk, honky tonk
With you all night long
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Just this week, my boss was explaining to me that only the Michael McDonald-era Doobies music was any good. It was all I could do not to go off, but since I wasn't hired to teach music appreciation, I kept my response to a brief, polite disagreement.
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Just this week, my boss was explaining to me that only the Michael McDonald-era Doobies music was any good. It was all I could do not to go off, but since I wasn't hired to teach music appreciation, I kept my response to a brief, polite disagreement.
I would've had to have thrown him in the trunk of a car and left him in the woods for a couple of days.
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Yeah, but he was great on the song "Black Water".Damnit, man! Now I'm going to have that absolutely awesome song stuck in my head for the rest of the day!!
Aaaaaand you're welcome! LOL
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USS Independence (LCS-2) is the lead ship of the Independence-class littoral combat ship. She is the sixth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the concept of independence. The design was produced by the General Dynamics consortium for the Navy's LCS program, and competes with the Lockheed Martin designed Freedom variant.
Independence, delivered to the Navy at the end of 2009, is a high speed, small crew corvette (although the U.S. Navy does not use the term) intended for operation in the littoral zone. She can swap out various systems to take on various missions, including finding and destroying mines, hunting submarines in and near shallow water, and fighting small boats (she is not intended to fight warships). The ship is a trimaran design with a wide beam above the waterline that supports a larger flight deck than those of the Navy's much larger destroyers and cruisers, as well as a large hangar and a similarly large mission bay below. The trimaran hull also exhibits low hydrodynamic drag, allowing efficient operation on two diesel powered water jets at speeds up to 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph), and high speed operation on two gas turbine powered water jets at a sustainable 44 knots (81 km/h; 51 mph) and even faster for short periods.
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In Life Debt, the second book in Chuck Wendig's Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy, we briefly encounter Mon Mothma's bodyguard Hern Kaveen, a bearded Pantoran whose name is an anagram of the name of another Star Wars author, Kevin Hearne.
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British author Roald Dahl (1916-1990), creator of such classic works as James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, served in the Royal Air Force as fighter pilot during the Second World War.
In his three years of service (1939-1942), Dahl flew combat missions in the RAF's Eastern Mediterranean campaign, including the famed "Battle of Athens," which claimed the life of famed flying ace Marmaduke "Pat" Pattle. Over the course of the campaign, Dahl shot down at least five enemy aircraft, qualifying him as a flying ace.
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Helen Slater's real hair color is brown. After dying it once for Supergirl (1984), she kept it blonde for her future roles until she became a spokeswoman for Preferance by L'oreal. She can be seen with her natural hair in her first feature, ABC Afterschool Specials: Amy & the Angel (1982).
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ZZ Top is a rock band formed in 1969 in Houston, Texas. Current members are bassist and lead vocalist Dusty Hill, guitarist and lead vocalist Billy Gibbons (the band's leader, main lyricist and musical arranger), and drummer Frank Beard. One of just a few major label recording groups with the same lineup for more than 45 years, critics and fellow musicians praise ZZ Top for its technical mastery. "As genuine roots musicians, they have few peers," according to former musician, critic and collector Michael "Cub" Coda. "Gibbons is one of America's finest blues guitarists working in the arena rock idiom while Hill and Beard provide the ultimate rhythm section support."
The band released its first album—called ZZ Top's First Album—in 1971. Beginning with blues-inspired rock, the band incorporated new wave, punk rock and dance-rock by using synthesizers. The band is also known for its humorous lyrics laced with double entendres and innuendo.
The band's top-selling album was the 1983 Eliminator, which sold more than 10 million copies in the United States. Total record sales of 25 million place ZZ Top among the top-100-selling artists in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.[8] That includes 11 gold, seven platinum and three multi-platinum records as of 2016, according to the RIAA.
By 2014, ZZ Top had sold more than 50 million albums worldwide.
ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
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The band's top-selling album was the 1983 Eliminator, which sold more than 10 million copies in the United States.
According to former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins, Eliminator was the band's go-to road music for their spring 1984 My War tour, and substantially influenced their follow-up album, Slip It In, which debuted in December of the same year.
Eliminator and its accompanying singles also influenced Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler while writing their 1985 studio album Brothers In Arms. According to Knopfler, the iconic sound of their single "Money For Nothing" was based on his trying to replicate Billy Gibbons' signature guitar tone.
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And of all three members of ZZ Top, Frank Beard is the easiest to discern from the other two, as he is the one with no beard, or at least the shortest one, depending on the period.
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Arleigh Albert Burke (October 19, 1901 – January 1, 1996) was an admiral of the United States Navy who distinguished himself during World War II and the Korean War, and who served as Chief of Naval Operations during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.
USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51), the lead ship of her class of Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyers, was commissioned in his honor in 1991, during his lifetime.
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USS Bulkeley (DDG 84) is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the United States Navy. She is named for Medal of Honor recipient Vice Admiral John D. Bulkeley. This ship is the 34th destroyer of its class. USS Bulkeley was the 15th ship of this class to be built at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and construction began on 10 May 1999. She was launched on 21 June 2000 and was christened on 24 June 2000. On 8 December 2001 she was commissioned during a pierside ceremony at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City, New York. USS Bulkeley is currently homeported at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia.
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When the Mariner 4 probe transmitted its first close-up pictures of Mars in 1965, it returned a stream of data in the form of brightness values that would take time to be processed into an actual picture. Not willing to wait for that, the scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory printed out the raw data as a raster of numbers corresponding to the color values and had one researcher color in the numbers with a set of oil pastels.
