Everyone who’s done it knows that cleaning is a lot like warfare (and if you have children, it’s always a losing battle). Hugo Tornelo and Pedro Alegria of Cabracega have just the weapon for your next house cleaning adventure: "Make Household Not War," a conceptual design of broom, dust pan and feather duster shaped like rapier swords.

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Similar: BBQ Sword Spatula

“We went on a scout camping expedition to Wetteren and I remember now that it was an old military camp,” Maité recalls very slowly. She has tiny dreadlocks that hang down her slim face and a silver ring in her nose – not the usual face of a First World War victim. “It was July 6th, 1992. I knew nothing about war. I remember we all built a fire using bricks round the outside and the other kids starting throwing logs on it. I was tired and so I went a few metres from the fire so I could sleep. Then there was a sudden explosion – I woke up and saw sparks from the explosion. Everyone was running and shouting and I tried to get up and I couldn’t. Everyone was looking at me and I looked down – and I saw that my left leg was hanging by a piece of skin.”

Roël is under the care of the Belgian Institute for Veterans’ Affairs and War Victims. She has no interest in learning about the war that affected her life. Link -via YesButNoButYes

(image credit: Laurent Lenclud)

An on-board security team repelled the attack by using evasive maneuvers, small-arms fire and a Long Range Acoustic Device, which can beam earsplitting alarm tones, the fleet said. [...]

The owners of the Maersk Alabama have spent a considerable amount of money since the April hijacking to make the vessel pirate-proof, Murphy said, including structural features and safety equipment. The most dramatic change is what he called a security force of "highly trained ex-military personnel."

"Somali pirates understand one thing and only one thing, and that’s force," said Capt. Joseph Murphy, who teaches maritime security at the school. "They analyze risk very carefully, and when the risk is too high they are going to step back. They are not going to jeopardize themselves."

The wife of the Maersk Alabama’s captain, Paul Rochford, told WBZ-AM radio in Boston that she was "really happy" there were weapons on board for this attack.

"It probably surprised the pirates. They were probably shocked," Kimberly Rochford. "I’m really happy at least it didn’t turn out like the last time."

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Long Range Acoustic Device? Turns out it’s an acoustic cannon (or super megaphone) that produce 150 decibels of sound, causing excruciating headache and ear pain. From Spiegel:

Until now, it wasn’t widely known that the US Defense Department was sharing the so-called Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) with commercial cruise ships. The weapon is essentially a small dish that beams hellishly loud noise that is deafening but not lethal. Weighing 20 kilograms and as big as a TV satellite dish, the device looks deceptively harmless. But once trained on its target, it blasts a tight beam of painful siren-like sound.

It’s not known how the grinning pirates 160 kilometers off the coast of the Horn of Africa reacted as they suddenly were hit by the LRAD. But they were close, and the closer one is to the sonic cannon, the worse the effect is. It’s possible they received permanent hearing damage, but at the very least they experienced an excruciating headache and ear pain to the point that they could no longer see or hear. They also quickly lost the desire to board the ship. Of course, even Captain Blackbeard would have quickly set sail when confronted with 150 decibels of pure noise.

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I should mention that Ivar the Boneless got his sweet nickname because he had a degenerative disease that left him unable to stand, and not because he needed to talk to his doctor about Cialis or anything like that. However, as a badass medieval sea-raiding shitwrecker, Ivar wasn’t going to let a little thing like “not being able to use his legs” stop him from raining death on his enemies at every turn.

In this manner, Ivar killed two kings and captured a large part of the British Isles. Link

A Milwaukee Army reservist’s military identification earned him some street cred Tuesday, when he says four men who mugged him at gunpoint returned his belongings and thanked him for his service after finding the ID.

The 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student said he was walking home from work about 1:15 a.m. Tuesday when he was pulled into an alley and told to lay face down and with a gun to his neck. Four men took his wallet, $16, keys, his cell phone and even a PowerBar wrapper from his pants pockets, he said.

But the hostile tone quickly changed when one of the robbers, whom the reservist presumed was the leader, saw an Army ID in the wallet. The robber told the others to return the items and they put most of his belongings on the ground next to him, including the wrapper, the reservist said.

