According to Van Tillburg, it looks more like a Cold War submarine than a WW2 ship, build for high speed underwater travel. The I-401 was its sister vessel. That one was located in 2005, and it was capable of carrying 144 people through 37,000 miles, it was three times the size of modern submarines. Japan wanted to use these ships to launch aerial attacks in the continental United States. To do this, it used three Aichi light bombers, each capable of carrying an 800-kilogram bomb. When their mission was complete, the bombers returned to the submarine, landing on the water using floats.

The Japanese also had a dirty trick in their pockets: Use the submarines to drop big cans full of rats infected with the plague and insects loaded with cholera, dengue, and typhus. They never were able to put that in practice, however. The Americans delivered a big can full of atoms to them first.

These two submarines were so advanced that, after being captured and inspected by the United States, they were sunk so the Soviets couldn't inspect them. The Japanese were the pioneers in developing advanced aerial attack technology for submarines. The sea-to-air cruise missile was developed later, during the Cold War period. Nowadays, the US Navy is working on submarine-launched drones, which can take off from underwater. [National Geographic via Daily Mail]

If there's an argument to be made, it's one of durability. These vintage Nazi backpacks are rated to last another 50 years (apparently WW2 was meant to go on a long, long time). Retrofitted with solar panels and batteries before being rebranded as KILLA Vintage series #1 bags, I have a feeling that the electronics will fail long before the cloth will wear away.

And while admitting this feels a bit awkward, I'm smitten with the design of the pack itself. It's almost too bad that only 20 bags will be produced yearly for an unspecified price. [Killa via taktomyshirt via therawfeed]

This tunnel is actually one of eight built by the British government during World War 2 as a network of bomb shelters to protect citizens from the German blitz. They could hold 8,000 people and were designed to function for five weeks without any assistance from the outside world. This "protection" even included "a bar and two canteens, not in use, and a billiard room, not to mention functioning water and electricity supplies," reports the New York Times.

However, after their completion, the tunnels were held aside to serve as secret bases of operations for soldiers. They were never used as shelters. Instead, they served as a temporary base for D-Day troops; one even became the European HQ for U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later, in 1944, the tunnels became bastions of counterintelligence, as members of the secret service used them to coordinate resistance movements in Nazi-controlled countries. The tunnels, once filled with Normandy invaders, were decked out with spy gear, telephones and teleprinters.

Today, though, the tunnels are empty, and waiting for some rich playboy real estate tycoon to swoop in and buy them up. Won't you take up that standard, and invite us poor gadget-loving folk to a few parties below the busy London streets? Please? [New york Times]

After seeing his watch splosh into the water, Teddy sent down a couple of divers to search for it, but without any luck. So, he informed the deputy harbor-master who logged the missing object. Fast-forward to 2007, and the watch turned up during the dredging of the harbor. When the authorities checked the log, they found Teddy's claim, and sent the watch, still ticking, off to him. Now 90 years old, the reitred sailor couldn't believe his eyes when a package containing his gold watch arrived at his new home.

'To say I was stunned could be considered a major understatement,' he said. "It truly was a miracle that I had been reunited with that watch after a lifetime. Now I wear it every day and it keeps perfect time, even after all those years in the water. It is absolutely excellent and I consider it a long-lost friend.'" [Daily Mail]

Tony Sale, the man behind Colossus' restoration, had just a few old photos to go on when he started on the project 14 years ago. One of the reasons that the machine, which contains over 2,000 valves, is so fast, is because it was a single-purpose processor rather than one with multiple uses, like modern computers. Of the two teams, he is unsure which one will win the Cipher Challenge.

"A virtual Colossus written to run on a Pentium 2 laptop takes about the same time to break a cipher as Colossus does," he said. The original machine could break codes in a matter of hours, and was instrumental in the Allies' eventual victory, shortening the war by an estimated 18 months.

"It was extremely important in the buildup to D-Day," reckons Mr Sale. "It revealed troop movements, the state of supplies, state of ammunition, numbers of dead soldiers—vitally important information for the whole of the second part of the war." Today's messages will be scrambled using a Lorenz SZ42 machine, the same used by German high command back in the '40s. [BBC News and 24 Hour Museum]