13 September 2018
Interesting tidbits:
1501 – Michelangelo began work on his statue of David.
1743 – Great Britain, Austria, and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms.
1848 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3-foot iron rod being driven through his head. The reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulated thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions. The iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and leading to a study of that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the succeeding twelve years. Gage is a fixture in the curricula of neurology, psychology and related disciplines, and is frequently mentioned in books and academic papers. Despite this celebrity the body of established fact about Gage and what he was like before or after his injury is remarkably small, which has allowed the fitting of almost any theory to the small number of facts we have". A survey of published accounts, including scientific ones, has found that they almost always severely distort Gage's behavioral changes, exaggerating the known facts when not directly contradicting them.
1862 – American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee‘s battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam.
1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patented celluloid photographic film. His patent was sold to Ansco who successfully sued Eastman Kodak for infringement of the patent.
1899 – Henry Bliss was the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident, and the first known in the Americas. On September 13, 1899 he was disembarking from a streetcar in New York City, when an electric-powered taxicab struck him and crushed his head and chest. He died from his injuries the next morning. Arthur Smith, the driver of the cab, was arrested and charged with manslaughter but was acquitted on the grounds that it was unintentional.
1906 – First flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe.
1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC was introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage.
Today's birthday crew:
1475 – Cesare Borgia, Italian politician and cardinal.
1502 – John Leland, English poet, antiquarian, and Arthurian scholar.
1857 – Milton S. Hershey, American businessman, founder of The Hershey Company. Excited by the potential of milk chocolate, which at that time was a luxury product, Hershey was determined to develop a formula for milk chocolate and market and sell it to the American public. The first Hershey's Bar was sold in 1900. Hershey's achievement is celebrated each year on this date as International Chocolate Day.
1877 – Wilhelm Filchner, German explorer of central Asia and Antarctica.
1908 – Mae Questel, American actress and vocal artist best known for the voices of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl, Popeye's girlfriend.
1916 – Roald Dahl, English pilot, author, and screenwriter whose works include James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
1931 – Barbara Bain, American actress (Mission: Impossible, Space 1999).
Happy birthday guys!
