Day in Engineering History Archive - December 27

December 27

1571: German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who formulated the three major laws of planetary motion, was born. 1771: Henri Pitot, discoverer of the pitot tube used for airspeed measurements, died. 1822: French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who developed the pasteurization process for milk preservation and developed the rabies vaccine, was born. 1825: The first public railroad using steam locomotive was completed in England. 1923: French civil engineer Gustave Eiffel, of tower fame, died. 1932: Radio City Music Hall opened in NYC. 1949: United States of Indonesia gained independence from Netherlands. 1956: USAF Captain Milburn Apt piloted the Bell X-2 to Mach 3.2, the first time past Mach 3.  968: Apollo 8 and its three astronauts made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific. 1977: Star Wars hit British theaters.

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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.