From 1966 to 1994, the Klingons and Romulans, with their cloaking devices and disruptors, held the spot of being famous fictional weapons makers the longest. Action and science fiction movies used to be the playground for writers and directors to showcase powerful weapons that only exist in the imagination. The first famous fictional weapon in US history is the ray gun used by Flash Gordon. The interesting thing is that lasers ended up being invented. This makes one wonder what the future will hold for the other forays into the realm of weapons used in the fiction genres.

1. Weapons of Star Trek

Phasers and Photon torpedoes follow both the Captain Kirk and Captain Picard eras. The Federation had ship mounted as well as rifle and hand held Phaser weapons. They were used for everything from stunning an aggressor to completely vaporizing them. They were used in more than one episode to heat rocks for warmth or light. Klingons and Romulans used disrupter weapons. The Varon-T disruptor was banned by the Federation because of the terrible slow disintegration death it caused.

2. Empire Weapons of Star Wars

The Death Star was being made by the Empire to fight the Rebel Alliance. There were two of them. The Death Stars were supposed to be the size of some planet’s moons and were capable of completely obliterating entire planets. Even though that would be considered an ultimate weapon, it was the lowly Lightsaber that took hold of the imaginations of audience members. The Lightsaber emitted a plasma beam that was the length of a sword. It could cut a person in half with a single swipe.

3. Weapons of Halo

Halo is probably the biggest first-person shooter game in video game history. The multi-billion dollar franchise has spawned lucrative sequels. In the Halo universe, a weapon called “Halo rings” was made to protect people from the “Flood” of parasites that were consuming everything in the Milky Way galaxy. When the Halos were activated, they were designed to destroy all living things that the parasites could use as food. They were superstructures 5,000 miles in diameter with several of them making up an array.

4. Weapons of Umbrella Corp

The Umbrella Corporation is from the Resident Evil series of video games. The franchise’s real fame came when Mila Jovovich starred in the feature films based on the video game plot. Umbrella Corp is a fictional evil corporation driven by profit. Their claim to fame with weapons was using genetics to create powerful soldiers. Jovovich played the role of Alice. She was engineered by the evil corporation but turned on them to become a defender of the remnant of human beings left after a weapons experiment went bad. The T-virus made by the corporation ended up turning most of the human race into zombies.

5. The Martian Tripod

The “War of the Worlds” was written in 1898 by author H.G. Wells. Back then, speculation abounded about whether Mars was inhabited or not. The “little green men” in H.G. Wells novel turned out to be more malevolent than other forays into the genre. The Martian Tripods were large weapons that walked on three legs. They were cited in the book written by Wells as being “higher than many houses.” In the 2005 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise, the Tripods could fire beams that could disintegrate vehicles or buildings as well as being able to emit a poison gas. The Tripods would then pick up the humans to extract their blood.

There are many famous fictional weapons. This is just one version of the Top 5 of all time. Honorable mentions go to Robocop from Omni Consumer Products, and the alien of the Alien movie franchises. Technically, the Alien was not manufactured but was implied to just be an alien species. Some versions of the back story imply it was a manufactured race of biological weapon. There are so many fictional weapons in the history of literature, TV and movies that it would take an encyclopedia to cover them all.

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Sam Hester is a gunsmith and guest author at BecomeGunSmith.org, a site with information on how to become a gunsmith.

If you’re just joining us, you may want to click over to yesterday’s post. If you already read it, are you ready for the answers? But first, here are a few more famous authors. Can you guess who they are?

Mystery Woman #4:
This Italian-American author wrote for the New York Times and eventually won a Pulitzer Commentary award. She left journalism behind for a career as a novelist, and of her five best-sellers, three have become films. Much of her nonfiction works centered on the death of her mother when she was nineteen, and some consider her best material to be on motherhood and raising her three children. She has also written on feminist topics and materialism in America. One of her best-known quotes is, “The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make. … I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”

Mystery Woman #5:
This female author, a Pulitzer prize winner, released her nineteenth novel in 2012. She was raised among the Quaker colonies of North Carolina and Raleigh and didn’t attend school until she was eleven, which helped her view the world, in her words, “with a certain amount of distance and surprise.” She married an Iranian psychiatrist, who died in 1997, and has two children. Her stories usually involve an intriguing elderly protagonist who is looking back on life and remembering events. While her plots are considered slow, her characters are well-developed and the smaller moments ignite the suspense for which she is best known.

