15 September 2018
Interesting tidbits:
1812 – The French army under Napoleon reached the Kremlin in Moscow.
1830 – The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opened. The L&M was the first locomotive-hauled railway to connect two major cities, and the first to provide a scheduled passenger service.
1831 – The locomotive John Bull operated for the first time in New Jersey on the Camden and Amboy Railroad.
1835 – HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reached the Galápagos Islands.
1916 – Tanks were used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme.
1918 - Sir Cecil Herbert Edward Chubb, was the last private owner of Stonehenge, which he donated to the British government.
1947 – RCA released the 12AX7 vacuum tube (used in audio amplifiers).
1948 – The F-86 Sabre set the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour (1,080 km/h).
1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship was launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.
1981 – The John Bull became the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.
Today's birthday crew:
1254 – Marco Polo, Italian explorer and merchant from the Republic of Venice who walked to China and back, and recorded his adventure in a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China.
1789 – James Fenimore Cooper, American novelist (Last of the Mohicans).
1890 – Agatha Christie, English crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays best remembered for the 66 detective novels and more than 15 short story collections, most of which revolve around Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple and Tommy and Tuppence. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap.
1907 – Fay Wray, Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in the original version of King Kong.
1908 – Penny Singleton, American actress best known as the comic strip heroine Blondie Bumstead in a series of 28 motion pictures and the Blondie radio program from 1939 until 1950. Singleton also provided the voice of Jane Jetsons.
1922 – Jackie Cooper, American actor and director.
1940 – Norman Spinrad, American science fiction author, essayist, and critic. Spinrad has been called perhaps the most controversial American component of SF's New Wave movement of the mid-to-late '60s.
1946 – Howard Waldrop, American science fiction author who works primarily in short fiction.
Happy birthday guys!
