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 October 19
 1875: English physicist
Sir Charles
Wheatstone, who invented the resistive bridge circuit that eventually bore his
name, died. 1914: The
U.S. Post Office established the first fleet of government-owned
autos for mail delivery to end rampant fraud by private contractors. 1937: British
Nobel Prize winner
Sir Ernest Rutherford, who discovered alpha and beta particles,
as well as gamma radiation, died. 1941: The first
wind turbine to generate energy for an alternating current central
power system was placed in service in Grandpa's Knob, VT. 1953: The first jet transcontinental
nonstop scheduled service began. 1987:
Black
Monday - the stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged
508 points, or 22.6% in value. 1972: American engineer
Philip Drinker,
who invented the
iron lung, died. 1973: A U.S. Federal Judge signed his decision
following a lengthy court trial which declared the ENIAC patent of Mauchly and Eckert
invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer -- the
Atanasoff-Berry Computer. 2006: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
(DJIA) closed above 12,000 for the first time. 2006: Duke University
researchers announced the first demonstration of a working
invisibility cloak.
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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