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Day of High Drama in Indian Parliament

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:47:00 +0000

Day of High Drama in Indian Parliament

New Delhi:

2 Bags Full of Money in Indian Parliament (BREAKING NEWS) - Funny videos are here

Lok Sabha on Tuesday witnessed high drama when a BJP member shocked the House by walking into the well with a bag full of currency notes which he claimed was given by a Samajwadi Party leader in return for his support in the trust vote.

The three MPs are MP from Morena, Ashok Argal; MP from Mandla, Faggan Singh Kulaste and MP from Salumber in Rajasthan Mahavir Bhagora. They have alleged that they were approached by a Samajwadi Party MP.

Placing a bag on the table of the Secretary General in front of the Speaker's podium, the three MPs fished out 10 bundles of currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination. Shouting "shame, shame" and alleging horse trading by the Samajwadi Party, the members took turns to flash the money, prompting Deputy Speaker Charanjit Atwal to adjourn the House hurriedly.

When the House reconvened, L K Advani got up to say that that three of his MP's were offered Rs 3 crore for abstentions.

"They were given Rs 1 crore initially and the rest of the money was to be given to them after the trust vote is over. We want to demand of the Speaker that the issue should be investigated thoroughly," Advani said in Parliament.

He said, "The three MP's approached me and said that they have been given money and that should they bring this money to Parliament. I allowed them to bring the money to Parliament."

"This is corruption at the highest in Parliament, second only to the JMM bribery scandal. Like that scandal, this too is not a small thing and it is related to Parliament. It is a case of corruption. Whoever has given the money, whoever is asking MPs to abstain stands accused of breach of privilege," added Advani.

Advani further stated that Ashok Argal has been unhappy that his name is being dragged up by the media saying that he was going to abstain.

A decision from the Lok Sabha Speaker is awaited. The Lok Sabha has been adjourned till 5 pm on Tuesday and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has called for an all party meet in his chamber.

The Left has called it a black day in democracy. CPI-M general Secretary Prakash Karat said, "This is the most shameful day in our Parliamentary history."

BSP Spokesperson, Prakash Javdekar said, "Today, Congress tactics are coming out in front of everyone. They wanted proof of horse trading, so we gave it. The Government doesn't have any moral right to be in power."

Today In Science

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:46:00 +0000

Kirk Bryan

Born 22 July 1888; died 22 Aug 1950.

American geologist and geomorphologist who pioneered in explaining the forces that molded the present landforms of arid climates. Through his studies inhydrology, Bryan became an authority on the geology of water conservation and dam sites, and on several occasions served as consultant to the Mexican government on the construction of dams and reservoirs for reclamation projects. In 1923-25, Bryan served as geologist on archaeological expeditions in the Chaco Canyon area of New Mexico where he applied geological research as an aid to archaeological and anthropological investigation. His correlations of alluviums, cave deposits bearing artifacts, moraines, and till helped establish the antiquity of man in North America.

Selman Waksman

Born 22 July 1888; died 16 Aug 1973

Selman Abraham Waksman, was a Ukrainian-born (Priluka) American biochemist who was one of the world's foremost authorities on soil microbiology. After the discovery of penicillin, he played a major role in initiating a calculated, systematic search for antibiotics among microbes. In 1939, Dubos, a previous student pointed out a bacteria-killing agent in a soil microorganism. He introduced the term antibiotic, "against life." In 1943, he isolated streptomycin from a mold he had known and studied early in his life. His consequent discovery of this antibiotic streptomycin, the first specific antibiotic effective against tuberculosis, earned him the 1952 Nobel Prize.

Gustav Hertz

Born 22 July 1887; died 30 Oct 1975.

German quantum physicist who, with James Franck, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1925 for the Franck-Hertz experiment, which confirmed the quantum theory that energy can be absorbed by an atom only in definite amounts and provided an important confirmation of the Bohr atomic model. He was a nephew of Heinrich Hertz. Although he fought on the German side in World War I, being of Jewish descent, he was forced to resign his professorship (1934) when Hitler took power. From 1945 he worked in the Soviet Union, and then in 1955 was a professor of physics in Leipzig, East Germany.

Gregor Mendel

Born 22 July 1822; died 6 Jan 1884.

Original name (until 1843) Johann Mendel. Austrian pioneer in the study of heredity. He spent his adult life with the Augustinian monastery in Brunn, where as a geneticist, botanist and plant experimenter, he was the first to lay the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics, in what came to be called Mendelism. Over the period 1856-63, Mendel grew and analyzed over 28,000 pea plants. He carefully studied for each their plant height, pod shape, pod color, flower position, seed color, seed shape and flower color. He made two very important generalizations from his pea experiments, known today as the Laws of Heredity. Mendel coined the present day terms in genetics: recessiveness and dominance.

Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel

Born 22 July 1784; died 17 Mar 1846.

