This Week In #History ... January 31 - February 6th
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @UlaVovk
Jan 31
1928 Scotch tape 1st marketed by 3-M Company
1930 1st U.S. glider flight from a dirigible, Lakehurst, New Jersey
1943 General Friedrich von Paul surrenders to Russian troops at Stalingrad
1955 RCA demonstrates 1st music synthesizer
1958 U.S. launches their 1st artificial satellite, Explorer 1
2010 A 5.2 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province, China, destroys at least 100 homes, injures 11 and kills one person
Happy birthday to Pieter de Bloot, Robert Morris, Franz Anton graaf von Kolowrat, Bernard Barton, Louis Angely, Franz Peter Schubert, Jan C J van Speijk, Jozsef Bajza, Samuel Sarphati, Emil Strauss, Theodore William Richards, Zane Grey, Willem J M van Eysinga, Joseph A. Cushman, Nicholas Joy, Adolf Bach, Freya Stark, Blaž Arnič, Alva Myrdal, Tallulah Bankhead, E van Ruller, Rene Simone Mathieu, Louis Osman, Thomas Merton, John Agar, Norman Mailer, Eddie Ryder, Jean Simmons, Rudolf Mossbauer, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Walter, Jonathan Banks, Shirley F Babashoff, Scott Ian Rosenfeld, John Dye, Minnie Driver, Justin Timberlake.
Feb 1
1884 1st volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, A-Ant, published
1920 1st commercial armored car introduced in St. Paul, Minn.
1951 1st X-ray moving picture process demonstrated
1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. and 700 demonstrators arrested in Selma, Alabama
1972 1st scientific hand-held calculator, the HP-35, introduced for $395
1982 "Late Night With David Letterman," debuts on NBC-TV
2003 Space Shuttle Columbia destroyed over Texas when returning to Earth, 7 crew members are killed
Happy birthday to Konrad E Ackermann, John P Kemble, Thomas Campbell, Charles J Sax, G. Stanley Hall, Victor August Herbert, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Eddie Pola, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dirk Roosenburg, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, John Ford, Clark Gable, S J Perelman, Emilio Segre, Alan Strode Campbell Ross, Albie Booth, Michael Kanin, Stanley Matthews, Galway Kinnell, Madeline Berthod, John Nott, Garrett Morris, Sherman Hemsley, Bibi Besch, Tina Sloan, Bart Braverman, Gilbert Hernandez, Gabrielle Carteris, Stephanie Marie Elisabeth de Grimaldi, Brandon Lee, Lisa Marie Presley, Jennifer Lien.
Feb 2
1852 1st British public men's toilet opens (Fleet St. London)
1892 Bottle cap with cork seal patented by William Painter (Baltimore)
1931 1st use of a rocket to deliver mail, Austria
1935 Lie detector 1st used in court, Portage, Wisconsin
1962 8 of 9 planets align for 1st time in 400 years
1977 Radio Shack officially begins creating TRS-80 computer
2010 The World Food Programme reports that 4.3 million people suffer from hunger in Sudan, the number has quadrupled since 2009
Happy birthday to Jacob van Campen, Hannah More, Jean-Baptiste JD Boussingault, John Glover, Jan Six, Henry Ellis, Margot Asquith, Fritz Kreisler, Karl Frederick, James Joyce, Kurt Baschwitz, George S Halas, Jane Wilde, Connie Gilchrist, Clarence "Buster" Crabbe, Wanda Lewis, Elaine Stritch, Howard Caine, Clyde Skip Batten, Thomas Michael Disch, Bo Hopkins, Barry Diller, Katherine Crawford, Barbara Sukowa, Shakira.
Feb 3
1815 World's 1st commercial cheese factory established, in Switzerland
1876 Albert Spalding with $800 starts sporting goods company, manufacturing 1st official baseball, tennis ball, basketball, golf ball, and football
1945 Almost 1000 Flying Fortresses drop 3000 ton bombs on Berlin
1962 President Kennedy bans all trade with Cuba except for food and drugs
1998 Stamps commemorating Princess Diana go on sale across Britain
2010 Somali pirates seize a North-Korean flagged cargo ship south of Yemen
Happy birthday to Charles VI, Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Elizabeth Blackwell, Walter Bagehot, Norman Rockwell, Paul Urysohn, Peggy Ann Garner, Jeremy Kemp, Deszo Nowak, Bridget Hanley, Blythe Danner, Morgan Fairchild, Felipe Munoz, Nathan Lane, Lee Crystal, Loi Tolhurst, Keith Gordon, Jason Morris, Isla Fisher, Maitland Ward.
