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Target ship

Target ship.
USS Oberrender (DE-344) was a John C. Butler-class destroyer escort built for the United States Navy during World War II. She was named for Lieutenant Commander Thomas Olin Oberrender, Jr., the engineering officer of the light cruiser USS Juneau, killed when that ship was torpedoed and sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Laid down in November 1943, launched in January 1944, and commissioned almost four months later, Oberrender commenced convoy escort duty in the Pacific in late 1944, with an interlude protecting escort carriers during the early stages of the invasion of Leyte. She was heavily damaged by the explosion of the ammunition ship USS Mount Hood at Manus and was repaired there during November. Returning to service in December, Oberrender served on anti-submarine patrol during the Battle of Okinawa, during which she was irreparably damaged by a kamikaze attack in early May 1945. She was decommissioned and sunk as a target late that year.

1974 White House helicopter incident

1974 White House helicopter incident.
The 1974 White House helicopter incident occurred when U.S. Army private Robert K. Preston stole a Bell UH-1B Iroquois helicopter (a "Huey") from Tipton Field, Maryland, and, in a major breach of security, landed it on the South Lawn (pictured) of the White House. Preston had enlisted in the Army to become a helicopter pilot, but did not graduate from the helicopter training course. Shortly after midnight on February 17, 1974, he was returning from leave when he took off in a helicopter. Preston flew towards Washington, D.C., where he hovered close to the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument and over the South Lawn of the White House. He then flew back towards Tipton Field, pursued by two police Bell 206 JetRanger helicopters. He returned to Washington, and again hovered over the South Lawn. The Secret Service opened fire; lightly wounded, Preston landed and was arrested. At his court-martial, he was sentenced to one year in prison and fined $2400.

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Macedonia (ancient kingdom)

Macedonia (ancient kingdom).
Macedonia was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the Argead dynasty, followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians, it originated on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula. Before the 4th century BC, it was a small kingdom outside of the area dominated by the city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and briefly subordinate to Achaemenid Persia. During the reign of the Argead king Philip II (359–336 BC), Macedonia subdued mainland Greece and the Thracians' Odrysian kingdom through conquest and diplomacy, and defeated Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea. His son Alexander the Great, commanding the whole of Greece, destroyed Thebes after the city revolted. During Alexander's subsequent campaign of conquest, he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered as far as the Indus River.

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Unknown (magazine)

Unknown (magazine).
Unknown was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Astounding Science Fiction, also edited by Campbell; many authors and illustrators contributed to both. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, the leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s. Campbell required his authors to avoid simplistic horror fiction and insisted that the fantasy elements be developed logically. Notable stories included several well-received novels by L. Ron Hubbard and Fritz Leiber's "Two Sought Adventure", the first in his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. Unknown was forced to a bimonthly schedule in 1941 by poor sales, and cancelled in 1943 when wartime paper shortages forced Campbell to choose between turning Astounding into a bimonthly or ending Unknown. The magazine is generally regarded as the finest fantasy fiction magazine ever published, despite the fact that it was not commercially successful.