German astronomer. In 1809, at the age of 26, Bessel was appointed director of Frederick William III of Prussia's new Königsberg Observatory and professor of astronomy, where he spent the rest of his career. His monumental task was determining the positions and proper motions for about 50,000 stars, which allowed the first accurate determination of interstellar distances. Bessel's work in determining the constants of precession, nutation and aberration won him further honors. Other than the sun, he was the first to measure the distance of a star, by parallax, of 61 Cygni (1838). In mathematical analysis, he is known for his Bessel function.

James Geddes

Born 22 July 1763; died 19 Aug 1838.

Civil engineer, lawyer and politician, born in Pennsylvania but moved to New York state in 1794. The New York State Legislature introduced a bill to fund a feasibility study for a New York State canal, and retained Judge James Geddes (1808) survey routes across the state, east to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. On 20 Jan 1809, Geddes recommended a Hudson-Erie route to the State legislature. Funding was delayed, but construction on the Erie Canal began on 4 Jul 1817. Taking eight years to complete, it is one of the first great engineering works in North America. Close to 1,000 Erie Canal workers died of malaria in the swamps. Geddes also consulted on canal routes for Ohio.

Pierre Lyonnet

Born 22 July 1708; died 10 Oct 1789

Dutch naturalist and engraver who skillfully dissected insects and made detailed illustrations of their anatomy. He also had a career as an official codebreaker. In 1738 he entered the service of the States General as an administrator of secret expenses and as a code-clerk. In his leisure he turned to natural history. He believed that nature was a cipher that could be interpreted by tracing every detail of its perfect design. He designed a simple microscope which had each lens suspended at the end of a series of ball and socket joints over a small mahogony dissecting table mounted on a post above a wooden base with small drawers containing his instruments. After preparing engravings for several books written by others, he produced his own treatises.« [Other sources list his birth year as 1706 and others as 1707.]

World Recently On Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:45:00 +0000

Ten years ago: The Senate Armed Services Committee rejected, on a 9-9 vote, Daryl Jones' bid to become Air Force secretary. President Clinton, with Republican lawmakers at his side, signed a bill designed to mold the Internal Revenue Service into a friendlier, fairer tax collector.

Five years ago: Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed when U.S. forces stormed a villa in Mosul, Iraq. Months after her prisoner-of-war ordeal, Pfc. Jessica Lynch returned home to a hero's welcome in Elizabeth, W.Va.

One year ago: A bus carrying Polish Catholic pilgrims from a holy site in the French Alps plunged off a steep mountain road, killing 26 people. Padraig Harrington survived a calamitous finish in regulation and a tense putt for bogey on the final hole of a playoff to win the British Open. Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs died in Beverly Hills, Calif., at age 74.

World Today More

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:43:00 +0000

In 1587, an English colony fated to vanish under mysterious circumstances was established on Roanoke Island off North Carolina.

In 1796, Cleveland was founded by Gen. Moses Cleaveland.

In 1908, American etiquette expert Amy Vanderbilt was born in New York City.

In 1934, a man identified as bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater.

In 1937, the Senate rejected President Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court.

In 1942, the Nazis began transporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp.

In 1943, American forces led by Gen. George S. Patton captured Palermo, Sicily, during World War II.

In 1946, Jewish extremists blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 90 people.

In 1975, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in voting to restore the American citizenship of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

In 1983, Samantha Smith and her parents returned home to Manchester, Maine, after completing a whirlwind tour of the Soviet Union.

World History Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:40:00 +0000

Sources : www.History.com

July 22, 2003

Jessica Lynch gets hero's welcome

On this day in 2003, U.S. Army Private Jessica Lynch, a prisoner-of-war who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital, receives a hero's welcome when she returns to her hometown of Palestine, West Virginia. The story of the 19-year-old supply clerk, who was captured by Iraqi forces in March 2003, gripped America; however, it was later revealed that some details of Lynch's dramatic capture and rescue might have been exaggerated.

Lynch, who was born April 26, 1983, was part of the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss, Texas. On March 23, 2003, just days after the U.S. invaded Iraq, Lynch was riding in a supply convoy when her unit took a wrong turn and was ambushed by Iraqi forces near Nasiriya. Eleven American soldiers died and four others besides Lynch were captured.

Lynch, who sustained multiple broken bones and other injuries when her vehicle crashed during the ambush, was taken to an Iraqi hospital. On April 1, she was rescued by U.S. Special Forces who raided the hospital where she was being held. They also recovered the bodies of eight of Lynch's fellow soldiers. Lynch was taken to a military hospital in Germany for treatment and then returned to the United States.

Lynch's story garnered massive media attention and she became an overnight celebrity. Various reports emerged about Lynch's experience, with some news accounts indicating that even after Lynch was wounded during the ambush she fought back against her captors. However, Lynch later stated that she had been knocked unconscious after her vehicle crashed and couldn't remember the details of what had happened to her. She also said she had not been mistreated by the staff at the Iraqi hospital and they put up no resistance to her rescue. Critics--and Lynch herself--charged the U.S. government with embellishing her story to boost patriotism and help promote the Iraq war.

