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  February 20
1844:
Ludwig Boltzmann,
after whom the Boltzmann constant (1.3806505 × 10-23 J/K) was named,
was born. 1877: The first cantilever bridge in the U.S. was completed in Harrodsburg,
KY. 1931: John
Milnor, who proved that a 7-dimensional sphere can have 28 different differential
structures - important work to be sure - was born. 1948: The first B-50 Superfortress
bomber was delivered to the Air Force. 1956: German physicist
Heinrich
Barkhausen, who discovered the effect named after him regarding changes in the
magnetic domain properties of metal, died. 1962: Astronaut
John
Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew 3 times around the
earth aboard the
Friendship 7 Mercury capsule. 1965: The
Ranger 8 spacecraft
crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.
1986: The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station into orbit. 1993:
Ferruccio
Lamborghini, of sports car fame, died. 2005: Spain became the first country
to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed
Constitution of the European Union.
Note: These
historical tidbits (see daily
list) have been collected from various sources, mostly on the Internet.
As detailed in my
It Happened When? Factoid article, there
is a lot of wrong information that is repeated hundreds of times because most websites
do not validate with authoritative sources. On RF Cafe, events with
hyperlinks have been verified. Many years ago,
I began commemorating the birthdays of notable people and events with
special RF Cafe logos.
Where available, I like to use images from postage stamps from the country where
the person or event occurred. Images used in the logos are often from open source
websites like Wikipedia, and are specifically credited with a hyperlink back to
the source where possible.
Fair Use laws permit
small samples of copyrighted content.
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