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Ice Station Zebra (novel)
''Ice Station Zebra'' is a 1963 thriller novel written by Scottish author Alistair MacLean. It marked a return to MacLean's classic Arctic setting. After completing this novel, whose plot line parallels real-life events during the Cold War, MacLean retired from writing for three years. In 1968 it was loosely adapted into a film of the same name. Plot Drift ice Station Zebra, a British meteorological station built on an ice floe in the Arctic Sea, suffers a catastrophic oil fire; several of its men die, and their shelter and supplies are destroyed. The survivors take refuge in one hut with little food and heat. The (fictional) American nuclear-powered submarine USS ''Dolphin'' is dispatched on a rescue mission. Just before she departs, Dr. Carpenter, the narrator, is sent to accompany her. Carpenter's background is unknown, but he claims that he is an expert in dealing with frostbite and other deep-cold medical conditions, and he carries orders from the Chief of Naval Ope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alistair MacLean
Alistair Stuart MacLean ( gd, Alasdair MacGill-Eain; 21 April 1922 – 2 February 1987) was a 20th-century Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, most notably '' The Guns of Navarone'' (1957) and ''Ice Station Zebra'' (1963). In the late 1960s, encouraged by film producer Elliott Kastner, MacLean began to write original screenplays, concurrently with an accompanying novel. The most successful was the first of these, the 1968 film ''Where Eagles Dare'', which was also a bestselling novel. MacLean also published two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. His books are estimated to have sold over 150 million copies, making him one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time. According to one obituary, "he never lost his love for the sea, his talent for portraying good Brits against bad Germans, or his penchant for high melodrama. Critics deplored his cardboard characters and vapid females, but readers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Listening Station
A radio listening station (also: listening post, radio intercept station or wireless intercept station, W/T station for wireless telegraphy) is a facility used for military reconnaissance, especially telecommunications reconnaissance (also known as ''signals intelligence SIGINT'') by "intercepting" radio transmitter communications. In contrast to the original eavesdropping on an acoustic speech conversation, radio eavesdropping stations are used to eavesdrop on the information transmitted wirelessly using radio technology. For this purpose, highly sensitive radio receivers and suitable receiving antennas are used (see images). First World War After Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) succeeded in 1886 as the first to generate electromagnetic waves in the ultra-short wave range, and Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) around 1900 was able to increase the range of his radio transmissions to hundreds of kilometers, thus radiotelegraphy technology was used in the First World War (1914–19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Republic Of The Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered to the northwest by the Republic of the Congo, to the north by the Central African Republic, to the northeast by South Sudan, to the east by Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, and by Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika), to the south and southeast by Zambia, to the southwest by Angola, and to the west by the South Atlantic Ocean and the Cabinda exclave of Angola. By area, it is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 108 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous officially Francophone country in the world. The national capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is also the nation's economic center. Centered on the Cong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indochina
Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. It includes the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, with peninsular Malaysia sometimes also being included. The term Indochina (originally Indo-China) was coined in the early nineteenth century, emphasizing the historical cultural influence of Indian and Chinese civilizations on the area. The term was later adopted as the name of the colony of French Indochina (today's Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam). Today, the term, Mainland Southeast Asia, in contrast to Maritime Southeast Asia, is more commonly referenced. Terminology The origins of the name Indo-China are usually attributed jointly to the Danish-French geographer Conrad Malte-Brun, who referred to the area as in 1804, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hungarian Revolution Of 1956
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hungarian domestic policies imposed by the Soviet Union (USSR). The Hungarian Revolution began on 23 October 1956 in Budapest when Student, university students appealed to the civil populace to join them at the Hungarian Parliament Building to protest against the USSR's geopolitical domination of Hungary with the Stalinism, Stalinist government of Mátyás Rákosi. A delegation of students entered the building of Magyar Rádió, Hungarian Radio to broadcast their Demands of Hungarian Revolutionaries of 1956, sixteen demands for political and economic reforms to the civil society of Hungary, but they were instead detained by security guards. When the student protestors outside the radio building demanded the release of their delegation of studen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1990, the territory was claimed by the West Germany, Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) which was heavily disputed by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. However, West Berlin de facto aligned itself politically with the FRG on 23 May 1949, was directly or indirectly represented in its federal institutions, and most of its residents were citizens of the FRG. West Berlin was formally controlled by the Western Allies and entirely surrounded by the Soviet Union, Soviet-controlled East Berlin and East Germany. West Berlin had great symbolic significance during the Cold War, as it was widely considered by westerners an "island of free world, freedom" and America's most loyal counterpa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
