Oklahoma City bombing. (2012). The History Channel website. Retrieved 5:13, January 30, 2012, from http://www.history.com/topics/oklahoma-city-bombing. Timothy McVeigh, an anti-government militant, set off a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The blast collapsed one side of the nine-story building and cost 168 people their lives. Until September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the worst terrorist attack to take place on U.S. soil. McVeigh received the death penalty for his crimes. The Oklahoma City Bombing was a terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995, in which a massive homemade bomb concealed in a rental truck exploded, heavily…

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Plants trapped under Iceland’s icecaps store a record of ancient temperatures   The Little Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions, and sustained by changes in Arctic ice cover, scientists conclude. An international research team studied ancient plants from Iceland and Canada, and sediments carried by glaciers. They say a series of eruptions just before 1300 lowered Arctic temperatures enough for ice sheets to expand. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, they say this would have kept the Earth cool for centuries. The exact definition of the Little Ice Age is disputed. While many studies suggest temperatures fell globally…

A 1929 Cartoon Explains How ‘Talkies’ Work By Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/01/finding-his-voice-1929/251929/ Jan 24 2012, 4:13 PM ET  Once upon a time, synchronized sound in movies was still new and exciting. Finding His Voice, a cartoon starring two rolls of film named Talkie and Mutie, illustrates that process. In the course of Mutie’s quest to get a voice, Dr. Western, a “film surgeon,” leads the pair through the whole process, from sound stage to screen. Courtesy of the Prelinger Archive, the film was created by Western Electric to promote their sound-on-film recording system. Max Fleischer, the co-director of the film, went on to create Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman.    Kasia…

The following article is in  response to a request by a reader for facts and issues regarding Pearl Harbor. How America Changed After Pearl Harbor The December of 1941 radically altered America and its global role By MICHAEL MORELLA January 6, 2012 On Dec. 7, 1941, radios buzzed with the news that several hundred Japanese planes attacked a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 Americans as well as damaging or destroying eight Navy battleships and more than 100 planes. Though it would be some time before people learned the full scope of the damage, within days a once-distant war in Europe and the Pacific became…

January 24, 2012 8:03 AM JFK tapes reveal days before his death By Bill Plante It’s a rare peek into Camelot.   The last batch of John F. Kennedy’s private White House tapes are being released by his presidential library.   The 45 hours of audio chronicle the end of his presidency — the last of them was recorded just two days before his assassination.   A particularly ominous note is sounded just three days before Dallas, when the president asks staffers to schedule a meeting with an Indonesian general. At one point during the discussion, he makes a haunting reference to the day on which his funeral would be…