April 12

1852: Ferdinand von Lindemann, who first proved that p is transcendental, was born. 1892: George Blickensderfer was awarded the first U.S. patent for a portable typewriter (first laptop?). 1955: The Salk vaccine against polio was announced to work. 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in space, orbiting the Earth once before making a safe landing. 1981: The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, FL, on its first flight (STS-1). 1984: The Telecommunications Act of 1984 received the Royal Assent, confirming the intention of the British government to privatize British Telecom. 1988: The first U.S. patent was issued for an animal life form to Harvard scientists for a genetically engineered mouse. 1994: Attorney Laurence Canter [allegedly] wrote a Perl script to flood Usenet message board readers with a notice for the "Green Card Lottery," thus creating the first incident of spamming. 2004: Barry Bonds hit his 660th home run to tie Willie Mays for third on baseball's career list.