In August 2003, Lynch received a medical honorable discharge. She collaborated on a book about her experience, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, which was released later that year. In April 2007, Lynch testified before Congress that she had falsely been portrayed as a "little girl Rambo" and the U.S. military had hyped her story for propaganda reasons. According to Lynch: "I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary." She added: "The truth of war is not always easy to hear but it always more heroic than the hype."

July 22, 1916

The Preparedness Day bombing

In San Francisco, a bomb at a Preparedness Day parade on Market Street kills 10 people and wounds 40. The bomb was hidden in a suitcase. The parade was organized by the city's Chamber of Commerce in support of America's possible entrance into World War I. San Francisco was suffering through severe labor strife at the time, and many suspected that anti-war labor radicals were responsible for the terrorist attack.

Labor leader Tom Mooney, his wife Rena, his assistant Warren K. Billings, and two others were soon charged by District Attorney Charles Fickert with the bombing. The case attracted international interest because all evidence, with the exception of a handful of questionable witness accounts, seemed to point unquestionably to their innocence. Even after confessions of perjured testimony were made in the courtroom, the trial continued, and in 1917 Mooney and Billings were convicted of first-degree murder, with Billings sentenced to life imprisonment and Mooney sentenced to hang. The other three defendants were acquitted. Responding to international outrage at the conviction, President Woodrow Wilson set up a "mediation commission" to investigate the case, and no clear evidence of their guilt was found. In 1918, Mooney's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

During the next two decades, many groups and individuals petitioned California to grant the two men a new trial. By 1939, when evidence of perjury and false testimony at the trial had become overwhelming, newly elected Governor Culbert Olson pardoned Mooney and commuted Billing's sentence to time served. Billings was not officially pardoned until 1961.

July 22, 1933

Wiley Post flies solo around the world

American aviator Wiley Post returns to Floyd Bennett Field in New York, having flown solo around the world in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. He was the first aviator to accomplish the feat.

Post, instantly recognizable by the patch he wore over one eye, began the journey on July 15, flying nonstop to Berlin. After a brief rest, he flew on to the Soviet Union, where he made several stops before returning to North America, with stops in Alaska, Canada, and finally a triumphant landing at his starting point in New York.

Two years earlier, Post had won fame when he successfully flew around the northern part of the earth with aviator Harold Gatty. For his solo around-the-world flight in 1933, he flew a slightly greater distance--15,596 miles--in less time. For both flights, he used the Winnie Mae, a Lockheed Vega monoplane that was equipped with a Sperry automatic pilot and a direction radio for Post's solo journey. In August 1935, he was attempting to fly across the North Pole to the USSR with American humorist Will Rogers when both men were killed in a crash near Point Barrow, Alaska.

July 22, 1934

Dillinger gunned down

Outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, notorious criminal John Dillinger--America's "Public Enemy No. 1"--is killed in a hail of bullets fired by federal agents. In a fiery bank-robbing career that lasted just over a year, Dillinger and his associates robbed 11 banks for more than $300,000, broke jail and narrowly escaped capture multiple times, and killed seven police officers and three federal agents.

John Dillinger was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1903. A juvenile delinquent, he was arrested in 1924 after a botched mugging. He pleaded guilty, hoping for clemency, but was sentenced to 10 to 20 years at Pendleton Reformatory. While in prison, he made several failed escapes and was adopted by a group of professional bank robbers led by Harry Pierpont, who taught him the ways of their trade. When his friends were transferred to Indiana's tough Michigan City Prison, he requested to be transferred there too.

In May 1933, Dillinger was paroled, and he met up with accomplices of Pierpont. Dillinger's plan was to raise enough funds to finance a prison break by Pierpont and the others, who then would take him on as a member of their elite robbery gang. In four months, Dillinger and his gang robbed four Indiana and Ohio banks, two grocery stores, and a drug store for a total of more than $40,000. He gained notoriety as a sharply dressed and athletic gunman who at one bank leapt over the high teller railing into the vault.

With the help of two of Pierpont's women friends, Dillinger set up the jailbreak. Guns were bought and arranged to be smuggled into Michigan City Prison. Prison workers were bribed, and a safe house was set up. On September 22, however, just days before the jailbreak was scheduled to occur, Dillinger was arrested in Dayton, Ohio. Four days later, Pierpont and nine others broke out of Michigan City. Pierpont's gang robbed a bank in Ohio for $11,000 and on October 12 came to Ohio to free Dillinger from the Lima city jail. The Lima sheriff was killed during the successful breakout. On October 30, the gang robbed a police arsenal, acquiring weapons, ammunition, and bulletproof vests.

