26 June 2017
Interesting tidbits:
1498 - The Toothbrush was invented. Before this date people used twigs with smashed ends, sections of wool cloth, wine with salt in it, or similar stuff
1740 – A combined force Spanish, free blacks and allied Indians defeat a British garrison at the Siege of Fort Mose near St. Augustine during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
1797 - Charles Newbold patents the first cast-iron plow. He can't sell it to farmers, though, because they fear the effects of iron on soil.
1819 - The bicycle was patented.
1870 - The first section of the Atlantic City (NJ) Boardwalk opened.
1870 – The Christian holiday of Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.
1886 – Henri Moissan isolated elemental Fluorine for the first time.
1894 - Karl Benz of Germany receives a US patent for his gasoline-driven auto.
1906 – 1906 French Grand Prix, the first Grand Prix motor racing event held
1909 - The Victoria & Albert Museum opened in London.
1927 – The Cyclone roller coaster opens on Coney Island.
1936 – Initial flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter.
1948 – William Shockley files the original patent for the grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.
1948 – Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery is published in The New Yorker magazine.
1974 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio
1978 - SEASAT 1 Launch.
Today's birthday crew:
1730 – Charles Messier, French astronomer most known for publishing an astronomical catalogue consisting of nebulae and star clusters that came to be known as the 110 "Messier objects". The purpose of the catalogue was to help astronomical observers, in particular comet hunters, distinguish between permanent and transient visually diffuse objects in the sky. Messier himself discovered 13 comets. The crater Messier on the Moon and the asteroid 7359 Messier were named in his honor.
1892 – Pearl S. Buck, American writer (The Good Earth).
1898 – Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft designer.
1904 – Peter Lorre, Hungarian actor (The Maltese Falcon).
1909 – Colonel Tom Parker, Dutch-American talent manager (Elvis).
1909 – Wolfgang Reitherman, American animator known and sometimes credited as Woolie Reitherman, was a famed Disney animator and one of Disney's Nine Old Men. Reitherman began working for Disney in 1934, along with future Disney legends Ward Kimball and Milt Kahl. The three worked together on a number of classic Disney shorts. Reitherman worked on various Disney feature films produced from 1940 to 1981, from Pinocchio to The Fox and the Hound. He did the dinosaur fight in Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in Fantasia, the Headless Horseman chase in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow section in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the Crocodile in Peter Pan, and Maleficent as a dragon in Sleeping Beauty. Beginning with 1961's One Hundred and One Dalmatians he served as Disney's chief animation director. One of Reitherman's productions, the 1969 short "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day", won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. He also served as a producer and sequence director, and starred as himself in a 1941 short entitled "The Reluctant Dragon". Reitherman directed several Disney animated feature films including, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats (1970), Robin Hood (1973) and The Rescuers (1977). He is also known for reusing animation in movies directed by him, although his contemporaries added that reuse was just one of his trademarks, and had nothing to do with time or cost savings.
1928 – Yoshiro Nakamatsu, Japanese inventor (over 4000 patents).
1931 – Colin Wilson, English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher. Wilson has written widely on crime, mysticism, and the paranormal who explored his ideas on human potential and consciousness in fiction, mostly detective fiction or science fiction, including several Cthulhu Mythos pieces. Like his non-fiction work, much of Wilson's fictional output from Ritual in the Dark (1960) onwards has concerned itself with the psychology of murder — especially that of serial killing. However, he has also written science fiction of a philosophical bent, including the Spider-World series. In The Strength to Dream (1961) Wilson attacked H. P. Lovecraft as "sick" and as "a bad writer" who had "rejected reality" — but he grudgingly praised Lovecraft's story "The Shadow Out of Time" as capable science fiction. August Derleth, incensed by Wilson's treatment of Lovecraft in The Strength to Dream, dared Wilson to write what became The Mind Parasites — to expound his philosophical ideas in the guise of fiction. In the preface to The Mind Parasites, Wilson concedes that Lovecraft, "far more than Hemingway or Faulkner, or even Kafka, is a symbol of the outsider-artist in the 20th century" and asked, "what would have happened if Lovecraft had possessed a private income - enough, say, to allow him to spend his winters in Italy and his summers in Greece or Switzerland?" answering that in his opinion "he would undoubtedly have produced less, but what he did produce would have been highly polished, without the pulp magazine cliches that disfigure so much of his work. And he would have given free rein to his love of curious and remote erudition, so that his work would have been closer to that of Anatole France or Jorge Luis Borges" Wilson also discussed Lovecraft in Order of Assassins (1972) and in the prefatory note to The Philosopher's Stone (1969). His short novel The Return of the Lloigor (1969/1974) also has roots in the Cthulhu Mythos - its central character works on the real book the Voynich Manuscript, but discovers it to be a mediaeval Arabic version of the Necronomicon - as does his 2002 novel The Tomb of the Old Ones.
1963 – Richard Garfield, American game designer who created Magic: The Gathering, the first collectible card game (CCG). Magic debuted in 1993, and its success spawned many imitations. Garfield also designed the CCGs Netrunner, BattleTech, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Star Wars Trading Card Game, The Great Dalmuti, and the board game RoboRally. He also created a variation of the game Hearts called Complex hearts. Garfield first became passionate about games when he played Dungeons & Dragons. In 1999, Garfield was inducted into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame, as was Magic.
1982 - Tolga Safer, British actor who is best known for playing Igor Karkaroff's Aide in the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. other notable film credits include Sugarhouse alongside Andy Serkis.
1985 – Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Tibetan spiritual leader, 17th Karmapa Lama.
1992 – Jennette McCurdy, American actress and singer (Sam Puckett).
Happy birthday guys!