August 25

Today is 007 Day (Sean Connery born). 1609: Galileo demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers. 1814: The British continue burning Washington, D.C., but the Patent Office was saved by the British Superintendent of Patents, Dr. William Thornton. 1819: James Watt, inventor of the steam engine and after whom the unit of power is named, died. 1830: The first race between a locomotive (the Tom Thumb) and a horse-drawn vehicle held between Relay and Baltimore, MD, a nine mile stretch (the horse won). 1867: Michael Faraday, who discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction (Faraday's Law), died. 1880: Joshua Lionel Cowen, founder of the Lionel model train company, was born. 1908: Antoine Becquerel, who discovered radiation (Becquerel rays) from uranium salts, died. 1910: Arnold Neustadter, inventor of the Rolodex (rolling index), was born. 1921: Peter Hewitt, inventor of the mercury vapor lamp, died. 1944: Paris was liberated from Nazi occupation (Freedom Tuesday). 1956: George Pierce, inventor of the quartz crystal based Peirce oscillator, died. 1965: The Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) was founded. 1981: Voyager 2 flew past Saturn and provided hundreds of close-up images. 1991: Linus Torvalds posted a message to the comp.os.minix newsgroup stating his intention to create what would become the Linux operating system. 1992: Hurricane Andrew, the U.S.'s 2nd most destructive hurricane (Katrina #1) thrashed south Florida and the Louisiana coast.