The Pierpont/Dillinger gang robbed banks in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Chicago for more than $130,000, a great fortune in the Depression era, and eluded the police in several close encounters. In January 1934, the gang headed to Tucson, Arizona, to lay low. By this time, four police officers had been killed and two wounded, and the Chicago police had established an elite squad to track down the fugitives. They were recognized in Tucson and on January 25 captured without bloodshed.

Dillinger was extradited to Indiana, arraigned for his January 15 murder of Indiana police officer William Patrick O'Malley, and held at Crown Point prison. On March 3, while still awaiting trial, he executed his most celebrated escape. That morning, he brandished a gun and methodically began locking up the prison officials. The legend is that the weapon was a wooden gun carved by Dillinger and blackened with shoe polish, but it may also have been a real gun smuggled into the prison by an associate. Whatever the case, Dillinger raided the prison arsenal, where he found two sub-machine guns, and then enlisted the aid of another prisoner, an African American man named Herbert Youngblood. Dillinger and Youngblood then made their way to the prison garage, where they stole a sheriff's car and calmly drove off--after pulling the ignition wires from the other vehicles parked there.

Parting ways with Youngblood, Dillinger traveled to Chicago and formed a new gang featuring "Baby Face" Nelson, a psychopathic killer who used to work for Al Capone. The new Dillinger gang robbed banks in South Dakota and Iowa, netting $101,500 and wounding two more police officers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined the manhunt for Dillinger after he escaped from Crown Point, and on March 31 two FBI agents closed in on him at an apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dillinger and an accomplice shot their way out.

In April, the Dillinger gang went to hide out at a resort in Wisconsin, but the FBI was tipped off. On April 22, the FBI stormed the resort. In a disastrous operation, three civilians were mistakenly shot by the FBI, one of whom died; Baby Face Nelson killed one agent, shot another, and critically wounded a police officer; the entire Dillinger gang escaped.

With two other gang members, Dillinger traveled to Chicago, surviving a shoot-out with Minnesota police along the way. In Chicago, he lived in a safe house and got a facelift to conceal his identity. At some point, he also used acid to burn off his fingerprints. On June 30, he participated in his last robbery, in South Bend, Indiana. The gang got away with about $30,000 at the cost of one officer killed, four civilians shot, and one gang member shot.

In July, Anna Sage, a Romanian-born brothel madam in Chicago and friend of Dillinger's, agreed to cooperate with the FBI in exchange for leniency in an upcoming deportation hearing. She also hoped to cash in on the $10,000 bounty that had been put on his head. On July 22, Sage and Dillinger went to see the gangster movie Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theatre around the corner from her house. Twenty FBI agents and police officers staked out the theater and waited for him to emerge with Sage, who would be wearing an orange dress to identify herself.

At 10:40 p.m., Dillinger came out. Sage's orange dress looked red under the Biograph's lights, which would earn her the nickname "the lady in red." Dillinger was ordered to surrender, but he took off running. He made it as far as an alley at the end of the block before he was gunned down, allegedly because he pulled a gun. Two bystanders were wounded in the gunfire. Public Enemy No. 1, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had deemed him, was dead.

Some researchers have claimed that another man, not Dillinger, was killed outside the Biograph, citing autopsy findings on the corpse that allegedly contradict Dillinger's known medical record.

July 22, 2003

Qusay and Uday Hussein killed

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s sons, Qusay and Uday Hussein, are killed after a three-hour firefight with U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. It is widely believed that the two men were even more cruel and ruthless than their notorious father, and their death was celebrated among many Iraqis. Uday and Qusay were 39 and 37 years old, respectively, when they died. Both are said to have amassed considerable fortunes through their participation in illegal oil smuggling.

Uday Hussein, as Saddam’s first-born son, was the natural choice to succeed the feared despot. But even the seemingly amoral Saddam took issue with Uday’s extravagant lifestyle—he is said to have personally owned hundreds of cars—and lack of personal discipline. After Uday bludgeoned and stabbed one of Saddam’s favorite attendants to death at a 1988 party, Saddam briefly had him imprisoned and beaten.

While Saddam began to favor his second son Qusay, Uday continued to make a name for himself among the Iraqi people for his sadism and cruelty. Prone to beating and torturing his servants and anyone else who displeased him, he was known to spend time studying new torture devices and methods to improve his technique. He even treated his so-called friends poorly—in one report, he forced some to drink dangerous amounts of alcohol purely for his amusement. Uday was also a man of unrestrained sexual appetites, sleeping with several women per night up to five nights a week. He was known for raping young women--some as young as 12--whom he found attractive, threatening their and their families’ lives if they complained or spoke out against the crime. He would sometimes torture and kill his victims after sex.

Uday held several jobs during his father’s regime, most notably publishing the most widely read newspaper in the country and heading Iraq’s Olympic Committee. In that position, he is known to have beaten athletes whom he felt did not perform up to expectations. He was also the head of the Fedayeen Saddam, one of his father’s security groups. In 1996, Uday was shot while driving in his car. Though never proven, it has been speculated that his brother Qusay may have been behind the assassination attempt. The incident caused him to suffer a stroke and, despite surgery, left a bullet lodged in his spine. Although he recovered most function, it is said that Uday lived with considerable pain for the rest of his life, which may have exacerbated his sadistic tendencies. The weakness he experienced after the shooting may also have contributed to his father’s growing doubts about his suitability as a successor.

