August 31
1821:
Hermann von Helmholtz, who experimented
with physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology, and inventor
of the Helmholtz coil, was born. 1842: The U.S.
Naval Observatory was authorized by an act of Congress. 1887:
Thomas
Edison received a patent for his
kinetoscope (movie projector). 1903: A Packard automobile become the
first car to cross the U.S. under its own power by completing a 52-day journey from San
Francisco to New York. 1956: The
KC-135 Stratotanker made its first flight. 1962: President Kennedy
signed the
Communications Satellite Act which gave a monopoly on international
communications via satellite to a new corporation called
Comsat. 1988: A 5-day
power blackout in downtown Seattle began. 1994: Russia officially
ended its military presence in the former
East Germany.
| 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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