March 5
1512: Flemish cartographer
Gerardus
Mercator, developer of the map projection that bears his name, was born. 1616:
The Copernican
sun-centric model is declared "false and erroneous" by the Catholic
Church in Rome. 1827: Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (no kidding), who
invented the pile battery and after whom the unit of Volts is named, died. 1827:
French mathematician
Pierre-Simon
Laplace died. 1836:
Samuel Colt manufactured the first pistol (.34-caliber). 1872:
George Westinghouse patented the
railroad air brake. 1893:
Emmett Culligan, founder of the "Hey Culligan Man" company, was
born. 1904: Pioneer watchmaker
Edward
Howard died. 1912: The Italians became the first to use dirigibles for military
purposes. 1929: Auto manufacturer
David Buick
died. 1936: The beautiful, elliptical winged British
Spitfire
made its first flight from Eastleigh aerodrome. 1946: Winston Churchill delivered
his famous "Iron Curtain" speech, credited as the beginning of the Cold War,
at Westminster College in Fulton, MO. 1979:
Voyager
1 (V'ger, for Star Trek fans) made its closest approach to Jupiter.
1998: NASA announced that the
Clementine orbiting craft had found enough water on the moon to
support a human colony and rocket fueling station.
| 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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