Feb 4
1824 J. W. Goodrich introduces rubber galoshes to public
1895 1st rolling lift bridge opens, Chicago
1920 1st flight from London to South Africa takes-off
1924 1st Winter Olympic games close at Chamonix, France
1936 1st radioactive substance produced synthetically (radium E)
1971 Apollo 14 lander Antares lands on Moon (Shepard and Mitchell)
1985 20 countries (but not U.S.) sign United Nations treaty outlawing torture
2010 Yahoo! sells HotJobs to Monster.com for a reported $225 million
Happy birthday to George Lillo, Carel H Verhuell, Maurits C van Hall, Mark Hopkins, Joshua Norton, Clement Ader, Francois-Victor-Jean Aicard, Constance Gore-booth Markiewicz, Ludwig Prandtl, Fernand Leger, Walter Catlett, Raymond Dart, Bernard Rogers, Charles Lindbergh, Alexander Oppenheim, Eddie Foy, Jr., Clyde William Tombaugh, David Lavender, Ida Lupino, Ray Evans, Norman Wisdom, Betty Friedan, Dave Ketchum, Gary Conway, Magnar Solberg, John Devitt, Collin Wilcox, John Steel, Jeannie Wilson, Pamela Franklin, Werner Schwab, Sergei Grinkov, Gabrielle Anwar, Oscar de la Hoya, Natalie Imbruglia, Gavin DeGraw.
Feb 5
1850 Adding machine employing depressible keys patented, New Paltz, New York
1861 1st moving picture peep show machine is patented by Samuel Goodale
1922 Reader's Digest magazine 1st published
1958 Gamel Abdel Nasser nominated 1st president of United Arab Republic
1974 U.S. Mariner 10 returns 1st close-up photos of Venus' cloud structure
1991 Howard Stern kisses New York Giant Leonard Marshall's ass over bet Stern lost claiming the Giants would lose the Superbowl
2010 Danish special forces storm a ship captured by Somali pirates, freeing 25 crewmembers on board
Happy birthday to Marie de Sevigne, John Witherspoon, John Jeffries, Christian Gottlob Neefe, Alexandre Brongniart, Robert "Bobbie" Peel, John Lindley, John Watkinson, John Boyd Dunlop, Hiram Stevens Maxim, Belle Starr [Myra Belle Shirley], Henri [Hendrik J] Hall, Andre-Gustave Citroen, Edward Rigby, Karl L Schmidt, Dirk U Stikker, John Carradine, Willard Parker, Alan Hodgkin, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charles J "Tim" Holt, John M Pritchard, Nick Georgiade, Stuart Damon, David Selby, Nolan Bushnell, Michael Mann, Charles Winfield, Al Kooper, Errol Morris, Christopher Guest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Meadows, Dennis Hall, Diego Serrano, Cristiano Ronaldo.
Feb 6
1869 Harper's Weekly publishes 1st picture of Uncle Sam with chin whiskers
1935 Monopoly board game goes on sale for 1st time
1948 KNXT (now KCBS) TV channel 2 in Los Angeles, California (CBS) 1st broadcast
1974 U.S. House of Representatives begins determining grounds for impeachment of Nixon
1987 No-smoking rules take effect in federal buildings
2010 The Taliban blow up a girls' school in Huwaid, Pakistan, no one is killed
Happy birthday to Anne Stuart, Theodore Caruelle d'Aligny, José María de Pereda y Sánchez Porrúa, Henry Irving, John Henry Mackay, Karl T Sapper, Louis Pierard, Anton Hermann Fokker, Alberto [de Almeida] Cavalcanti, Ben Lyon, Irmgard Keun, Ronald Reagan, John Edward Christopher Hill, Eva Braun, Mary Leakey, John Lund, Patrick MacNee, Sixten Jernberg, Keith Waterhouse, Wies Andersen, Mike Farrell, Stephen Albert, Gigi Perreau, Gayle Hunnicutt, Natalie Cole, Linda Grovenor, Robert Townsend, Barry Miller, Megan Gallagher, April Lerman, Jeff Rouse, Brandon Hammond.