 July 31
 1790: The
first
U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for his process for making potash and pearl
ashes. 1792: The
foundation stone of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was laid. 1918:
Francis Stanley (not his twin brother Freelan), famous for their
Stanley Steamer automobile,
died. 1923:
Stephanie Kwolek, inventor of
Kevlar, was born. 1937:
Charles
Hires of root beer fame died. 1965: The last
cigarette commercial appeared on British
television. 1964: Space probe
Ranger 7 transmitted the first close-up images of the moon's surface ever taken by
a U.S. spacecraft. 1969: A Moscow police chief reported that thousands of Moscow telephone
booths had been made inoperable by thieves who had stolen phone parts in order to convert
their acoustic guitars to electric. 1971: Astronauts rode in a vehicle on the moon for
the first time in a
lunar rover vehicle (LRV). 1998:
IBM's Russian subsidiary agreed to pay $8.5 million in fines for
selling powerful computers ultimately destined for a Russian nuclear weapons laboratory.
2003: Felix Baumgartner
was the first to cross the English Channel by unpowered flight when he jumped from 30,000-ft
and glided 22 miles wearing a birdman
suit.
| 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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