13 June 2017
Interesting tidbits:
1611 - John Fabricius dedicates the earliest sunspot publication.
1777 - Leonard Norcross patents a submarine diving suit (not the world's first).
1881 – The USS Jeannette was crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack. The USS Jeannette departed San Francisco on 8 July 1879 and pushed northward to Alaska's Norton Sound. Under Lt. Cdr. DeLong's direction the ship sailed across the Chukchi Sea and sighted Herald Island on 4 September. Soon afterward she was caught fast in the ice pack near Wrangel Island at 71°35'N 175°6'E. For the next 21 months, Jeannette drifted to the northwest, ever-closer to the North Pole. On the night of 12 June, the pressure of the ice finally began to crush Jeannette. DeLong and his men unloaded provisions and equipment onto the ice pack and the ship sank the following morning. The expedition now faced a long trek to the Siberian coast, with little hope even then of rescue. Nonetheless they started off for the Lena Delta hauling their sledges with boats and supplies. After reaching several small islands in the Siberian group and gaining some food and rest, they took to their three boats on 12 September in hope of reaching the mainland. As a violent storm blew up, one of the boats capsized and sank. The other two, commanded by DeLong and Chief Engineer George W. Melville, survived the severe weather but landed at widely separated points on the delta. The party headed by DeLong began the long march inland over the marshy, half-frozen delta to hoped-for native settlements, and one by one the men died from starvation and exposure. Finally DeLong sent the two strongest ahead for help. They eventually found a settlement and survived. DeLong and his 11 other companions died on the Siberian tundra. In the meantime, Melville and his party had found a native village on the other side of the delta and were rescued. Melville then started for Belun, a Russian outpost, where he found the two survivors of DeLong's boat. With the help of some of the locals, he succeeded in finding the landing place of the other boat on the Lena and recovered Jeannette's log and other important records, but returned to Belun on 27 November without locating the DeLong group. On June 18, 1884, wreckage from Jeannette was found on an ice floe near Julianehåb near the southern tip of Greenland. This suggested that the ice of the Arctic Ocean was in constant motion from the Siberian coast to the American coast.
1893 – Grover Cleveland undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; operation not revealed to US public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.
1895 - Emile Levassor wins the first Paris-Bordeaux-Paris auto race with an average speed of 24 kph.
1907 - Lowest temp ever in 48 US states for June, 2°F in Tamarack Calif.
1927 – Aviator Charles Lindbergh receives a ticker-tape parade down 5th Avenue in New York City.
1930 - The first Nudist Colony opened.
1933 - The first sodium vapor street lamps were installed at Schenectady, NY.
1942 - The first V-2 rocket launch in Peenemunde, Germany, reached 1.3 km.
1955 – Mir Mine, the first diamond mine in the USSR, is discovered.
1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the furthest planet from the Sun at the time).
2010 – A capsule of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, containing particles of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, returns to Earth.
Today's birthday crew:
1831 – James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist formulated a set of equations that united previously unrelated observations, experiments, and equations of electricity, magnetism, and optics into a consistent theory. His theory of classical electromagnetism demonstrates that electricity, magnetism and light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon, namely the electromagnetic field. With the publication of A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field in 1865, Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light. Maxwell proposed that light was in fact undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. The unification of light and electrical phenomena led to the prediction of the existence of radio waves.
1854 – Charles Algernon Parsons, Aglo-Irish engineer best known for his invention of the steam turbine. He attended Trinity College, Dublin and St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating from the latter in 1877 after which he moved to Kitsons in Yorkshire where he worked on rocket-powered torpedoes. In 1884 he moved to Clarke, Chapman and Co., ship engine manufacturers near Newcastle, where he was head of their electrical equipment development. He developed a turbine engine there in 1884 and immediately utilized the new engine to drive an electrical generator, which he also designed. Parsons' steam turbine made cheap and plentiful electricity possible and revolutionised marine transport and naval warfare.
1884 – Gerald Gardner, English occultist also known by the craft name Scire, was an English Wiccan, as well as an author and an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist. He was instrumental in bringing the Contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca to public attention, writing some of its definitive religious texts and founding the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca.
1892 – Basil Rathbone, South African-British actor best known for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in a series of films.
1893 – Dorothy L. Sayers, English author best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, that remain popular to this day.
1911 – Luis Walter Alvarez, American physicist and inventor, Nobel Prize laureate.
1926 – Paul Lynde, American actor.
1935 – Christo, Bulgarian artist.
1939 – Siegfried Fischbacher, German-American magician.
1943 – Malcolm McDowell, English actor known for the controversial films If.... and A Clockwork Orange, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Alex DeLarge. He also appeared in Star Trek Generations and the 2007 remake of Halloween.
1945 – Whitley Strieber, American author best known for his horror novels The Wolfen and The Hunger and for Communion, a non-fiction account of his perceived experiences with non-human entities. He has maintained a dual career of author (of fiction) and advocate of alternative concepts (through non-fiction, his Unknown Country website, and his internet podcast, Dreamland).
1950 – Michael Stark, Australian voice actor (Darkwing Duck).
1971 – Shannon Fill, American actress (Sito Jaxa).
1972 – Natalie MacMaster, Canadian singer and violinist.
1981 – Chris Evans, American actor known for his superhero roles as Johnny Storm / Human Torch in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and Steve Rogers / Captain America in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and Marvel's The Avengers (2012).
Happy birthday guys!