On December 6, 1884, an aluminum capstone was set atop the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.. (In the 1880s, aluminum was still rare and considered precious.) At 555 feet, this made it the tallest man-made structure in the world, overtaking Cologne Cathedral.
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December 6, 1534: Quito, Ecuador, was founded by Spanish colonists on the ruins of an Incan city.
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And on December 6, 1917, the French munitions cargo ship SS Mont Blanc collided with Norwegian SS Imo in the harbor of Halifax, Canada. The resulting explosion killed at least 1,700 and injured more than 9,000 people. This event has been gauged as the world’s largest pre-atomic explosion.
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Today’s feature article is a re-post from our friend and fellow American Redoubt resident Brandon Smith. He is the editor of the free Alt-Market.us website and the by-subscription newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch. Both publications are well worth reading.
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We need some entries for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. More than $978,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 122 ends on January 31st, 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