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The black labrador bitch was with a joint Australian-Afghan patrol that was ambushed in Uruzgan province in September 2008.

Nine Australian soldiers, including Sabi’s trainer, were wounded in the exchange.

After the battle there was no sign of the dog, and months of searching failed to find her. Sabi was officially declared Missing In Action.

An Australian military spokesman said it would probably never be known exactly what had happened to Sabi in the 14 months she was missing, but the fact that she was in good condition indicated she had been cared for by someone.

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Previously on Neatorama: Welcome Home

He said: ‘I don’t mind suffering for a few days if I can let the lads know that people really care about what they’re doing out there, and raise some money for the guys coming home wounded as well.

‘The family thought I was mad to begin with, but they’ve come round to the idea now, and my wife is backing me all the way.’

The married father-of-two from Doncaster hopes his challenge will raise £500 for the charity Help for Heroes.

He plans on updating the sombre list every year on Remembrance Day if required.

Tattoo artist Kevin Kent donated his services free of charge. Link -via Digg

(image credit: Ross Parry Agency)

Photo: Ronald Playforth

Early in May, 1945, officers from the German army and Gestapo met with Allied commanders, including Field Marshall Montgomery to offer their country’s surrender at his headquarters near Hamburg.  Interestingly, the only color photographs of this event were taken by a clerk, Ronald Playforth, who hid in the trees during the meeting.

Thequintessential wrote a brief synopsis of this event:

His pictures show Admiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg, the most senior member of the delegation, General Eberhard Kinzel, chief of staff of the north west Germany army, and Major Friedl, a 6ft 6ins Gestapo chief. They were received by Field Marshall Montgomery, with his customary black beret and army uniform, who, when the Germans tried to negotiate, reportedly gave them a ‘tongue lashing’ about the bombing of Coventry and the horrors of Belsen. The delegation reported back to their HQ and Admiral Karl Doenitz – Hitler’s successor – and were given permission to sign the surrender papers, which they did the next day, May 4. When it was all over Montgomery is said to have leaned back and said simply: ‘That concludes the surrender.’

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Everyone in the family is happy and excited when a soldier comes home after a long deployment, but who is best at expressing that joy? Right, the dog! Mental_floss posted ten videos of dogs welcoming their soldiers home. I dare you to keep a straight face and a dry eye while watching these. Link

"The War to End All Wars" ended 91 years ago on the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month in 1918. This became known as Armistice Day, and later as Veteran’s Day. For many, especially Americans, World War I has been practically forgotten as it is overshadowed by WWII in history classes, but WWI had a great impact on the 20th century and that impact lingers to this day. The nation of Iraq was created in the aftermath of the war, for example.

World War I in many ways was the “War to end all Wars” in that it was every war past and future rolled up into one. There were Napoleonic charges, aerial bombardment, a few misguided cavalry charges with actual horses, tanks, machine guns, artillery barrages, air combat, poison gas attacks, flamethrowers, submarine warfare, and primitive hand-to-hand fighting that came down to knives, sharpened spades, and clubs.

The trenches were hell on earth – mud, water, snipers, artillery barrages, barbed wire, machine gun fire, and the rotting corpses of those who fell in No-Man’s Land, the deadly area between the opposing armies’ trenches. Plus there was rampant disease, lice, and rats grown fat from feeding off of corpses.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by samuraidave.

In 1942, Japanese translators and codebreakers were regularly intercepting U.S. military communications and sabotaging U.S. plans in the Pacific.  Philip Johnston, a white man who was raised on the Navajo Reservation, convinced Major General Clayton Vogel, commanding general of the Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, that the Marines should recruit Navajos to transmit important military communications.

From the Naval Historical Center:

“In May 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp. Then, at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California, this first group created the Navajo code. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training.

…The developers of the original code assigned Navajo words to represent about 450 frequently used military terms that did not exist in the Navajo language. Several examples: ‘besh- lo’ (iron fish) meant ’submarine,’ and ‘dah-he- tih-hi’ (hummingbird) meant ‘fighter plane’…

Once a Navajo code talker completed his training, he was sent to a Marine unit deployed in the Pacific theater. The code talkers’ primary job was to talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios…Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, ‘Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.’”

