August 7, 1588: English sailors set alight eight fireships, with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder, and tar, and cast them downwind towards the closely anchored vessels of the Spanish Armada, scattering the armada. Pictured: English and Spanish fleets clash in the 1558 Battle of Gravelines in a painting by Philip James de Loutherbourg.
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August 7th, 1933 was the birthday of the late Jerry Pournelle. He, along with Larry Niven, authored the survivalist classic Lucifer’s Hammer.
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As part of the 20th Anniversary celebration for SurvivalBlog, we’ve launched our biggest sale ever on all of our percussion gun inventory at Elk Creek Company. (Elk Creek Company is a spin-off venture that helps pay the bills for SurvivalBlog.) Take note that most of our percussion revolver inventory is hand-selected for the availability of cartridge conversion cylinders. This is particularly important for folks who live in any of the 23 states that have de facto registration on the sales of private party modern (post-1898) cartridge guns. The sale pricing on our percussion guns will end on Friday, August 15, 2025. Oh, and by the way, if you’d like to pay in pre-1965 “junk” U.S. 90% coins, you can divide your order total by 29.7.
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Today’s feature article is by SurvivalBlog staffer Tom Christianson.
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We are in need of entries for Round 120 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. More than $960,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 120 ends on September 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.
Read the full article here