June 26

1824: Lord Kelvin, after whom the absolute temperature scale is named, was born. 1898: German aircraft engineer Willy Messerschmitt was born. 1902: William Lear, designer of the Lear Jet, was born. 1910: Roy Plunkett, inventor of Teflon, was born. 1911: Sir Frederic Williams, co-inventor of the CRT (the "Williams-Kilburn tube"), was born. 1948: The Berlin Airlift began as the U.S., Britain and France started ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin. 1974: A package of Wrigley's chewing gum with a bar code printed on it passed over a scanner in Troy, OH, becoming the first product ever logged under the new UPC computerized recognition system. 1976: The CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, was opened as the world's tallest free-standing structure, at a height of 1815 feet 5 inches. 2000: Rival scientific teams completed the first rough map of the human genetic code after a ten-year race.