Salem's Latte

I Thought That One Up All By Myself
Can you tell?  <damn it, there goes that Star Trek door squeak again!> Okay, make sure you are paying attention, because only that way will your descendants avoid slavery in the uranium mines.  Okay, yesterday we highlighted the particular date of 1968.  I would like to further define that as 20th August 1968.
     Now that we've sorted that out, let us return to "The Bridge At Remagen", and immediately change the subject to - LIGNITE MINING!

The Most with the mostest.  Plus lignite

     Back when it was still Czechoslovakia, the government, although nominally Communist, was in reality only the very lightest shade of pink.  They also wanted to get rid of the town of Most in order to begin an open-cast mine, mining - treacle.  No!  Sorry, lignite.  I meant lignite. 

Then again ...

 They put the word about and Hay Pesto!  Hollywood expressed an interest in staging the war fillum TBAR in Czechoslovakia.
     "Do you mind if we blow things up?" asked Hollywood, politely.
     "Not at all!" responded Prague.  "The more you blow up or burn down, the less work there is for us.  Go right ahead."
     Which the film crew did.  If you see buildings being blown up or exploded apart in TBAR, rest assured that this is not the wretched Hollywood flame-pot at work, those buildings really are being blown to bits*.
     Now well into shooting, there occurred a bit of a problem:  THE SOVIET INVASION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA!  In fact !!

"Welcome to Prague!  Now eff off home again.

     Those crowds are jeering, not cheering.
     Not waiting to see how things turned out, the TBAR cast and crew legged it over the border into Austria quick smart, taking the completed film reels with them.  This is a good thing, as the Sinisters would probably have shot them.  As it was, the KGB, probably with their fingers crossed, loudly and proudly displayed all the film military props and kit as "evidence" that the South Canadians were preparing a coup d'état.

An Introduction To Siege Warfare
Because you never know when you might need to besiege your annoying neighbours, and won't you look a fool if you don't know a circumvallation from a contravallation.
     You can comfortably divide siege warfare into pre- and post-gunpowder eras, so we shall examine pre-gunpowder first.
     During this time the most powerful weapons used torsion power for generating kinetic energy, and tended to propel their missiles in a parabola.  The Trebuchet (also our font here at BOOJUM!) is an example of this.  

Hooray for the trebuchet!

There were weapons that fired their projectiles in a flat trajectory, which were a lot less powerful than the ballistic versions.  They were up against defences that tended to be tall and made of stone. 

The Gastraphetes

 It would take a considerable length of time to reduce these effectively with missile weapons, so other tactics were tried, in concert and solo.  These were:
     1)  Biological.  You would catapult dead dog's carcasses over the battlements, hoping to spread disease and despondence amongst the defenders, or at the very least making them wince at the smell.

Cats, too, Jenny.  Cats, too.

     2)  Mining.  You would dig beneath the fortification's foundation, propping up the stonework with wooden beams, then setting them all on fire at once.  The battlements would then collapse, as would the defenders morale.  The Greeks used to calculate that a fifty-yard gap needed to be made to effectively undermine a fortification; it was not unknown for the besiegers to pretend to have undermined this amount, causing a surrender.
     3)  Treachery.  My favourite!  You bribed or threatened an insider to accidentally open the gates whilst some of your stout chaps are loitering with intent.

Thalassemia
This came up as an item on the Beeb website, about a disease which doughty scientists have conquered.  Ha, take that, disease!  Apparently it causes one's red blood cells to spontaneously explode.
     This actually makes a grim kind of sense, as Conrad recognised "Thalassa" - it is Greek for "The sea", and it comes at the end of Xenophon's Tourist Guide To Fighting Your Way Across A Hostile Persia, a.k.a. The Anabasis.  

GPS unavailable

When the remaining warriors of the 10,000 spot the Black Sea in the distance, they know they are saved and shout out "The sea!  The sea!"
     So, if your blood is being rendered all watery and feeble, because all the erythrocytes are exploding, then that is very Thalassemic.
     For your information, "Erythrocytes" come from the Greek for "Red".




*  Very satisfying it is too.