This Week In #History ... February 14th - February 20th
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @UlaVovk
Feb 14
1803 Apple parer patented by Moses Coats, Downington, Pennsylvania
1876 A G Bell and Elisha Gray apply separately for telephone patents Supreme Court eventually rules Bell rightful inventor
1899 U.S. Congress begins using voting machines
1924 IBM Corporation founded by Thomas Watson
1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, 7 gangsters killed
1950 U.S.S.R. and China sign peace treaty
1961 Element 103, Lawrencium, 1st produced in Berkeley, California
1978 1st "micro on a chip" patented by Texas Instruments
2001 Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft becomes first vehicle to land on an asteroid (433 Eros)
Happy birthday to Leon Battista Alberti, Zahir al-Din Mohammed Babur Shah, Henry II of Bavaria, Johann Pistorius, Richard Allen, Frederick Douglass, Margaret Knight, Cecil De Vere, Joseph Thomson, George Washington Gale Ferris, Robert E Park, Henricus A. Poels, Charles Wilson, William John Gruffydd, George Jean Nathan, Nikolaj A. Orloff, Max Horkheimer, Fritz Zwicky, John Randall, Jr., Stu Erwin, Charles William Oatley, Thelma Ritter, Willem J. Kolff, Florence Rice, Edward Platt, Derrick Holden-Brown, Lois Maxwell, Vic Morrow, Alexander Kluge, Marlene Matthews, David Wilson, Andrew Pine, Chris Pyne, Ischa Meijer, Alan Parker, Tina Aumont, Ken Wahl, Perry Stephens, D'Wayne Wiggins, Petr Svoboda, Nathan Osmond, Simon Pegg.
Feb 15
1768 1st mustard manufactured in America advertised, Philadelphia
1804 New Jersey becomes last northern state to abolish slavery
1852 Great Ormond St. Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits 1st patient
1902 Underground railway (U-Bahn)
1933 President-elect Franklin Roosevelt survives assassination attempt
1944 891 British bombers attack Berlin
1955 1st pilot plant to produce man-made diamonds announced
1967 1st anti-bootleg recording laws enacted
1981 Rocket-powered ice sled attains 399 kph, Lake George, New York
1998 Daytona 500 race
Happy birthday to Charles de Guise, Galileo Galilei, Francois Charpentier, Frans Anneessens, Antonio M Valsalva, Louis XV the Well-Beloved, Abraham Clark, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Malthus, Henry Engelhard Steinway, Frederik W. Conrad, John Augustus Sutter, Cyrus Hall McCormick, Charles Lewis Tiffany, Charles F Daubigny, Christopher Sholes, William Preece, William Pickering, Alfred North Whitehead, Ernest H Shackleton, John Barrymore, Oswaldo Aranha, Gale Sondergard, Cesar Romero, Kevin McCarthy, Keene Curtis, Harvey Korman, Claire Bloom, Susan Brownmiller, Douglas R Hofstadter, Rusty Hamer, Jess Walton, Jane Seymour, Renee Props, Michael Easton, Renee O'Connor, Amy Van Dyken.
Feb 16
1741 Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine, 2nd U.S. magazine begins publishing
1846 Battle of Sobraon ends 1st Sikh War in India
1878 Silver dollar became U.S. legal tender
1905 1st U.S. Esperanto club organizes in Boston
1932 1st patent issued for a tree, to James Markham for a peach tree
1946 1st commercially designed helicopter tested, Bridgeport, Connecticut
1956 Britain abolishes death penalty
1965 Pegasus 1 launched to detect micro-meteors
1972 1st NBA to score 30,000 points (Wilt Chamberlain in 940 games)
2010 The Queen Mary 2 makes her first port call in China at the Port of Shanghai, since her maiden voyage in 2004
Happy birthday to Ordericus Vitalis, Rheticus, Frederick William, Bohuslav Matej Czernohorsky, Pierre Bouguer, Johann Heinse, Heinrich Barth, Joseph V von Scheffel, Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, Henry B. Adams, Arnoldus Pannevis, Charles Taze Russell, George Macauley Trevelyan, Selim Palmgren, Robert Flaherty, Van Wyck Brooks, Katharine Cornell, Chester Morris, Vera Menchik, Henri van Albada, Jeffrey Lynn, Hal Porter, Vera-Ellen, John Schlesinger, Ken Takakura, Gretchen Wyler, Brian Bedford, Paul Bailey, Paul Bailey, Vitali Kuznetsov, Aleksandr Shaparenko, William Katt, Iain [Menzies] Banks, James Ingram, Ice-T, Andy Taylor, Christopher Eccleston, Bo Bennett, Kimberly Dawn Whipany.
Feb 17
1817 Baltimore is the 1st U.S. city lit by gas
1911 1st hydroplane flight to and from a ship (Glenn Curtiss, San Diego)
1934 1st high school auto driving course offered (State College, Penn.)