At the same time, Qusay was earning Saddam’s trust. Married with four children, Qusay was said to be less sadistic than his brother, but was still a cold and ruthless killer who was much feared throughout the country. While Uday often bragged about his excesses and violent exploits, Qusay was known to intentionally keep a much lower profile. He worshipped his father and worked hard to impress him. After he proved himself by brutally repressing the Shi’ite uprisings that occurred after the 1991 Gulf War—even doing some of the killing himself—Saddam rewarded Qusay with a series of more responsible posts, including command of Iraq’s elite fighting force, the Republican Guard, and the Special Security Organization, Iraq’s secret police. By that time, it had become clear that Qusay had replaced his brother as Saddam’s likely heir.

Despite Qusay’s superior reputation, observers noted with interest that Uday’s Fedayeen Saddam actually outperformed the Qusay-led Republican Guard during the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq. Qusay proved to be an ineffective leader, showing fear and often second-guessing his own decisions. After the invasion, both brothers went into hiding and the U.S. government posted a $15 million reward for information leading to the discovery of either man’s location. Though it was widely speculated that they would not be found together because of their mutual enmity, an informant’s tip led U.S. Special Forces to a house in which they were both staying on July 22, 2003. After drawing fire, the soldiers withdrew, until receiving backup in the form of 100 troops from the 101st Airborne division, Apache helicopters, and an A-10 gunship. A battle ensued, after which Americans entered the house and found the bodies of the two brothers, as well as that of Qusay’s 14- year-old son. They were buried in a cemetery near the city of Tikrit, their father’s birthplace.

In the wake of their deaths, the American government drew criticism for releasing pictures of Uday’s and Qusay’s lifeless bodies, but insisted the move was necessary to convince the skeptical Iraqi people that the long-feared brothers were truly dead. About five months later, on December 13, 2003, their father, who also went into hiding after the U.S. invasion, was found and captured alive by American forces. His trial by special tribunal for multiple crimes committed during his reign began in October 2005. On November 5, 2006, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. After an unsuccessful appeal, Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006.

July 22, 1908

Fisher Body Company is established

Albert Fisher and his nephews, Frederic and Charles Fisher, established the Fisher Body Company to manufacture carriage and automobile bodies. Albert Fisher personally supplied $30,000 of the company's total of $50,000 in initial capital. Charles and Frederic had been trained in their father's carriage building shop and supplied the technical know-how required at the company's inception. Fisher Body quickly abandoned carriage building to concentrate on car frames. By 1910, Fisher supplied some car bodies for General Motors (GM), and in 1919 GM purchased controlling interest in the company to shore up a supplier for its car bodies. At that time, Fisher was the largest supplier of car bodies in the world. The Fisher brothers were early advocates of closed-body, steel and wood frames, and they pre-empted their competition by creating more closed-bodied cars than open-bodied. They were also early in their adoption of aluminum and steel frames. Fisher Body completed a total merger in 1924 after their initial contracted agreement to supply bodies to GM had expired. On June 30, 1926, GM traded 667,720 shares of its own stock, at a market value of $136 million, for the remaining 40 percent of Fisher Body. The firm became the Fisher Body Division of GM, and was still headed by the Fisher family. The Fisher family remained in control of the Fisher Body Division until 1944, though brothers Lawrence and Edward were on the board of directors until 1969. The Fisher family's impact on the automotive industry is second only to that of the Ford family. Every GM body between 1919 and 1944 passed the approval of a Fisher man.

July 22, 1987

Gorbachev accepts ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles

In a dramatic turnaround, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indicates that he is willing to negotiate a ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles without conditions. Gorbachev's decision paved the way for the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States.

Since coming to power in 1985, Gorbachev had made it clear that he sought a less contentious relationship with the United States. His American counterpart, President Ronald Reagan, was a staunch anticommunist and initially harbored deep suspicions about Gorbachev's sincerity. After meeting with Gorbachev in November 1985, however, Reagan came to believe that progress might be made on a number of issues, including arms control. In subsequent summit meetings, the two leaders focused on the so-called intermediate-range nuclear missiles that both nations had massed in Europe and around the world. In late 1986, it appeared that the two nations were close to an agreement that would eliminate the weapons from Europe. Negotiations stumbled, however, when Gorbachev demanded that the elimination of the missiles be accompanied by U.S. abandonment of its development of the strategic defense initiative (the "Star Wars" plan). The talks broke down while Reagan and Gorbachev traded accusations of bad faith. On July 22, 1987, Gorbachev dramatically announced that he was ready to discuss the elimination of intermediate-range missiles on a worldwide basis, with no conditions. By dropping his objection to the strategic defense initiative (which was one of Reagan's pet projects), Gorbachev cleared the way for negotiations, and he and Reagan agreed to meet again.

