29 June 2017
Interesting tidbits:
512 - A solar eclipse is recorded by a monastic chronicler in Ireland.
1613 – The Globe Theatre in London, England burns to the ground.
1888 – George Edward Gouraud recorded Handel's Israel in Egypt onto a phonograph cylinder, thought for many years to be the oldest known recording of music. Gouraud was an American Civil War recipient of the Medal of Honor who later became famous for introducing the new Edison Phonograph cylinder audio recording technology to England. He was a technophile who suffounded himself with the new electric inventions of his day. Gouraud had many such gadgets installed in his house in South London, which became known as "Little Menlo" after Menlo Park where Edison's company was located, and acted as an agent for Edison in London. In 1888, Thomas Edison sent his "Perfected" Phonograph to Gouraud in London and on 14 August 1888, Gouraud introduced the phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made.
1914 – Jina Guseva attempts to assassinate Grigori Rasputin at his home town in Siberia.
1927 – The Bird of Paradise, a U.S. Army Air Corps Fokker tri-motor, completed the first transpacific flight, from the mainland United States to Hawaii. The Bird of Paradise was a military airplane used by the United States Army Air Corps to experiment with the use of radio beacon aids in air navigation. On June 28–29, 1927, the Bird of Paradise, crewed by 1st Lt. Lester J. Maitland and 1st Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger, completed the first transpacific flight, from California to Hawaii, a feat for which the crew received the Mackay Trophy. The plane was one of three Atlantic-Fokker C-2 trimotor transport planes developed for the Air Corps from the civilian Fokker F.VIIa/3m airliner design. Its two-ton carrying capacity gave it the ability to carry sufficient fuel for the 2,500-mile flight, and its three motors provided an acceptable safety factor in the event one failed. Although modified for the long distance flight, the C-2 was a widely used standard design, demonstrating the practicality of flying long distances. Although the recognition accorded Maitland and Hegenberger was less in comparison with the adulation given Charles Lindbergh only five weeks earlier, their feat was arguably more significant from a navigational stand point. From our standpoint almost a century after the fact we tend to forget how many brave men - and women - were involved in the development of heavier than air flight.
1927 – First test of Wallace Turnbull's controllable pitch propeller.
1936 - Empire State Building broadcasts high definition TV-343 lines.
1939 - Dixie Clipper completes 1st commercial plane flight to Europe
1940 - Batman Comics, mobsters rubbed out a circus highwire team known as the Flying Graysons, leaving their son Dick (Robin) an orphan
1956 – The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System.
1995 – Space Shuttle program: STS-71 Mission (Atlantis) docks with the Russian space station Mir for the first time.
2007 – Apple Inc. releases their first mobile phone, the iPhone.
Today's birthday crew:
1793 – Josef Ressel, Czech-Austrian inventor, invented the propeller. He was awarded a patent for his screw propeller in 1827. Two years later, he modified a steam-powered boat and test-drove it in the Trieste harbor at six knots before the steam conduits exploded. Because of this misfortune, the authorities banned further testing. However, the explosion was not caused by the propeller as many people believed at the time. The first transatlantic journey of a ship powered by a screw-propeller was by the SS Great Britain in 1845. Besides having been called "the inventor of the propeller", Ressel was also called the inventor of the steamship and a monument to him in a park in Vienna commemorates him as “the one and only inventor of the screw propeller and steam shipping”.
1858 – George Washington Goethals, American army officer and engineer, co-designed the Panama Canal.
1868 – George Ellery Hale, American astronomer. As an undergraduate at MIT, Hale invented the spectrohelioscope, with which he made his discovery of solar vortices. In 1908, he established that sunspots were magnetic. Subsequent work demonstrated that the polarity in each hemisphere switched orientation from one sunspot cycle to the next. This systematic property of sunspot magnetic fields is now commonly referred to as "Hale's law." Hale was a driven individual, who worked to found Yerkes Observatory, Mount Wilson Observatory, Palomar Observatory, and the Hale Solar Laboratory. At Mount Wilson, he hired and encouraged Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble (after whom the space telescope is named) toward some of the most significant discoveries of the time. The Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory is named after him, as are the 22-year solar Hale cycle, Asteroid 1024 Hale, and a crater on the Moon and another on Mars. In the serise The X-Files, Fox Mulder used the pseudonym "George E. Hale" on a number of occasions.
1901 – Nelson Eddy, American singer and actor.
1919 – Slim Pickens, American actor (Dr Strangelove).
1920 – Ray Harryhausen, American visual effects creator, writer, and producer who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as "Dynamation." His most memorable works include the animation on Mighty Joe Young (1949), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeleton warriors. His last film was Clash of the Titans (1981), after which he retired. After having seen King Kong (1933) for the first of many times on its initial release, Harryhausen spent his early years experimenting in the production of animated shorts, inspired by the burgeoning science fiction literary genre of the period. The scenes utilising stop-motion animation, those featuring creatures on the island or Kong, were the work of pioneer model animator Willis O'Brien. His work in King Kong inspired Harryhausen, and a friend arranged a meeting with O'Brien for him. O'Brien critiqued Harryhausen's early models and urged him to take classes in graphic arts and sculpture to hone his skills. Meanwhile, Harryhausen became friends with an aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury, with similar enthusiasms. Bradbury and Harryhausen joined a Los Angeles-area Science Fiction League formed by Forrest J. Ackerman in 1939, and the three became lifelong friends.
1943 – Little Eva, American singer (The Loco-Motion).
1949 – Greg Burson, American voice actor who did the voice of Bugs Bunny in the 1995 Carrotblanca, a well-received 8-minute Looney Tunes cartoon originally shown in cinemas. Burson also voiced Bugs in the 1996 short From Hare to Eternity, which was dedicated to the memory of Friz Freleng and the last Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones. He also did the voices of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Pepé Le Pew, and Foghorn Leghorn on Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, and Taz-Mania. Besides voicing Looney Tunes characters, Burson voiced Yogi Bear on The New Yogi Bear Show (after the death of Daws Butler in 1988) and many other characters in Hanna-Barbera-related shows and Mr. Magoo in the animated segments of the live action feature film of the same name in 1997 (after Jim Backus died in 1989). His other voice work includes CatDog, Batman: The Animated Series, All-New Dennis the Menace, Mother Goose and Grimm, The Angry Beavers, Samurai Jack, The Smurfs, Super Friends, The Twisted Adventures of Felix the Cat, and Garfield and Friends, and the three Star Wars video games The Phantom Menace, Jedi Power Battles, and The Gungan Frontier. He died at the age of 59 from the complications of extreme alcoholism after a series of bizzare incidents.
1951 – Don Rosa, American writer and illustrator (Disney).
1966 – Yoko Kamio, Japanese illustrator (Manga).
1968 – Judith Hoag, American actress and educator (First April O'Neil).
1977 - Lizzieluv Trinkets Steampunk personality.
Happy birthday guys!