20 June 2017
Interesting tidbits:
1756 – A British garrison is imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta. The Black Hole of Calcutta was a small dungeon in Fort William at Calcutta, India, where troops of the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, held British prisoners of war after the capture of the Fort. Fort William was established to protect the East India Company's trade in the city of Calcutta. In 1756, with the possibility of conflict with French forces increasing, the British began building up the fort's strengths and defences. The Nawab was unhappy with the company's interference in the internal affairs of his province and perceived a threat to its independence. He ordered an immediate stop to the Fort's military enhancement, but the Company paid no heed. As a consequence, he organized his army and laid siege to the fort. The garrison's commander organised an escape, leaving behind 146 soldiers under the command of Holwell, a senior East India Company bureaucrat who had been a military surgeon. However, desertions made even this temporary defence ineffectual, and the fort fell. The surviving defenders, who numbered from 64 to 69, were captured along with an unknown number of Anglo-Indian soldiers and civilians who had been sheltering in the fort. Holwell wrote about the events after the fall of the fort. According to him the prisoners were locked in the fort's prison ("the black hole" was 18th century military slang for any military prison, similar to "the brig" in the US Navy), which was said to be 14 by 18 feet (4.3 m × 5.5 m) in size. When the "Black Hole" was opened the next morning only 23 people were still alive. Holwell claimed that 1233 died of 146 held. While his account was not questioned in Britain at the time, other contemporary accounts differed on details, and Holwell's account has been called everything from an exageration to a hoax to nothing but propaganda.
1819 – The US vessel SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, England, United Kingdom. SS Savannah was an American hybrid sailing ship/sidewheel steamer built in 1818. She was notable for being the first steamship in the world to cross the Atlantic Ocean, a feat that was accomplished from May to June 1819, although only a fraction of the distance was covered with the ship under steam power. In spite of her historic voyage, Savannah was not a commercial success as a steamship and was converted back into a sailing ship shortly after returning from Europe. Savannah was wrecked off Long Island in 1821. No other American-owned steamship would cross the Atlantic for almost thirty years after Savannah's pioneering voyage.
1837 – Queen Victoria succeeded to the British throne. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died leaving no legitimate, surviving children. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the Sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Publicly, she became a national icon, and was identified with strict standards of personal morality.
1840 – Samuel Morse receives the patent for the telegraph. The first commercial electrical telegraph was co-developed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, and entered use on the Great Western Railway in Britain. It ran for 13 miles / 21 km from Paddington station to West Drayton and came into operation on 9 July 1839. It was patented in the United Kingdom in 1837, and was first successfully demonstrated by Cooke and Wheatstone on 25 July 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London. An electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signalling alphabet with Morse. The first telegram in the United States was sent by Morse on 11 January 1838, across two miles / 3 km of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey. On 24 May 1844, he sent the message "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore. This message was chosen by Annie Ellsworth of Lafayette, Indiana,[16] the daughter of Patent Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth. The message was all capital letters because the original Morse code alphabet had no question mark or lower case. The Morse/Vail telegraph was quickly deployed in the following two decades. The overland telegraph connected the west coast of the continent to the east coast by 24 October 1861, bringing an end to the Pony Express.
1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Bell was awarded the first US patent for the telephone in 1876, and the Bell Telephone Company was created the following year. By 1886, more than 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone, which emerged as one of the most successful products ever. In 1879, the Bell company acquired Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for longer distances and it was no longer necessary to shout to be heard at the receiving telephone. Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society. Ironically, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion and refused to have a telephone in his study.
1893 – Lizzie Borden is acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother. Lizzie Borden was an American woman who was tried and acquitted of the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. The case was a cause célèbre throughout the United States. Following her release from the prison in which she had been held during the trial, Borden chose to remain a resident of Fall River, Massachusetts for the rest of her life, despite facing significant ostracism. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected to charge no one else with the murder of Andrew and Abby Borden. speculation about the crimes continues to this day. The event produced the following famous rhyme:
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
1909 - The first balloon honeymoon (Roger Burham & Eleanor Waring).
1939 - Test flight of the first rocket plane using liquid propellants.
1990 – Asteroid Eureka is discovered.
Today's birthday crew:
1682 - Eleonore von Schwarzenberg Austro-Hungarian vampire. On 6 December 1701 Princess Eleonore married the Austrian Hofmarschall, Adam Franz Karl Eusebius, Hereditary Prince von Schwarzenberg. Eleonore was considered a cultivated lady, and her and her husband’s wealthy and cultured lifestyle was often displayed at court. Princess Eleonore died on 5 May 1741 in the Palais Schwarzenberg in Vienna. Franz von Gerstoff, the emperor’s physician, requested an autopsy from which the cause of death has been diagnosed as cervical cancer. The 2008 Austrian documentary "The Vampire Princess" found evidence suggesting that Eleonore was suspected of being a vampire after her death. Her apparent reburial conforms to vampire burial rites of the time, and a stone slab was placed over her coffin as if to prevent her from rising. After Vlad III Dracula and Elizabeth Bathory, Eleonore von Schwarzenberg is the third most famouse suspected vampire from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1909 – Errol Flynn, Australian actor (Robin Hood, George Armstrong Custer).
1928 – Martin Landau, American actor (Mission Impossible, Space 1999).
1951 – Tress MacNeille, American voice actress best known for providing various voices on the animated series The Simpsons, Futurama, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Disney's House of Mouse, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Dave the Barbarian.
1954 – Miles O'Keeffe, American actor who got his first big break playing the title role in the 1981 version of Tarzan, the Ape Man.
1967 – Nicole Kidman, Australian-American actress (Batman Forever).
1988 – Shefali Chowdhury, Welsh actress best known for playing the role of Parvati Patil in the Harry Potter films.
Happy birthday guys!