Gorbachev's change of mind was the result of a number of factors. His own nation was suffering from serious economic problems and Gorbachev desperately wanted to cut Russia's military spending. In addition, the growing "no-nukes" movement in Europe was interfering with his ability to conduct diplomatic relations with France, Great Britain, and other western European nations. Finally, Gorbachev seemed to have a sincere personal trust in and friendship with Ronald Reagan, and this feeling was apparently reciprocal. In December 1987, during a summit in Washington, the two men signed off on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.

July 22, 1993

Kaskaskia is inundated by flood of ‘93

On this day in 1993, the levee holding back the flooding Mississippi River at Kaskaskia, Illinois, ruptures, forcing the town’s people to flee on barges. The Mississippi flood of 1993 caused $18 billion in damages and killed 52 people.

From June through August 1993, the midwestern United States received far more rainfall than normal, particularly in the northern region, where water feeds into both the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The unusually heavy rainfall led to severe flooding, particularly along the Illinois and Missouri shores. In all, more than 1,000 levees burst in late July.

The incident at Kaskaskia was the most dramatic event of the flood. The town, virtually an island, was protected by a levee that the town attempted to shore up even after the bridge connecting the town to the riverside was wiped out by the rising river. At 9:48 a.m., the levee broke, leaving the people of Kaskaskia with no escape route other than two Army Corp of Engineers barges. By 2 p.m., the entire town was underwater.

When the Quincy, Illinois, levee broke, there was no way to cross the Mississippi River for 250 miles north of St. Louis. In Grafton, Illinois, flood waters reached two stories high. Other towns had better luck-- in St. Genevieve, Missouri, the entire town turned out to raise the levee. Prisoners were even brought in to assist the effort. The river crested at a record 49 feet, just two feet below the improved levee.

The flood inundated 1 million acres of prime farm land and wreaked havoc on the area’s economy. Miles of wheat fields were too saturated to harvest that season. In addition, the herbicides from the farms washed down the river and severely damaged fish farms in Louisiana. Many other people lost their jobs when barge traffic on the river was suspended for two months.

July 22, 1944

Farewell to Bretton Woods

During the summer of 1944, representatives from forty-four nations gathered at a resort hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to hash out the global finances for the remaining half of the twentieth century. Cast against the backdrop of World War II, the three-week conference was a striking display of the United States' swelling political and fiscal might. For one, the U.S. used Bretton Woods as a stage to promote the dollar as the standard currency for international transactions. Though some European leaders initially blanched at the idea, American officials stood their ground and the dollar eventually won the day. But, the United States' victories at Bretton Woods didn't end there: by the time the conference closed on July 22, the delegates had voted to create both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), institutions which, in the minds of some historians, sealed America's role as the leader of the post-war economic order. Though U.S. leaders positioned the World Bank and IMF as "financial institutions" shorn of political entanglements, both bodies bore the traces of American influence. The brainchild of American officials, the IMF was charged with stabilizing exchange rates and enforcing the dollar-centric currency standard. Likewise, the World Bank, which was devised to dole out international loans, received good chunks of its fiscal resources from the United States.

Get more from : www.history.com

World History Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:28:00 +0000

July 21, 2005

Bombers attempt to attack London transit system

On this day in 2005, terrorists attempt to attack the London transit system by planting bombs on three subways and on one bus; none of the bombs detonate completely. The attempted attack came exactly two weeks after terrorists killed 56 people, including themselves, and wounded 700 others in the largest attack on Great Britain since World War II. The previous attack also targeted three subways and one bus.

The failed bombs were found at the London Underground’s Oval, Warren Street and Shepherd’s Bush stations and on a bus in Hackney. Two days later, a fifth bomb, apparently abandoned, was found in some bushes near a park in Little Wormwood Scrubs.

The five men believed to be the bombers--Ibrahim Muktar Said, Yassin Hassan Omar, Hussain Osman, Ramzi Mohamed and Manfo Kwaku Asiedu--left behind substantial forensic evidence and were arrested by the end of July. All are charged with conspiracy to commit murder, among other charges. Their trial is set to begin in September 2006.

An estimated 3 million people ride the London Underground every day, with another 6.5 million using the city’s bus system.

July 21, 1970

Aswan High Dam completed

After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in Egypt is completed on July 21, 1970. More than two miles long at its crest, the massive $1 billion dam ended the cycle of flood and drought in the Nile River region, and exploited a tremendous source of renewable energy, but had a controversial environmental impact.