1938 1st public experimental demonstration of Baird color TV in London
1958 Comic strip "BC" 1st appears
1959 1st weather satellite launched, Vanguard 2, 9.8 kg
1979 China invades Vietnam
1985 1st day/night game at the MCG, Australia vs. England
2008 Kosovo declares independence from Serbia
Happy birthday to J Henry Alting, Arcangelo Corelli, Baron Ernst Gottlieb, Hans Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, Tobias Mayer, Horace B de Saussure, Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe Lannec, Samuel van Houten, Jaroslav Vrchlicky, Friedrich A. Krupp, Samuel Sidney McClure, William Cadbury, Louis de Raet, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Ronald Aburthnott Knox, Ronald Fisher, Anita Stewart, Johannes Linthorst Homan, Charles B Timmer, Staats Cotsworth, Marc Lawrence, Oskar Danon, Arthur Kennedy, Raf Vallone, Margaret Truman, Buck Trent, Alan Bates, Patricia Morrow, Dallas Adams, Janice Dickinson, Rowdy Gaines, Ambrose "Rowdy" Gaines, Michael Jordan, Denise Richards, Billie Joe Armstrong, Jerry O'Connell, Jason Ritter, Paris Hilton, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Feb 18
1787 Austrian emperor Jozef II bans children under 8 from labor
1876 Direct telegraph link established between Britain and New Zealand
1915 Germany begins a blockade of England
1930 U.S. astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto
1953 Premiere of 1st 3-D feature film - "Bwana Devil" (New York City)
1968 10,000 demonstrators against U.S. in Vietnam War in West-Berlin
1979 Snow falls in Sahara Desert
2003 Arsonist set a fire in a trian station in Daegu, South Korea kills nearly 200
Happy birthday to Mary I Tudor (Bloody Mary), Giovanni Battista Vitali, Jacques Cassini, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, Thomas Girtin, Marshall Hall, Ramakrishna, Ernst Mach, Willem Maris, Max Klinger, Sholem Aleichem, Walter Andrae, Tom Walls, Gladys Cooper, Edward Arnold, Semjon Timoshenko, Reginald Sheffield, Billy Dewolfe, Wallace Stegner, Phyllis Calvert, Helen Gurley Brown, Allan Melvin, George Kennedy, Harry "Little" Caesar, Johnny Hart, Milos Forman, Mary Ure, Ian Hacking, Dennis De Young, John Hughes, John Travolta, Marita Koch, Julie Strain, Dr. Dre, Gary Neville.
Feb 19
1831 1st practical U.S. coal-burning locomotive makes 1st trial run, Pennsylvania
1881 Kansas becomes 1st state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages
1933 Prussian minister Goering bans all Catholic newspapers
1953 Georgia approves U.S. 1st literature censorship board
1969 1st Test flight of Boeing 747 jumbo jet
1977 Shuttle Enterprise makes 1st Test flight atop a 747 jetliner
1987 Anti-smoking ad airs for 1st time on TV, featuring Yul Brynner
1992 Peter Collins discovers nova Cygni 1992
2010 The Vatican approves of Australian Mary MacKillop as their first saint for canonization
Happy birthday to Nicolaus Copernicus, David Garrick, Pieter G van Overstraten, Mark Prager Lindo, Elie Ducommun, Svante August Arhenius, Sven Hedin, Evert Gorter, Cedric Hardwicke, Louis Calhern, Nydia Westman, Hugo Haas, Merle Oberon, Eddie Arcaro, George Rose, Andries Treurnicht, Lee Marvin, Leslie Laing, Jean-Pierre Ponnele, Carlin Glynn, Sam Abell, Thomas Brasch, Paul Dean, Peter Bird, Byron K Lichtenburg, Edward Hardin, Andy Powell, Stephen Nichols, Amy Tan, Frances Bucholz, Bill Kirchenbauer, Jeff Daniels, George David Low, Johann Hoelzel Falco, Holly Johnson, Jessica Tuck, Andrew Jameson, Becky Dyroen-Lancer.
Feb 20
1768 1st American chartered fire insurance company opens (Penn.)
1872 Hydraulic electric elevator patented by Cyrus Baldwin
1922 Vilinus, Lithuania, agrees to separate from Poland
1935 Karoline Mikkelson is 1st woman on Antarctica
1949 1st International Pancake Race held (Liberal, KS)
1962 John Glenn is 1st American to orbit Earth in Friendship 7
1975 Margaret Thatcher elected leader of British Conservative Party
2010 At least 32 people are dead and 68 injured from floods and mudslides on the island of Madeira, Portugal
Happy birthday to Johan Friis, Gentile Bellini, Adam Black, Angelina Grimke, Joseph Jefferson, Allessandro d'Ancona, Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann, Louis F M van Westerhoven, Mary Garden, Hesketh Pearson, Marie Rambert, Russel Crouse, Enzo Ferrari, Jean Negulesco, Rene Jules Dubos, Henry Eyring, Ella Maillart, Bramwell Fletcher, Malcolm Atterbury, Margot Grahame, John Daly, Jackie Gleason, Liesbeth Tonckens, Amanda Blake, Gloria Vanderbilt, Donald Longmore, Marj Dusay, Robert Huber, Peter Strauss, Lew Soloff, Sandy Duncan, Billy Zoom, James Wilby, Imogen Stubbs, William Baldwin, French Stewart, Cindy Crawford, Kurt Cobain, Brian Littrell, Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Interesting fact: On February 20th 5 siblings were born in a span of 14 years - Catherine (1952), Carol (1953), Charles (1956), Claudia (1961) & Cecilia (1966). Yeah, mindfuck!