U-2 Incident
On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by American pilot Francis Gary Powers, had taken off from Peshawar, Pakistan, and crashed near Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg), after being hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile. Powers parachuted to the ground safely and was captured. Initially, American authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose a few days later after the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases. The incident occurred during the tenures of American president Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, around two weeks before the scheduled opening ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kh-4b Corona
The CORONA program was a series of American strategic reconnaissance satellites produced and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the U.S. Air Force. The CORONA satellites were used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union (USSR), China, and other areas beginning in June 1959 and ending in May 1972. History In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite. Officially, Sputnik was launched to correspond with the International Geophysical Year, a solar period that the International Council of Scientific Unions declared would be ideal for the launching of artificial satellites to study Earth and the solar system. However, the launch led to public concern about the perceived technological gap between the West and the Soviet Union. The unanticipated success of the mission precipitated the Sputnik Crisis, and prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to auth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
USS Skate (SSN-578) Surfaced In Arctic - 1959
Three submarines of the United States Navy have borne the name USS ''Skate'', named for a type of ray. *The first USS ''Skate'' (SS-23) was a that sank in March 1915 off Pearl Harbor. *The second was a that saw action in World War II. *The third , the lead ship of her class of nuclear attack submarines, saw action during the Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the .... {{DEFAULTSORT:Skate, Uss United States Navy ship names ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corona (satellite)
The CORONA program was a series of American strategic reconnaissance satellites produced and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the U.S. Air Force. The CORONA satellites were used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union (USSR), China, and other areas beginning in June 1959 and ending in May 1972. History In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite. Officially, Sputnik was launched to correspond with the International Geophysical Year, a solar period that the International Council of Scientific Unions declared would be ideal for the launching of artificial satellites to study Earth and the solar system. However, the launch led to public concern about the perceived technological gap between the West and the Soviet Union. The unanticipated success of the mission precipitated the Sputnik Crisis, and prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to auth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reconnaissance Satellite
A reconnaissance satellite or intelligence satellite (commonly, although unofficially, referred to as a spy satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications. The first generation type (i.e., Corona and Zenit) took photographs, then ejected canisters of photographic film which would descend back down into Earth's atmosphere. Corona capsules were retrieved in mid-air as they floated down on parachutes. Later, spacecraft had digital imaging systems and downloaded the images via encrypted radio links. In the United States, most information available about reconnaissance satellites is on programs that existed up to 1972, as this information has been declassified due to its age. Some information about programs before that time is still classified information, and a small amount of information is available on subsequent missions. A few up-to-date reconnaissance satellite images have been declassified o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photographic Film
Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent film base coated on one side with a gelatin photographic emulsion, emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of the crystals determine the sensitivity, contrast, and image resolution, resolution of the film. The emulsion will gradually darken if left exposed to light, but the process is too slow and incomplete to be of any practical use. Instead, a very short exposure (photography), exposure to the image formed by a camera lens is used to produce only a very slight chemical change, proportional to the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. This creates an invisible latent image in the emulsion, which can be chemically photographic processing, developed into a visible photograph. In addition to visible light, all films are sensitive to ultraviolet light, X-rays, gamma rays, and particle radiation, high-energy particles. Unmodified silver halide crys ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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