06 July 2017
Interesting tidbits:
1699 - Pirate Captain William Kidd is captured in Boston.
1785 – The dollar was unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States.
1858 - Lyman Blake patents a shoe manufacturing machine.
1885 – Louis Pasteur successfully tested his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog. Pasteur publicly claimed he had made anthrax vaccine by exposing the bacilli to oxygen. His laboratory notebooks, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, in fact show Pasteur used the method of rival Jean-Joseph-Henri Toussaint, a Toulouse veterinary surgeon, to create the anthrax vaccine. This method used the oxidizing agent potassium dichromate. Pasteur's oxygen method did eventually produce a vaccine but only after he had been awarded a patent on the production of an anthrax vaccine. The rabies vaccine was initially created by Emile Roux, a French doctor and a colleague of Pasteur who had been working with a killed vaccine produced by desiccating the spinal cords of infected rabbits. The vaccine had been tested only on 11 dogs before its first human trial. This vaccine was first used on 9-year old Joseph Meister, on July 6, 1885, after the boy was badly mauled by a rabid dog. This was done at some personal risk for Pasteur, since he was not a licensed physician and could have faced prosecution for treating the boy. After consulting with colleagues, Pasteur decided to go ahead with the treatment. Three months later, when Pasteur examined Meister and found that he was in good health. Pasteur was hailed as a hero and the legal matter was not pursued. Throughout his career Pasteur played fast and loose with the truth, but was lucky enought to be right.
1886 - Horlick's of Wisconsin offers the first malted milk to the public.
1903 - George Wyman arrives in NYC by motorcycle 51 days after leaving San Francisco.
1917 - T E Lawrence captures the port of Aqaba from the Turks.
1919 – The British dirigible R34 landed in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship. The R33 class of British rigid airships were built for the Royal Naval Air Service during World War I, but were not completed until after the end of hostilities as part of the Royal Air Force. The lead ship, R33, went on to serve successfully for ten years and survived one of the most alarming and heroic incidents in airship history when she was ripped from her mooring mast in a gale. She was called a "Pulham Pig" by the locals, as the blimps based there had also been, and is immortalised in the village sign for Pulham St Mary. The only other airship in the class, R34, became the first aircraft to make an East-to-West crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on 6 July 1919, and was decommissioned two years later after sustaining damage in adverse weather. The crew nicknamed her "Tiny". Substantially larger than the preceding R31 class, the R33 class was in the design stage in 1916 when a German Zeppelin, coincidentally designated L 33, was brought down on English soil. Despite the best efforts of her crew, she was captured near intact with engines in good order. For five months, the L 33 was carefully examined to uncover the Germans' secrets. The existing design was adapted to generate a new airship based on the German craft. It was then decided to go for the first return Atlantic crossing under the command of Major George Herbert Scott. R34 had never been intended as a passenger carrier and extra accommodation was arranged by slinging hammocks in the keel walkway. Hot food was provided by cooking on a plate welded to an engine exhaust pipe. The crew included Brigadier-General Edward Maitland and a representative of the US Navy. William Ballantyne, one of the crew members scheduled to stay behind to save weight, stowed away with the crew's mascot, a small tabby kitten called "Whoopsie"; they emerged at 2.00 p.m. on the first day, too late to be dropped off. R34 left Britain on 2 July 1919 and arrived at Mineola, Long Island, United States on 6 July after a flight of 108 hours with virtually no fuel left. As the landing party had no experience of handling large rigid airships, Major E.M. Pritchard jumped by parachute and so became the first person to reach American soil by air from Europe. This was the first East-West crossing of the Atlantic and was done two weeks after the first transatlantic airplane flight. The return journey to Pulham in Norfolk was from 10 to 13 July and took 75 hours. On 27 January 1921 R34 left on what should have been a routine exercise. Over the North Sea the weather worsened and a recall signal sent by radio was not received. Following a navigational error the craft hit the North Yorkshire Moors in the dark and lost two propellers. She went back out to sea using the two remaining engines and in daylight followed the Humber estuary back to Howden. Strong winds made it impossible to get her back into the shed and she was tied down outside for the night. By the morning further damage had occurred and R34 was written off.
1924 - The first photo was sent experimentally across the Atlantic by radio, US to England.
1928 - The first all-talking motion picture was shown in NY (Lights of NY).
1947 – The AK-47 went into production in the Soviet Union.
1957 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney were introduced to each other when Lennon's band the Quarrymen performed at the St. Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton.
1962 – As a part of Operation Plowshare, the Sedan nuclear test took place.
2003 – The 70-metre Eupatoria Planetary Radar sent a METI message (Cosmic Call 2) to 5 stars: Hip 4872, HD 245409, 55 Cancri (HD 75732), HD 10307 and 47 Ursae Majoris (HD 95128). The messages will arrive to these stars in 2036, 2040, 2044 and 2049 respectively.
Today's birthday crew:
1911 – LaVerne Andrews, American singer, member of the Andrews Sisters.
1918 – Sebastian Cabot, English actor.
1925 – Bill Haley, American singer-songwriter and musician (Bill Haley & His Comets).
1927 – Pat Paulsen, American comedian and actor.
1935 – Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama.
1945 – Burt Ward, American actor and activist. He is best known for his portrayal of Robin in the television series Batman (1966–68) and its theatrical film spin-off.
1950 – John Byrne, British-born American comic-book writer and artist of comic books. Since the mid-1970s, Byrne has worked on nearly every major American superhero. Byrne's better-known work has been on Marvel Comics’ X-Men and Fantastic Four and the 1986 relaunch of DC Comics’ Superman franchise. Coming into the comics profession exclusively as a penciler, Byrne began co-plotting the X-Men comics during his tenure on them, and launched his writing career in earnest with Fantastic Four (where he started inking his own pencils). During the 1990s he produced a number of creator-owned works, including Next Men and Danger Unlimited. He scripted the first issues of Mike Mignola's Hellboy series and produced a number of Star Trek comics for IDW Publishing.
1958 – Jennifer Saunders, English actress and screenwriter (Edina).
1982 – Tay Zonday, American actor and singer (Chocolate rain).
Happy birthday guys!