Today in History: 22 October
362 – The temple of Apollo at Daphne, outside of Antioch, is destroyed in a mysterious fire
1721 – Tsar Peter the Great titles himself “Emperor of All Russia”
1746 – Princeton University (NJ) receives its charter
1836 – Sam Houston inaugurated as 1st elected President of the Republic of Texas
1879 – Thomas Edison perfects the carbonized cotton filament light bulb
1884 – International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) worldwide and creates 24 international time zones with longitude zero at the Greenwich meridian
1897 – World’s first car dealer opens in London
1906 – Henry Ford becomes President of Ford Motor Company
1907 – Ringling Brothers Greatest Show on Earth buys Barnum & Bailey circus
1926 – Boxer J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in his dressing room at the Princess Theater in Montreal. The attack started or helped cause the appendicitis that would take Houdini’s life 9 days later.
1962 – US President John F. Kennedy makes a live television address about Soviet missile bases in Cuba and imposes a naval blockade on Cuba, beginning the Cuban Missile Crisis
1964 – French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre refuses Nobel prize
1969 – Paul McCartney denies greatly exaggerated rumors of his death
1993 – Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov makes record 9th space walk
2008 – Google Play is launched, the official app store for the Android operating system
Download Complete! –
1811 – Franz Liszt, Hungarian romantic composer and virtuoso pianist
1844 – Sarah Bernhardt, French actress
1936 – Bobby Seale, American political and civil rights activist
1938 – Christopher Lloyd, American Emmy award winning actor
1952 – Jeff Goldblum, American actor and jazz pianist
1968 – Shaggy, Jamaican-American Grammy Award-winning reggae rapper
Unrecoverable Error –
1383 – Ferdinand I, King of Portugal
1906 – Paul Cezanne, French artist and Post-Impressionist painter
1934 – Pretty Boy Floyd, American gangster and FBI Most Wanted criminal
1975 – Arnold J. Toynbee, English historian
2022 – Dietrich Mateschitz, Austrian businessman (co creator of Red Bull energy drink)
The Funnies:
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Mouseover: In my new scale, °X, 0 is Earths’ record lowest surface temperature, 50 is the global average, and 100 is the record highest, with a linear scale between each point and adjustment every year as needed.
Explain XKCD 3001: Temperature Scales - explain xkcd
Image Credit: xkcd: Temperature Scales
Inspirobot Sometimes Controversial Inspirational Quote of the Day:
In case you missed it, you can find yesterday’s illuminated Spark by @Lonny6654 over here….
