January 19
 1736:
James Watt, inventor
of the steam engine and after whom the unit of power is named, was born. 1747: German
astronomer Johann
Bode, who formulated Bode's Law governing planet distance from the sun, was born. 1883:
Thomas Edison's first village electric lighting system using
overhead
wires began operation in Roselle, NJ. 1903: President Theodore Roosevelt sent the
first trans-Atlantic,
wireless telegraph
message to King Edward VII of England. 1904: Thomas Edison was issued a patent for an
Electrical Automobile. 1915: George Claude patented the
neon tube advertising sign. Also in 1915, more than 20 people were
killed when German
zeppelins bombed England for the first time. 1922: U.S. Geological
Survey predicted that the
U.S.
oil supply will last only 20 years. 1937:
Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying from Los
Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. 1969: My twin sisters,
Bonnie and Brenda Blattenberger, were born - Happy Birthday! 1983: The Apple "Lisa" computer, which
was the first with a GUI, was released. 1976:
Hidetsugu
Yagi, inventor of the antenna bearing his name, died. 2038: The Unix time stamp (POSIX) becomes
technically obsolete - the Y2.038k problem. 1977:
Clyde Tombaugh,
who discovered the non-planet Pluto, 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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