Most Heavily Decorated Soldier

You want to meet a hero? Watch this film about Bob Howard who was nominated for the Medal of Honor 3 times. You can only receive it once in a lifetime. He was not a simple man. He had two masters degrees, but he also served us all for 50 years in the uniform of the U.S. Army. Rest in Peace, Bob Howard. LINK, Via: Youtube

RIP Frank Buckles

Frank W. Buckles celebrated his 110th birthday on February first. He died peacefully at his home on Sunday morning. Buckles was one of 4,734,992 Americans who served in World War I. With his death, there are no more surviving US veterans of that war.

Buckles, who served as a U.S. Army ambulance driver in Europe during what became known as the “Great War,” rose to the rank of corporal before the war ended. He came to prominence in recent years, in part because of the work of DeJonge, a Michigan portrait photographer who had undertaken a project to document the last surviving veterans of that war.

As the years continued, all but Buckles had passed away, leaving him the “last man standing” among U.S. troops who were called “The Doughboys.”

In recent years, Buckles became an advocate for a memorial in Washington to honor those who served in the “Great War”. Link, -Via: Fark, Via: Neatorama

Godspeed Mr. Buckles.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

US Army Rail Gun Fires for the First Time

Not to be less than the US Navy, the Army has tested their own electromagnetic rail gun, firing several times at Dugway Proving Grounds. Manufacturer General Atomics calls it Blitzer. I call it Hey Enemy Tank, You Have Been Blended.

Blitzer will continue testing through 2010, until they fire "tactically relevant aerodynamic rounds." That means shells designed to obliterate enemy tanks, bunkers, and anything that moves on the ground.

[General Atomics, Via: Popsci, Via: Gizmodo]

US Army raises world's largest herd of white deer

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer. .

Recovering from our experience being Boinged (Sysadmin, save me!) I thought I would share a wondrous site found in a less than exotic location...

The story begins in 1941 at an army depot in Seneca County, NY when some soldiers noticed a couple white deer roaming inside their 24-square-mile fenced-off base. Realizing that something strange (and wonderful) was afoot, the General ordered the soldiers to protect the white deer. While the soldiers continued to hunt brown deer inside the confines of the reserve, the white ones were allowed to breed. With predators were kept at bay by a giant fence, and pressure put on the brown deer by hunting, the white deer population was able to explode. (These blanched deer are not albinos, as you might assume, but rather possess two copies of another rare recessive gene for whiteness.) There are now 200 of them roaming the grounds, the largest herd of white deer anywhere in the world.

Today the base is no longer active, but the deer are looked after by a not-for-profit organization--Seneca White Deer Inc--devoted to managing the herd. They are currently fighting plans by developers to reduce the area to a fourth of its current size. LINK

Seneca White Deer Website