Today in History: 15 July
1207 – King John of England expels Canterbury monks for supporting Pope’s choice of Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton
1500 – Baglione family massacre at the “Blood Wedding” of Astorre Baglione and Lavinia Colonna in Perugia
1501 – Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral arrives back in Lisbon from his voyage to India, having lost six ships, during which he accidentally discovered Brazil
1783 – World’s first steamboat the Pyroscaphe, built by Claude-Francois-Dorothee, marquis de Jouffroy d’Abbans, makes its first voyage on the river Saone in France
1799 – The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign
1867 – San Francisco Merchants’ Exchange opens
1869 – Margarine is patented by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès for use by the French Navy
1898 – Camillo Golgi discovers the Golgi Apparatus (a delicate network inside cells essential for the transmission and reception of information between cells)
1916 – Boeing Company (Pacific Aero) formed by William Boeing in Seattle, Washington
1922 – First duck-billed platypus publicly exhibited in the US at Bronx Zoological Park in New York City
1932 – US President Herbert Hoover cuts own salary 15%
1940 – Physicist Donald Kerst becomes the first person to accelerate electrons using electromagnetic induction, reaching energies of 2.3 MeV, when his betatron device (for particle acceleration) becomes operation in Urbana, Illinois
1941 – Howard Florey and Norman Heatley present freeze-dried mold cultures of penicillin
1960 – Chubby Checker releases his version of “The Twist” in the US (date approximate)
1965 – “Mariner IV” sends back 1st pictures of Mars
1975 – Soyuz 19 and Apollo 18 launched; will rendezvous 2 days later
1988 – “Die Hard” directed by John McTiernan and starring Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman is released in the US
2003 – AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape Communications Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day
2012 – Korean pop singer Psy releases single “Gangnam Style”; it becomes a worldwide hit, topping the charts in over 36 countries
Download Complete! –
1353 – Vladimir the Bold, Russian prince of Serpukhov
1606 – Rembrandt von Rijn, Dutch Golden Age painter, printer, and draughtsman
1858 – Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragette
1926 – Raymond Gosling, British scientist involved in DNA structure research
1933 – John Hopfield, American physicist and neuroscientist
1943 – Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Irish astrophysicist
1972 – Scott Foley, American actor
Unrecoverable Error –
1521 – Juan Ponce de Leon, Spanish explorer and conquistador
1904 – Anton Chekhov, Russian author and playwright
1919 – Emil Fischer, German chemist
1997 – Gianna Versace, Italian fashion designer
The Funnies:
Quote of the Day
YouTube Clip of the Day
Comic of the Day
Mouseover: ‘Tin pest’ makes more sense to me. Tin just doesn’t want to be locked down in a shape like that. I get it. But why would any metal want to grow hair??
Explain XKCD 3115: Unsolved Physics Problems - explain xkcd
Image Credit: XKCD
Inspirobot Sometimes Controversial Inspirational Quote of the Day:
In case you missed it, you can go take a look at yesterday’s revolutionary Spark! by @steve6343 over here
