August 17
Cat Nights begin today. 1807:
Robert Fulton's
steamboat Clermont made its first trip up NY's Hudson River. 1859: The first
U.S. air mail delivery was made in a balloon from Lafayette, IN. 1891:
The automobile electric self-starter was patented. 1893:
Walter Noddack,
discoverer of the element rhenium (Re, 75), was born. 1960:
Francis
Gary Powers' U-2 spy trial opened in Moscow. 1969:
Hurricane
Camille slammed into the Gulf Coast at Biloxi, MS. 1978: The first trans-Atlantic
balloon flight
was completed, from Maine to France. 1982: The
CD-ROM made its debut from Philips, featuring the group ABBA.
1998: Bill Clinton admitted to
Lewinsky
affair after a previous public denial. 2000:
Robert Gilruth,
developer of the Bell X-1 supersonic airplane, died.
| 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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