16 July 2017

Interesting tidbits:

1618 - Capt John Gilbert patented the first dredger in Britain.

1661 - The first banknotes in Europe were issued by Bank of Stockholm.

1782 – First performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

1790 – The District of Columbia was established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.

1909 – Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar was forced out as Shah of Persia and was replaced by his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.

1910 – John Robertson Duigan made the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia.

1915 – Henry James becomes a British citizen, to highlight his commitment to Britain during the first World War.

1926 - National Geographic took the first natural-color undersea photos.

1935 - The first automatic parking meter in the US was installed, at Oklahoma City.

1945 – The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis left San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island.

1945 – The Atomic Age began when the United States successfully detonated a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1948 – The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.

1956 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its very last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, due to changing economics all subsequent circus shows were held in arenas.

1969 – Apollo 11 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. As a long time science fiction fan I include this event because it markes the start of the mission that saw human beings walk on another body in space for the first time.

1994 – Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 collides with Jupiter. Impacts continue until July 22.

Today's birthday crew:

1661 – Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, French soldier, ship captain, explorer, colonial administrator, adventurer, privateer, trader, and founder of the French colony of Louisiana. Le Moyne was born in July 1661 at Montreal. At the age of 12, he became a cabin boy on his uncle's ship trading to Port Royal, Acadia. A few years later he was in the fur trade at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle was the first European to travel from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. From the 1690s, the French began dreaming of building a great empire by linking the Saint Lawrence and Mississippi basins and bottling up the English on the east coast. Pontchartrain, the minister for naval affairs and colonies gave Le Moyne the task of building a fort at the mouth of the Mississippi which would block the river to other nations. He died suddenly, perhaps of yellow fever, in July, 1706. After his death, his estate became involved in an inquiry that dragged on for more than thirty years. Le Moyne had acquired a large fortune by uncertain means. The accounts of the West Indian expedition were hopelessly disorganized; there were accusations of embezzlement. His widow was forced to pay back a large part of her inheritance. Le Moyne was perhaps the first great soldier born in Canada. Students of the art of war may see his career as an example of the importance of following up after a victory, for he won all his battles but never was able to consolidate what he had won.

1872 – Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was the first to traverse the Northwest Passage (1903–06). After crossing the Northwest Passage, Amundsen made plans to go to the North Pole and explore the North Polar Basin. However, he had problems raising funds for the departure and upon hearing in 1909 that Frederick Cook and Robert Peary both claimed to have reached the Pole, he decided to reroute to Antarctica. He did not make these plans known and misled both Scott and the Norwegians. The expedition arrived at the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf at a large inlet where Amundsen located his base camp and named it Framheim. Amundsen eschewed the heavy wool clothing worn on earlier Antarctic attempts in favour of Eskimo-style skins. Using skis and dog sleds for transportation the expedition departed on 19 October 1911. On 14 December 1911, the team of five arrived at the Pole. They arrived 33–34 days before Scott’s group. They left a small tent and letter stating their accomplishment. The team returned to Framheim on 25 January 1912. Amundsen’s success was publicly announced when he arrived at Hobart, Australia. In 1926, Amundsen and 15 other men made the first crossing of the Arctic in the airship Norge designed by Umberto Nobile. Amundsen disappeared on 18 June 1928 while flying on a rescue mission looking for missing members of Nobile's crew, whose new airship Italia had crashed while returning from the North Pole. It is believed that the plane crashed in fog in the Barents Sea, and that Amundsen was killed in the crash, or died shortly afterwards. His body was never found.

1888 – Percy Kilbride, American actor (Pa Kettle).

1889 – Larry Semon, American actor (Wizard of Oz - 1925 version).

1902 – Mary Philbin, American actress (Phantom of the Opera - 1925 version).

1907 – Orville Redenbacher, American farmer and businessman (Popcorn).

1911 – Ginger Rogers, American actress and dancer.

1928 – Robert Sheckley, Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical. Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001. His works include not only original short stories and novels, but also TV series episodes (Captain Video and His Video Rangers), novelizations of works by others (Babylon 5: A Call to Arms), stories in shared universes, and collaborations with other writers. Typical Sheckley stories include "Bad Medicine" (in which a man is mistakenly treated by a psychotherapy machine intended for Martians), "Protection" (whose protagonist is warned of deadly danger unless he avoids the common activity of "lesnerizing", a word whose meaning is not explained), and "The Accountant" (in which a family of wizards learns that their son has been taken from them by a more sinister trade — accountancy). In many stories Sheckley speculates about alternative (and usually sinister) social orders, of which a good example is the story "A Ticket to Tranai" (that tells of a sort of Utopia designed for human nature as it actually is, which turns out to have terrible drawbacks).

1929 – Sheri S. Tepper, American author of science fiction, horror and mystery novels. She is particularly known as a feminist science fiction writer, often with an ecofeminist slant. She has written under several pseudonyms, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant. Her early work was published under the name Sheri S. Eberhart.

1946 – Richard LeParmentier, American actor best known for his role as Admiral Motti in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

1956 – Jerry Doyle, American actor best known for his role as Michael Garibaldi in Babylon 5.

1957 – Faye Grant, American actress (V).

1986 – Calum Gittins, New Zealand actor best known for playing Haleth in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Happy birthday guys!