August 9

Today is Smokey the Bear Day (1944). 1678: American Indians sold the Bronx to Jonas Bronck for 400 beads. 1776: Count Amedeo Avogadro, who discovered that at the same T and P all volumes of a perfect gas contained the same number of particles, and defined 6.022 x 1023 units per mole of a substance, was born. 1815: The first natural gas well in the U.S. was discovered. 1819: William Morton, the first dentist to use ether (letheon) during a tooth extraction, was born. 1831: The first steam locomotive train began its inaugural run between Albany and Schenectady, in NY. 1859: The passenger elevator was patented. 1892: Thomas Edison received a patent for the two-way telegraph. 1898: Rudolf Diesel was granted patent #608,845 for an "internal combustion engine" the diesel engine. 1910: The first completely self-contained electric washing machine was patented. 1945: During WW II, an atomic bomb (Fat Man) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, effectively ending the war begun with the 1941 surprise raid at Pearl Harbor. 1956: The first statewide, state-supported educational television network went on the air in AL. 1976: The U.S.S.R. launched Luna 24, last lunar flight to date from Earth. 1985: Arthur Walker, a retired Navy officer, was found guilty of seven counts of spying for the Soviet Union. 1998: Chinese engineers dynamited levees along the Yangtze River to ease the worst floods in 44 years. 2006: : American physicist James Van Allen, discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, died.