For decades after the war, the contributions of the Navajo code talkers were not publicly acknowledged, because of the continued value of their language as a secure code. The code talkers were finally honored at the Pentagon in 1992, and the Navajo code talker exhibit is now a regular stop on the Pentagon tour.

Of the approximately 400 Navajos who trained as code talkers, only about 50 are still alive, most of them living in the Navajo Nation that includes part of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.  Today, for the first time, a group of 13 code talkers will take part in the Veterans Day parade in New York City.

AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca of Navajo code talker Keith Little, 85, at a book signing in Albuquerque, N.M.

Helmets fitted with masklike visors were a popular German and Austrian fashion about 1510 to 1540. With their visors forged and embossed as humorous or grotesque human masks, such helmets were often worn in tournaments held during the exuberant pre-Lenten (Shrovetide) festivals, celebrations somewhat akin to the modern Mardi Gras. Substitute visors of more conventional type were often provided for everyday use.

Interestingly, the postulated 1515 date for this helmet would make it contemporary with the “horned helmet” previously posted at Neatorama.

Link, via Titam et le Sirop d’Erable.  Photo credit Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Can you distinguish whether a name belongs to a cat litter brand or an actual military operation? That’s the challenge in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I didn’t know any of the answers, because they all sounded like military operations to me, but I managed to score 70%. Link

Sugihara discussed the plan with his wife Yukiko and decided to risk his career and his entire future by defying his superiors. The couple then spent 29 days issuing travel visas, up to 300 a day, as thousands of refugees stood in line at his office. Yukiko would prepare and register the visas while Chiune Sugihara would sign and stamp them, hour after hour, without breaking for meals. They would work late into the night until Yukiko would massage her husband’s weary hands in preparation for the next day. Sugihara was under orders to leave, which he could no longer delay. The family departed on September 1st, but he kept signing visas even as he boarded the train. Sugihara then tossed his official stamp out to the crowd, as he hadn’t time to stamp them all.

Sugihara’s actions enabled around 6,000 Jewish refugees to escape the Holocaust. For his efforts, Sugihara was imprisoned by the Soviets and fired from his job by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Read the entire story at mental_floss. Link

What does it take to create an American Soldier? Denver Post Photojournalist Craig F. Walker tracked Ian Fisher from his high school graduation through basic training, assignment to Colorado’s Fort Carson, and deployment in Iraq:

His decision to join the Army grew out of many things. The opportunity to fight for his country. The desire to add to a family legacy. The need to point his young life in a productive direction. In the spring of 2007 and at the depths of the Iraq war s unpopularity, Ian Fisher graduated from Lakewood s Bear Creek High School and, two weeks later, shipped out to basic training. There, he began the challenging process of becoming an American soldier – and outgrowing the trappings of youth. Like many recruits, he would struggle, learn, make mistakes and rebound. His training prepared him for violent conflict in a foreign land. Nothing prepared him for the war within.

Photo Gallery at Denver Post’s Captured Photo Collection Blog | The Story | Flash Page

If you’ve ever watched a movie and wondered what kind of gun that is, or if you have argued with a friend about movie weapons, here’s the perfect resource. The Internet Movie Firearms Database (imfdb) has the answers! You can look up movies by title, actors, television shows, the weapons themselves, and even video games. Pictured is Johnny Depp with a M1911A1 in the 2001 film Blow. Link -via Transbuddha

Matt Woolbright of My San Antonio has the story:

Myers’ reunion with 10-year-old Hannah was his second of the day. He reunited with his 19-month-old daughter, Adison, just before surprising Hannah.

Adison didn’t know how to react, burying her face into her mom before uttering, “Hi, Daddy,” and bringing tears to many of the people there.

Hannah’s class was interrupted when Bessette announced that some friends would be talking to the class and taking pictures. When everyone was in place, mom and dad walked in.

Hannah’s expression and instant tears drove her mother to tears as well as she watched her daughter and husband reunite.

“I was so excited, I couldn’t believe it,” Hannah said. “I don’t really remember what happened because I was just so happy.”

Link | Watch the heartwarming video (Photo and video by John Davenport / Express-News.net)

Update 11/3/09 by Alex – I replaced the unattributed video with the original source over at My San Antonio News – Thanks Michael Knoop!

