1603:
William Gilbert,
the "father of electrical studies," coiner of the names of electric attraction, electric
force, and magnetic poles, died. 1756: German physicist
Ernst Chladni,
known as "the father of acoustics," was born. 1782: The U.S. and Britain signed preliminary
peace articles in Paris, ending the
Revolutionary
War. 1874:
Sir Winston Churchill was born. 1835:
Samuel Clemens (aka
Mark Twain) was born, the same year as an appearance of Halley's Comet and, amazingly,
the comet's next appearance came during April 1910, the year of Clemens' death (throughout
his life, Clemens said that he would "go out with the comet"). 1850:
Germain Hess, early
thermochemistry researcher who developed Hess's law of constant heat summation, died.
1858: John Mason patented the screw neck bottle (Mason Jar). 1882:
Hans Geiger, inventor
of the Geiger counter alpha particle detector, was born. 1954: In Sylacauga, AL, Ann
Hodges, was bruised on the arm and hip by a meteorite (Hodges Meteorite) that
fell through the roof of her house into her living room. 1983: Radio Shack announced
Tandy Model 2000 computer
(80186 chip). 1999: British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form
BAE Systems.
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.
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