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Because of the movie WindTalkers many of us have been exposed to a secret code used by the US Military in WWII. This secret code was based on the Navajo language and was unbreakable by the Japanese.

The dictionary used by the codetalkers was declassified by the Navy and posted on their website. For historicans interested in the Asian Theater during WWII, this makes for a fascinating addition to their WWII literature collection. The entire dictionary is online. You can view the entire dictionary here.

It also includes the Navajo Codes for letters of the alphabet, specific words, country names, dates, ships, airplanes, officer, organizations and a translation of The Marine Hymm into Navajo Code.

Throughout the years, the Department of Defense has knowingly performed a variety of radiation experiments to learn the effects of different types and dosages of radiation on the human body.

The entire history of radiation experiments and potential radiation experiments is documented in the Report on Search for Human Radiation Experiment Records 1944 – 1994, was prepared by the Department of Defense Radiation Experiments Command Center (DoD RECC).

The document makes for interesting reading for anyone interested in the history of nuclear radiation and humans.

Nowadays it seems that there are more television commercials than show on television. If fact if you watch any of your favorite one hour programs, there are only 44 minutes of the show (which includes all the credits, etc.) and a whopping 16 minutes of commercials. That is more than 20% of the entire hour, mor ethen 25% of the length of the show.

But did you ever wonder when it all started. What is the history of the first television commercial? What was it and when was it shown?

The first television commercial was shown in the United States on July 1, 1941. It was a 10 second spot by the Bulova Watch company. It aired on the New York City affiliate WNBT (now WNBC) before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies and lasted 10 seconds.

The commercial was very simple – not much more than a print ad on film really. It showed a Bulova watch displayed on top of a map of the United States with a voiceover that said “America runs on Bulova time!”

The cost for this commercial – a whopping $9.00. (In today’s dollars, that comes to about $120.00.)

When most of us think of television and television history, we tend to think of when our families got their first television set – usually sometime in the 1950’s. That is the time when television became somewhat affordable for the masses. But in truth, the history of television began in 1875. Here is a brief chronology of the early events of television history.

• 1875 – George R. Carey proposes the idea od a television system where each picture element is simultaneously tramsmitted.
• 1880 – The idea of scanning an image is propsed by E.E. Sawyer and Maurice LeBlanc.
• 1900 – The term television is first coined by Constantin Perskyi at the Paris Exposition.
• 1921 – Charles Francis Jenkins forms Jenkin Laboratories in Washington to develop radio movies to be broadcast to the home.
• May 19,1922 – Charles Jenkins achieves his first successful transmission in his laboratories.
• October 3, 1922 – Charles Jenkins demonstrates television. It was different than modern television however. He sent still images by telephone wire from Washington to the Navy station in Anacostia and then transmitted them back to the post offfice in Washington via wireless transmission.
• June 14, 1923 – Jenkins successfully transmits television in themodern sense.
• December 29, 1923 – Zworykin applies for a patent on the idea of an all electronic television system.
• June 13, 1925 – Jenkins performs a synchronized transmission of sound and pictures. Jenkins called this technology radiovision.

To learn more about the early milestones of television, visit A U.S. Television Chronology, 1875-1970.

This web site has a collection of aerial photos of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Here are some of the photos you can find on this site.

• CIA annotated photo showing the entire Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
• CIA photo showing a close-up view of the gas chambers and prisoners being conducted from the trains.
• Close-up of Krematorium II clearly showing the Zyklon introduction ports on the roof of the gas chamber on August 25, 1944.
• Photo of the southern portion of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. It clearly shows Krematoriums II, III, IV, and V. Photo was taken on  September 13, 1944.
• Aerial photograph showing the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camps during a bombing raid on September 13, 1944.
• A large scale photograph of the Town of Oscwiecim on June 26, 1944. Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and the I.G. Farben industrial complex at Monowice are clearly visible. This photograph allows you to see the size, relationship and the distances between the various camps.
• and several other very detailed photos of these camps.