A dam was completed at Aswan, 500 miles south of Cairo, in 1902. The first Aswan dam provided valuable irrigation during droughts but could not hold back the annual flood of the mighty Nile River. In the 1950s, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser envisioned building a new dam across the Nile, one large enough to end flooding and bring electric power to every corner of Egypt. He won United States and British financial backing, but in July 1956 both nations canceled the offer after learning of a secret Egyptian arms agreement with the USSR. In response, Nasser nationalized the British and French-owned Suez Canal, intending to use tolls to pay for his High Dam project. This act precipitated the Suez Canal Crisis, in which Israel, Britain, and France attacked Egypt in a joint military operation. The Suez Canal was occupied, but Soviet, U.S., and U.N. forced Israel, Britain, and France to withdraw, and the Suez Canal was left in Egyptian hands in 1957.

Soviet loans and proceeds from Suez Canal tolls allowed Nasser to begin work on the Aswan High Dam in 1960. Some 57 million cubic yards of earth and rock were used to build the dam, which has a mass 16 times that of the Great Pyramid at Giza. On July 21, 1970, the ambitious project was completed. President Nasser died of a heart attack in September 1970, before the dam was formally dedicated in 1971.

The giant reservoir created by the dam--300 miles long and 10 miles wide--was named Lake Nasser in his honor. The formation of Lake Nasser required the resettlement of 90,000 Egyptian peasants and Sudanese Nubian nomads, as well as the costly relocation of the ancient Egyptian temple complex of Abu Simbel, built in the 13th century B.C.

The Aswan High Dam brought the Nile's devastating floods to an end, reclaimed more than 100,000 acres of desert land for cultivation, and made additional crops possible on some 800,000 other acres. The dam's 12 giant Soviet-built turbines produce as much as 10 billion kilowatt-hours annually, providing a tremendous boost to the Egyptian economy and introducing 20th-century life into many villages. The water stored in Lake Nasser, several trillion cubic feet, is shared by Egypt and the Sudan and was crucial during the African drought years of 1984 to 1988.

Despite its successes, the Aswan High Dam has produced several negative side effects. Most costly is the gradual decrease in the fertility of agricultural lands in the Nile delta, which used to benefit from the millions of tons of silt deposited annually by the Nile floods. Another detriment to humans has been the spread of the disease schistosomiasis by snails that live in the irrigation system created by the dam. The reduction of waterborne nutrients flowing into the Mediterranean is suspected to be the cause of a decline in anchovy populations in the eastern Mediterranean. The end of flooding has sharply reduced the number of fish in the Nile, many of which were migratory. Lake Nasser, however, has been stocked with fish, and many species, including perch, thrive there.

ENTER A DATE

July 21, 1904

Rigolly breaks 100mph barrier

On this day in 1904 Louis Rigolly, driving a 15-liter Gobron-Brillie on the Ostend-Newport road in Belgium, became the first man to break the 100mph barrier in a car by raising the land-speed record to 103.55mph. On the same day in 1925, Sir Malcolm Campbell was first to best the 150mph mark when he drove his Sunbeam to a two-way average of 150.33mph at the Pendine Sands in Wales.

July 21, 1925

The "Trial of the Century" draws national attention

Schoolteacher John T. Scopes is convicted of violating Tennessee's law against teaching evolution in public schools. The case debated in the so-called "Trial of the Century" was never really in doubt; the jury only conferred for a few moments in the hallway before returning to the courtroom with a guilty verdict. Nevertheless, the supporters of evolution won the public relations battle that was really at stake.

Despite popular perceptions of the case, fueled in part by the Broadway play and movie Inherit the Wind, the Scopes trial was never more than a show trial. On May 4, 1925, the American Civil Liberties Union published a newspaper advertisement offering to help any Tennessee schoolteacher challenge the new law that had outlawed the teaching of evolution. George W. Rappleyea, a New Yorker who had moved to Dayton, Tennessee, read the ad and persuaded the local townspeople that Dayton should host a trial in order to spark interest in the town.

The leaders of the less than 2,000 residents of Dayton quickly came around to Rappleyea's idea. The school superintendent agreed with the law but wanted to gain publicity for the town. Even Dayton's prosecutors were in on the deal. The last piece of the puzzle was to find a defendant. Twenty-four-year-old John T. Scopes, a local high school science teacher and football coach, agreed to fill the roll since he wasn't planning on staying in Dayton for the long term. No one was really concerned whether he had actually taught evolution to his students. The fact that he had been using the state-approved science textbook, which included a chapter on evolution, was deemed sufficient. A warrant was made for Scopes' arrest, and word went out that the trial would begin in the summer.

Although the rest of Tennessee was displeased with Dayton's plan, 500 seats were added to the town's courtroom for press and spectators, and loudspeakers were set up on the lawn outside and in four auditoriums around town. This proved necessary when the nation's leading figures in the evolution debate hijacked the case from the local attorneys. William Jennings Bryan, a former congressman who had twice run for president before serving as secretary of state for Woodrow Wilson, took over the prosecution. Bryan had personally initiated the campaign against evolution in the United States; the Tennessee law was his first major success.