Mystery Woman #6:
Our final author was an English novelist in the 1800’s. Her mother was also an author, of a famous feminist social study. Though the author’s mother died when she was eleven days old, her father raised her with a strong emphasis on progressive education. She married one of her father’s political followers, ensuring ostracism from English society for the first few years of their marriage. Her first three children didn’t make it into childhood, leaving her fourth son the only survivor. Her husband drowned when his sail boat was caught in a storm. After his death, she devoted herself to raising her son and her writing career. Her work is among the first of the science fiction genre and was instantly popular. (She originally published anonymously.)

Alright, you ready? Here’s the answers:

Mystery Woman #1: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Mystery Woman #2: Danielle Steel

Mystery Woman #3: Mary Higgins Clark

Mystery Woman #4: Anna Quindlen

Mystery Woman # 5: Anne Tyler

Mystery Woman #6: Mary Shelly (most famous for Frankenstein)

I think every woman and every mother has something equally important to say, and we all do it differently. I’ve read some mommy blogs that were so powerful they brought me to tears. I’ve seen websites that lifted my spirits, and read novels that changed the way I saw the world. Fiction, nonfiction, news articles, blogs, whatever. I agree with Ms. Stowe: “I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.”
The success of these women are all inspirational, but the most inspirational part of their stories is this: they were regular women, with kids and bills and relationship problems. But they kept writing. Persistence paid off for them, and it can pay off for any aspiring or struggling author as well.
Ladies, keep writing. We have some big—and hopefully fashionable—shoes to fill.

Guest blog by

When you think of famous authors in the last decade, it may be surprising that many of them are women. Gone are the days of predominantly male writers, and female authors are beginning to take the world by storm. JK Rowling. Stephanie Meyer. Suzanne Collins. The list goes on and on.
But how much do you really know about history’s most famous female authors, and what is the one thing they all have in common? Below are three of America’s best. Let’s see if you really know your stuff.

Mystery Woman #1:
This woman was short and comely and received what was considered a “man’s education.” She gave birth to seven children, including twin girls. When Congress passed a law that she disagreed with, she felt the time had come for her to make her opinion known. She wrote, “I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.” The result was a book with an initial print run of 5000 copies. That estimate turned out to be grossly inadequate, as she sold almost 300,000 in the first year. 300 babies were named after one of her characters that year in Boston alone. Her book ignited a political fire that is said to have started the Civil War. She eventually met President Abraham Lincoln, who (according to legend) said, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

Mystery Woman #2:
This writer wanted to be a nun when she grew up. Instead, she became the fourth best-selling author of all time, with 800 million copies sold. (That’s almost twice JK Rowling’s record.) Twenty-two of her books have been adapted for television. Despite her literary success, however, her marital situation has been less desirable. She has had five husbands and raised seven children. Readers will notice the relationship and family-oriented themes of her novels, and some note that her female protagonists have become increasingly independent as the author matured.

Mystery Woman #3:
This Irish-American writer began writing at age seven. A few years later, during the Great Depression, she came home from Mass to see that her father had died in his sleep. That ignited years of financial difficulty for her family. Her brother joined the military to help with bills and died of spinal meningitis six months later. After a year of working as a stewardess for Pan Am, she got married and had her first baby nine months later. Just before the fourth child was born, a publisher finally accepted her first short story. That began an interesting career that included writing for radio talk shows and starring in a laundry detergent commercial that aired during the I Love Lucy show. Her husband died of a heart attack, and when her mother-in-law discovered his body, she collapsed and passed away as well. Their first Christmas without their father, this mother of five couldn’t afford presents, so she gave her kids personalized poetry outlining what she wished she could buy them. She eventually began writing suspense novels. To date she has written twenty-four of them, each of which has become a national best-seller.

Leave a comment and see if you know who these ladies are! Tomorrow, I’ll give you clues to two more women, along with all the answers.

Guest blog by

Changing a diaper isn’t usually fun unless it’s your own offspring. Still, Hollywood has had a field day building the lame cliché that dads (or men, in general) aren’t capable of changing a simple diaper. Let’s look at Hollywood’s top baby changing scenes that depict the fun times of changing diapers.