NYC teacher Mr. D. decided to have his students re-enact the crisis, with surprising results.

I laid out a dossier of the facts of the case: missiles were discovered in Cuba by an American spy plane.  The United States is under pressure from the Soviet Union to withdraw missiles from Turkey.  The Russians are not saying for certain that there are missiles.  The United States is prepared to escalate with possible military action.

I had the class divide into groups, take the facts and create a course of action.  Amazingly, their plans mirrored the plans created by Kennedy’s cabinet and Pentagon officials in 1962.  One group favored a military option, a direct strike on the Cuban missiles.  Another group favored a covert operation to disable the missiles.  Still another favored a unilateral pullout from Turkey as a sign of goodwill.

What was most astonishing was my last group.  They actually said, “Maybe we should get other countries on our side by showing them what we have.”  By doing so, they figured, it would make the Soviets look like the bad guy, the aggressor.  I was floored.  These were barely teenagers and they tackled delicate foreign policy like a pro.

Link with embedded video clips of Adlai Stevenson’s triumph at the U.N. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

“Everyone was handing it off to everybody else,” Schule said.

He was surprised at the amount of work it took to get the military to pick up its lost missile launcher.

Schule initially was nervous when he found the weapon. But as the hours passed, he did what most guys would do — marvel at the mind-blowing awesomeness of finding a missile launcher. He posted photos on Facebook and called his buddies, saying: “Guess what I found?”

Schule called the military police at Fort Sam. But their jurisdiction doesn’t extend off the post. Schule’s information was passed along to an Army criminal investigator, who visited Schule on Wednesday morning — about 19 hours after he started making phone calls.

Three hours later, an Army ordinance disposal team retrieved the weapon. There is still no word on how it got to Schule’s yard. Link -via Queuebot

This 10-minute video shows the impact of bullets on various targets at 1 million frames per second. It was made by Werner Mehl, an engineer noted for his development of high-speed photography:

Germany’s Werner Mehl is the talented engineer who created the PVM-21 infrared chronograph, in many respects the most sophisticated ballistic speed-measuring system currently available to the general public. Werner runs a company, Kurzzeitmesstechnik, which specializes in high-tech ballistic measuring systems and ultra-high-speed photography. Werner has engineered camera and lighting systems that can literally track a bullet in flight, millimeter by millimeter, with eye-popping resolution. Werner employs digital cameras that record up to 1 million frames per second, with effective shutter speeds as fast as 1.5 nano-seconds. The videos produced by Werner’s systems are amazing. Below are two short samples. The first shows a 7mm bullet penetrating cardboard. Note you can clearly see the engraving of the rifling on the bullet.

Link via Hell in a Handbasket | Werner Mehl’s Website

Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum was ordered to Iraq in July. His four-year-old daughter Paige had a hard time letting go, so much that she held onto his hand in formation. No one, including the commanding officer, had the heart to pull her away. The picture of the incident, taken by Paige’s mother, has gone viral and touched people all over the country. Link -via Buzzfeed

(image credit: Abby Bennethum)

Link via io9 | Fried’ s Bio | Image: AdaFruit Industries

Image: Lightning Packs

Lightning Packs is a company that is developing backpacks that generate electricity with the motion of their users. As the user walks, the spring-mounted backback bounces slightly, turning a gear on a generator. It is the brainchild of Lawrence C. Rome of the University of Pennsylvania, who hopes to market his idea to the U.S. military:

“Soldiers now carry GPS receivers, night vision goggles, headlamps, communication devices, and more. And with this technology, means of powering them becomes critical. Soldiers carry eighty pound backpacks, up to twenty pounds of which are spare batteries. Now, with the Suspended Load Backpack, electricity can be generated to power the equipment directly or to charge a lightweight rechargeable battery,” Dr. Rome said.

When walking, the Suspended Load Backpack can generate up to 7.4 watts, more than enough power to simultaneously power an MP3 player, night vision goggles (or 3 LED headlamp), a PDA, a CMOS image decoder, a handheld GPS, Bluetooth, and a GSM terminal in talk mode.

