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 January 19
 1736 (O.S.):
James Watt,
inventor of the steam engine and after whom the unit of power is named, was born.
1747: German astronomer
Johann Bode,
who formulated Bode's Law governing planet distance from the sun, was born. 1883:
Thomas Edison's first village electric lighting system using
overhead wires began operation in Roselle, NJ. 1903: President
Theodore Roosevelt sent the first trans-Atlantic,
wireless
telegraph message to King Edward VII of England. 1904: Thomas Edison was issued
a patent for an
Electrical Automobile. 1915: George Claude patented the
neon tube advertising sign. Also in 1915, more than 20 people
were killed when German
zeppelins bombed England for the first time. 1922: U.S. Geological
Survey predicted that the U.S. oil supply will last only 20 years. 1937:
Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying from
Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. 1969: My twin
sisters, Bonnie and Brenda Blattenberger, were born - Happy Birthday! 1977: President
Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino ("Tokyo Rose"). 1983: The Apple "Lisa" computer,
which was the first with a GUI, was released. 1976:
Hidetsugu Yagi,
inventor of the antenna bearing his name, died. 2038: The Unix time stamp (POSIX)
becomes technically obsolete - the Y2.038k problem.
| Jan
| Feb | Mar |
Apr | May |
Jun | Jul |
Aug | Sep |
Oct | Nov |
Dec |
Note: These
historical tidbits have been collected from various sources, mostly on the Internet.
As detailed in
this 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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