17 July 2017

Interesting tidbits:

1771 – Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacred a group of unsuspecting Inuit. Hearne was an English explorer, fur-trader, author, and naturalist. He was the first European to make an overland excursion across northern Canada to the Arctic Ocean via the Coppermine River. By tracing the Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean he had established there was no northwest passage through the continent at lower latitudes. This expedition also proved successful in its primary goal by discovering copper in the Coppermine River basin; however, an intensive search of the area yielded only one four-pound lump of copper and commercial mining was not considered viable. Hearne returned to Fort Prince of Wales on 30 June 1772 having walked some 5,000 miles / 8,000 km and explored more than 250,000 square miles / 650,000 km2. He became governor of Fort Prince of Wales on 22 January 1776. On 8 August 1782 Hearne and his complement of 38 civilians were confronted by a French force composed of three ships, including one of 74 guns, and 290 soldiers. As a veteran Hearne recognized hopeless odds and surrendered without a shot. Hearne and some of the other prisoners were allowed to sail back to England from Hudson Strait in a small sloop. Hearne returned the next year but found trade had deteriorated. The Indian population had been decimated by smallpox and starvation due to the lack of normal hunting supplies of powder and shot. Hearne's health began to fail and on 16 August 1787 he returned to England.

1856 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, killed over 60 people. It was the deadliest railroad catastrophe in the world up to that time and became one of the signature events of its era. An excursion train operated by the North Pennsylvania Railroad, known as the "Picnic Special," had been contracted by St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia to send their Sunday School children on a picnic in Shaeff's Woods, a sprawling grove near the railroad's Wissahickon station. The train, reported as carrying 1,100 people, was due to arrive in Wissahickon at 6:00 am. It left 23 minutes late, partly due to the large number of passengers aboard. The engine, known for having low steam pressure, was under a sizable strain as it pulled between 10 and 12 cars overloaded with passengers, and had to make periodic stops to regain enough pressure to continue. At the Wissahickon station another train waited for the excursion to pass on the single track line that had opened one year earlier. The train was late, but the conductor did not use the telegraph to check traffic on the line and had no idea when the excursion had left. There was a customary 15-minute waiting period for regularly scheduled trains, but the picnic special was an excursion train, which confused matters. The engineer was confident he could make up for the time he had lost. He knew the other train was due in the opposite direction on the same single track, but calculated they could use the siding at Edge Hill to safely pass each other. As he neared a blind curve the train was travelling slightly downhill. Both trains were rounding the same curve at the same blind spot. As they rounded the curve, they finally caught sight of each other. But it was too late. The trains collided. The boilers made direct contact and the impact caused an explosion heard up to five miles away.

1902 – Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York.

1917 – King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor.

1918 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are executed by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

1918 – The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; 5 lives are lost.

1933 – After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.

1938 – Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn to fly the "wrong way" to Ireland and became known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan. After a transcontinental flight from Long Beach, California, to New York, he flew from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, to Ireland, though his flight plan was filed to return to Long Beach. He was a skilled aircraft mechanic and had made several modifications to his own plane, preparing it for his transatlantic flight. He had been denied permission to make a nonstop flight from New York to Ireland, and his "navigational error" was seen as deliberate. Nevertheless, he never publicly admitted to having flown to Ireland intentionally.

1955 – Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.

1975 – Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

Today's birthday crew:

1839 – Ephraim Shay, American inventor and engineer, invented the Shay locomotive. The Shay locomotive was the most widely used geared steam locomotive. Although the design of Ephraim Shay's early locomotives differed from later ones, there is a clear line of development that joins all Shays. In about 1877 he developed the idea of having an engine sit on a flat car with a boiler, gears, and trucks that could pivot. The first Shay only had two cylinders and the front truck was mounted normally while the rear truck was fixed to the frame and could not swivel, much as normal drivers on a locomotive. He mounted the 3-foot / 0.91 m diameter by 5-foot / 1.5 m tall boiler centered on the car with the water tank over the front trucks and the Crippen's engine mounted crossways over the rear trucks. Shay applied for and was issued a patent for the basic idea in 1881. He patented an improved geared truck for his engines in 1901.

1894 – Georges Lemaître, Belgian priest, astronomer, and cosmologist. He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was also the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'.

1913 – Marc Swayze, American writer and illustrator best known for his work on Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family during the Golden Age of comic books for Fawcett Comics. He was the co-creator of Mary Marvel, along with writer Otto Binder. The first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Swayze's drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including the classic origin story, "Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel" (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. 1942).

1939 – Spencer Davis, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

1944 – Catherine Schell, Hungarian-English actress best known for her portrayal of Maya in the science-fiction series Space: 1999.

1954 – J. Michael Straczynski, American author of films, television series, novels, short stories, comic books, radio dramas and other media. Straczynski is a playwright, former journalist, and author of The Complete Book of Scriptwriting. He was the creator and showrunner for the science fiction television series Babylon 5, its spin-off Crusade, as well as Jeremiah, a series loosely based on Hermann Huppen's comics. Straczynski wrote 92 out of the 110 Babylon 5 episodes, notably including an unbroken 59-episode run through the third and fourth seasons, and all but one episode of the fifth season. He also wrote the four Babylon 5 TV movies produced alongside the series. From 2001 to 2007, he was the writer for the long-running Marvel comic book series The Amazing Spider-Man. He is credited as being the first TV producer ("showrunner" in Hollywood parlance) to directly engage with fans on the Internet, and allow their viewpoints to influence the look and feel of his show.

1973 – Liam Kyle Sullivan, American comedian and actor (Shoes).

Happy birthday guys!