Link via Gizmodo (where there’s a video)

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, we still don’t know if Russia’s doomsday weapon is still operational.  It’s a bit of a worry, because the weapon, code name The Dead Hand, is 50,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima:

As far as anyone knows, the Dead Hand remains operational. What is truly worrying, even today, is the secrecy that continues to surround the whole subject. Thompson has found that neither George Schultz nor former CIA director James Woolsey had heard of the Dead Hand system. Former Soviet era officials will still not discuss it. One who dared to talk died in mysterious circumstances. Such secrecy is, as Dr Strangelove realised, disastrous: ‘Yes, but the…whole point of the doomsday machine…is lost…if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, eh?’

The doomsday machine is supposed to be the ultimate deterrent. But if no one knows that the deterrent exists… Well, you’ve all seen the final scenes of Dr Strangelove.

Link – via markarayner

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by drtundra.

The Staffordshire Hoard contains about 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, making it far bigger than the Sutton Hoo discovery in 1939 when 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold was found near Woodbridge in Suffolk.

Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe, said: “This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries.

“(It is) absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells.”

Some of the gold pieces are inlaid with precious stones such as garnets.  The hoard appears to date from the 7th century; at present there is no indication of who owned it or why it was buried in the Staffordshire field.

Link to BBC article and slideshow of 12 photos.

Link to a gallery of photos at The Guardian.

Photo credit to The Stafforshire Hoard, which appears to be a sort of “home page” for the find.

A well-insulated 20,000 square foot home complete with an airstrip and a Jacuzzi sounds really nice. This one is underground in an abandoned missile silo! It was once the home of an Atlas-F missile built for the Cold War, but it’s been converted into a luxury home. See seven such military installations now used as living spaces. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

Photo: Resilient Technologies

Pneumatic tires take a lot of abuse in combat, which is why Resilient Technologies is trying to develop an airless tire. Because they can’t be punctured, vehicles equipped with such tires can stay mobile after taking damage that would incapacitate others:

The Wisconsin design breakthrough, first developed by Resilient’s in-house design and development team, takes a page from nature. “The goal was to reduce the variation in the stiffness of the tire, to make it transmit loads uniformly and become more homogenous,” Osswald says. “And the best design, as nature gives it to us, is really the honeycomb.”….

The patent-pending Resilient design relies on a precise pattern of six-sided cells that are arranged, like a honeycomb, in a way that best mimics the “ride feel” of pneumatic tires. The honeycomb geometry also does a great job of reducing noise levels and reducing heat generated during usage – two common problems with past applications.

Link via DVICE

Reporter and former Green Beret Michael Yon took a series of intriguing photos of glowing rotor blades as a helicopter lands in a military base in Afghanistan. The eerie "halo" is caused by static electricity generated as the titanium/nickel blades move through a field of dust (which is kicked up from the ground as the heli lands).

The phenomenon, striking as it is, has no name – and Michael decided to name it the Kopp-Etchells Effect, as a tribute, after Corporal Benjamin Kopp and Corporal Joseph Etchells, who died in battle.

The full story at Michael’s blog: Link via TYWKIWDBI

Iraqi officials said they found the planes in the process of trying to trace what Saddam, the former dictator, did with the country’s military assets. The 19 planes, all Soviet-built, were sent in 1989 to a Yugoslav maintenance plant in Zagreb, in what is now Croatia, but never got the overhauls they needed.

In 1991, when the Croatian war for independence broke out, the jets were transported to Serbia in parts. And there they remained.

A delegation from Iraq will go to Belgrade to negotiate the return of the jets, but they are unlikely to help Iraq rebuild its air defenses. The Iraqi Air Force currently has no jets. Link -via Fark

This design, patented in 1945 by Henry Wallace, never made it into mass production (or, I suspect, even a prototype). Odd, that. From the text of the patent:

One of the objects of this invention is to provide a tank having an extensible leg capable of imparting a series of vertical oscillations to the tank, and having means to vary the angle of inclination of the leg to obtain directional movement of the tank.

Another of the objects of the invention is to provide a tank which is adapted to traverse difficult terrain.

Yet another object of the invention is to provide a tank which is propelled in such a manner that its progress is intermittent, thereby rendering it a difficult target. Still another object is to provide a tank provided with means whereby the direction of its course may be rapidly changed, thereby rendering it a difficult target.

Link via Boing Boing