1. Jesse and Joey’s First Diaper Change – Thanks to Three Men and a Baby, Full House made for some classic baby moments. This one shows teamwork between Uncle Jesse and Joey, peppered with Stephanie Tanner’s hilarious comments. While the incompetent Uncle Jesse and Joey wrap Michelle in paper towels, Stephanie steals the show.
2. Mr. Mom – In Mr. Mom, we saw Michael Keaton attempt to do the typical chores associated with moms. In this scene, he turns to his two sons to find out where the diapers are. Armed with goggles and a trash bag, it looks like Mr. Mom is on his own.
3. Three Men and a Baby – In this classic movie, Steve Gutenberg and Tom Selleck are at a loss for how to change baby Mary’s diaper. After using cotton balls to wipe Mary clean, the two finally figure out how to get a diaper on her, but it’s multiple sizes too big. That’s OK, Mary gets revenge when she pees as Selleck holds her up. This one was the scene-stealer in the film and much buzzed about when the movie was released decades ago.
4. Life As We Know It – In this film, Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel inherit a baby to take care of after close friends die in a car accident. While the two aren’t entirely compatible (at first), this makes for a great story of the two arguing over how to properly care for a child. Remember neither has any experience with babies or kids, but we can see which character is willing to stick around and try. There’s nothing like being saved by the bell. We like this one because Duhamel does come around and proves to be a great father figure later in the film.
5. The Change-Up – The Change-Up was released in 2011 and it seems the stigma of a male changing diapers is still something audiences get a laugh from. Jason Bateman is actually the Ryan Reynolds character in this scene, a bachelor who knows nothing about kids, which explains why he proceeds with caution. Still, the little lad ends up shooting poop onto Bateman’s face, making the scene the most graphic and grotesque on our list.

Hollywood loves to perpetuate the stereotype that dads or men can’t change a diaper. The truth is, this job is often outsourced to dads around the globe and many are happy to do it. Hollywood needs to understand that moms and dads have their good and bad days, but taking care of a child properly isn’t exclusive to moms.

Elana Cameron is an active parent and frequently changes diapers.  When she’s not changing diapers she’s writing for BabyStations.com
photo credit: brooklyn skinny via photopin cc

Musicals are one of the best sources of entertainment. Gradually, these are getting dwindled. But then again, London came up with oomph for propagating these shows. Many movies were made based on these stage musicals but are inept of carrying the weight of shows which lead to flops. Philharmonics are noble, humorous with arresting acts. At times, these shows steal the hearts with emotions and sentiments.

The best movie musicals in London are
Matlida: This is a classic novel by Roald Dahl which is admired by all the age groups and is recently reformed by Dennis Kelly in a very funny new style. The story is about a little girl named Matlida who is an intellectual; possess mystifying smartness and paranormal (supernatural) powers. She was disliked by her parents and on the other hand, wonders her school teacher in the course of her first term at school, the teacher and students have an ethical influence on each other’s lives.

Jersey boys: This is about 4 class boys who are working. From a wrong track, one of the boys becomes the best in pop industry and thus the story runs. The music in Jersey Boy’s was four seasons hit with ‘Big girls don’t cry’, ‘Sherry’, ‘Rag doll’, ‘Can’t take my eyes off you’ and ‘oh what a night’. This is a completely magnificent show full of joie de vivre, power and pace.

Wicked: It is about two archetypal young women who meet at a university during graduation where their lives turn unambiguously threatening. The beginning of the show is similar to Harry Potter. Regardless of the age, one can enjoy this stunning show.

Les Miserables: This is the world’s longest seriatim musical and is translated in 21 languages. It constitutes of powerful stuff. It’s an outstanding conversion of ‘Victor Hugo’s’ must watch masterpiece. Indulge yourself with this emotional piece of art.

Aladdin – A wish come true: Visit the wonder world where a young yet poor chap falls in love with a princess; the story with a magical twist when the poor boy suddenly becomes rich with the help of a genie and some fun-loving and trust-worthy friends.

Burn the floor: It’s an intensified Ball room and Latin dance colossal which electrified millions of audiences in more than thirty republics. It takes the spectators on a jaunt over the zealous spectacle of dance.

Blood Brothers: It’s about the heart-rending tale of twins who get separated after their birth, brought up in different tracks. Lastly, when they meet each other, flashes hover. It’s simply tenacious, influential, mesmerizing and inspiring. The moments will be utterly heart-breaking.

Flash Mob: it’s a vast three week run dance show directed by the best of the pop’s Gary Lloyd. This vibrant show is bursting with energy enthralls you with the moves. America’s top dance troops take the stage.

If tempted to revel in the musicals, then plan and be prepared with your passport and VISA to visit London. You can go for bad debt loan if you run short of money anywhere and anytime. It aids the necessity without any credit check.

About the Author: The guest post was contributed by Alicia, financial guest blogger from Manchester, UK. Find out more about her finance related blogs @financeport