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The Betamax magnetic tape video cassette format was developed by Sony and released in Japan in 1975 (Betamax was released worldwide later that same year). In 1976, JVC released their VHS magnetic tape cassette, which debuted a year later in the United States. By the early 1980s, VHS dominated the home video market, and Betamax tapes became quite hard to find in the US by the 1990s. However, in Japan, Betamax remained a viable format (though not as popular as VHS), and was still produced by Sony until its cancellation in 2016.
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Austrian-American actor Turhan Bey (born Turhan Gilbert Selahattin Sahultavy, 1922-2012), best known for his work in 1940s Hollywood films such as Dragon Seed and The Amazing Mr. X, was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a Muslim Turkish diplomat and a Jewish woman from Czechoslovakia. Bey's parents divorced when he was a young child, and his mother took him to Los Angeles, CA, USA, where Bey's maternal uncle introduced him to a family friend: physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein and Bey kept up a correspondence until Einstein's death in 1955.
Turhan Bey's career faded in the late 1940s, and he left acting to work as a professional photographer in Europe. However, in the mid-1990s, Bey experienced an unexpected career comeback on American television, with roles on the shows SeaQuest DSV, Murder, She Wrote, and Babylon 5. His character on Babylon 5 was named "Emperor Turhan" in his honor.
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In 1976, British actor Peter Cushing (1913-1994) was cast in as the villainous Grand Moff Tarkin in George Lucas' Star Wars (AKA Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). Like all of the other actors portraying Galactic Imperial officers, he was presented with ill-fitting riding boots, which pinched his feet so much that he was given permission by director George Lucas to play the role wearing his slippers. As a result, the camera operators filmed him throughout the film only from the knees up, or else standing behind the table of the Death Star conference room set.
Costuming discomfort aside, Cushing contrasted sharply with co-star Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi) in that he enjoyed his experience on the film, appreciated the renewed interest in his work from young fans and only regretted that he could not appear in the sequels. Co-star Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia Organa) later stated in an interview that she found the scene in which Tarkin interrogates her character to be difficult to film, not because of the nature of the scene, but because Cushing was such a nice man that it was hard to imagine him as a villain. Fisher also added that she found it difficult to be intimidated by a man wearing carpet slippers.
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Former United States President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (1913-2006) was named at birth Leslie Lynch King, Jr. Ford's mother, Dorothy Gardner, left King weeks after the birth of their son, and in 1916 married Gerald Rudolff Ford. The younger Ford was called "Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr." throughout his childhood, but did not officially change his name until 1935 (though he used a more conventional spelling of his middle name).
Gerald R. Ford lived longer than any other US president to date (93 years, 165 days), and served for the shortest term of any president who did not die in office (895 days). In addition, having been appointed to the office of Vice President by Richard Nixon after the resignation of Spiro Agnew, ascending to the presidency after the resignation of Nixon, and being defeated in his re-election campaign by James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Ford is the only US president never to have been elected as either US Vice President or US President.
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The phrase "Houston, we have a problem" (used colloquially to denote the occurrence of an unforeseen problem) derives from an incident that occurred during the Apollo 13 moon mission in which an oxygen tank exploded, disabling the craft's service module.
However, the line itself (spoken by astronaut Jack Swigert and repeated by astronaut Jim Lovell) was actually "Houston, we've had a problem here." The colloquial phrasing derives from an abbreviated version of the quote delivered by actor Tom Hanks, portraying Lovell in the 1995 film Apollo 13.
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A hemispherical combustion chamber is a type of combustion chamber with a domed cylinder head. The hemispherical shape provides some advantages in an internal combustion engine. An engine featuring this type of chamber is known as a hemi engine.
Hemispherical cylinder heads have been used since at least 1901; they were used by the Belgian car maker Pipe in 1905 and the 1907 Fiat 130 HP Grand Prix racer. The Peugeot Grand Prix Car of 1912 and the Alfa Romeo Grand Prix car of 1914 both were four valve engines also, Daimler, and Riley were also using hemispherical combustion chambers. Stutz, beginning in 1912, used four-valve engines, conceptually anticipating modern car engines. Other examples include the BMW double-pushrod design (adopted by Bristol Cars), the Peugeot 403, the Toyota T engine and Toyota V engine (Toyota's first V8 engine), and Miller racing engines, and the Jaguar XK engine.
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The archer on Daniel Horne's cover for Dragon Magazine 126 (October 1987), is modelled on his wife.
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The archer on Daniel Horne's cover for Dragon Magazine 126 (October 1987), is modelled on his wife.
Ooo, cool!
Who'd he model the undead viking on?
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That I don't know. Ragnar Lodbrok?
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That's who I would have picked.
Fun fact: During Ragnar's seven missing years, he was getting clean at Betty Fjord.
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The archer on Daniel Horne's cover for Dragon Magazine 126 (October 1987), is modelled on his wife.Ooo, cool!
Who'd he model the undead viking on?
His mother-in-law.
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The Marman clamp is a type of heavy-duty band clamp used extensively in aeronautics and aerospace applications, including quick disconnects in flexible aircraft fuel lines, mechanical load-transfer and clamping mechanisms in booster rockets and satellite payloads, and most notably, the clamps used to hold the "Fat Man" atomic bomb in place on the B-29 bomber Bockscar.
The clamp itself was produced in the 1930s by Marman Products, a machined parts company that was owned and operated by Herbert M. "Zeppo" Marx, who aside from being the least funny Marx Brother was a talented mechanical engineer. Aside from contributing to the design of the Marman clamp, Marx also held patents for numerous inventions, including a heart monitor wristwatch.