1/18 Funny Cultural Revolution episode: a thread 🧵 🪡
2/18 In 1975, after a series of abnormally high failure rates in rocket launches and missile tests, the Chinese gov sent general Zhang Aiping to investigate the problems with gyroscope factory 230, which had a reputation of unruliness as it was run by worker factions.
3/18 Upon entering the facility, we immediately saw a huge poster: “Zhang Aiping, what are you doing here! You can’t suppress the revolution with production!” Clearly they were prepared. There was a poster that read “Zhang Aiping fuck off!” He raised his cane and ripped it down.
A thread 🧵 🪡 on the invention of the limpet mine ⬇️
2/ In December 1938, a new unit was created in the British military that soon became known as Military Intelligence (Research), which is sometimes abbreviated as MI(R) or occasionally as MIR. MI(R) absorbed a technical section that was at first known as MI(R)c.
3/ In April 1939, Joe Holland, the head of MIR, recruited his old friend Major Millis Rowland Jefferis as director of the technical section. One of Jefferis' earliest ideas was a mine that could be towed behind a rowboat, which would attach to the hull of a ship that it passed.