Knowing that it would be the perfect forum to debate Bryan on the evolution and creationism issue, the great liberal lawyer Clarence Darrow wormed his way into the case as the defense attorney. While the press flooded into Dayton for the showdown between these two larger-than-life figures, a Chicago radio station broadcast the trial live-a first in America.

The trial opened on July 10 with magnificent speeches from both Bryan and Darrow. However, it soon became evident that the trial judge was not going to play along: He cut off every attempt by Darrow to debate the validity of evolution. The trial would have been completely uneventful except for a creative gambit by Darrow-he called Bryan as a witness. Although the judge would never have allowed a prosecutor to be called as a defense witness, Bryan didn't dare back down to the challenge. In a famous exchange, Darrow questioned Bryan on the literal interpretation of the Bible's account of the beginning of the world. With masterful questioning, Darrow forced Bryan to admit that a purely literal interpretation was not possible, making him look very foolish.

Darrow's performance didn't save Scopes from a conviction and $100 fine (it was later overturned on a technicality), but in the mainstream press, the theory of evolution clearly won the debate.

July 21, 365

Tsunami hits Alexandria, Egypt

On this day in the year 365, a powerful earthquake off the coast of Greece causes a tsunami that devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Although there were no measuring tools at the time, scientists now estimate that the quake was actually two tremors in succession, the largest of which is thought to have had a magnitude of 8.0.

The quake was centered near the plate boundary called the Hellenic Arc and quickly sent a wall of water across the Mediterranean Sea toward the Egyptian coast. Ships in the harbor at Alexandria were overturned as the water near the coast receded suddenly. Reports indicate that many people rushed out to loot the hapless ships. The tsunami wave then rushed in and carried the ships over the sea walls, landing many on top of buildings. In Alexandria, approximately 5,000 people lost their lives and 50,000 homes were destoyed.

The surrounding villages and towns suffered even greater destruction. Many were virtually wiped off the map. Outside the city, 45,000 people were killed. In addition, the inundation of saltwater rendered farmland useless for years to come. Evidence indicates that the area’s shoreline was permanently changed by the disaster. Slowly, but steadily, the buildings of Alexandria’s Royal Quarter were overtaken by the sea following the tsunami. It was not until 1995 that archaeologists discovered the ruins of the old city off the coast of present-day Alexandria.

Today, the anniversary of the tsunami is celebrated annually with the residents saying prayers and marking the evening by illuminating the city.

July 21, 1862

Former President Martin Van Buren lapses into a coma

On this day in 1862, former President Martin Van Buren, who served as the nation’s eighth president between 1837 and 1841, slips into a coma.

Van Buren, who developed asthma in 1860, had a history of heavy drinking as well as, later in life, cardiac problems. The drinking, for which he had earned a reputation as early as age 25, may have contributed to a host of illnesses he experienced in his lifetime. However, historians claim the man known as “Blue Whiskey Van” had largely given up, or began to hide, his alcohol consumption by the time he became Andrew Jackson’s vice president in 1829.

During his presidency and in subsequent years, Van Buren’s history of drinking, plus his increasing obesity, led to a battle with gout. He caught frequent colds, suffered from serious bouts of flu and developed a nervous stomach. For the stomach ailment, Van Buren was treated with a combination of water, charcoal and soot. After his tenure at the White House, at the age of 71, Van Buren’s continued struggles with gout led him to travel to France to stay at the same spa at which Thomas Jefferson sought treatment in 1821 for a fractured wrist.

Eight years later, as Van Buren developed asthma, his circulatory system began to fail, causing the coma. Three days later, he passed away. Some historians claim that a possible case of sleep apnea, caused by disruptive snoring, may have contributed to Van Buren’s declining health and his ultimate death.

July 21, 1877

Railroad strike turns bloody

In mid-July of 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad strike turned bloody: the Maryland militia opened fire on the rail workers, leaving nine strikers dead and touching off a round of riots that engulfed Baltimore. The effects of the Baltimore and Ohio incident surged across the East Coast and, on this day in 1877, workers in rail-heavy Pittsburgh hit the picket line to stage a sympathy strike. Coming but a day after the outbreak of fighting in Maryland, the Pittsburgh strike was all but bound to degenerate into violence. And, when the state militia entered the scene, Pittsburgh was primed to go up in flames. The workers greeted the troops with a volley of stones; the militia responded with a round gun fire and Pittsburgh's sympathy strike soon turned into an all out war. During the ensuing battle ignited, fires ravaged the surrounding area and forced the militia to beat a temporary retreat. But, after a night of a fighting that cost local rail companies some $10 million, the troops regained a modicum of control over the city. While the brutish events in Pittsburgh were repeated in Chicago later that month, the bloodshed did little to aid the Baltimore and Ohio strikers: indeed, the rail workers ultimately signed an agreement that did little to ameliorate their conditions.

July 21, 1944

Hitler to Germany: "I'm still alive."

On this day in 1944, Adolf Hitler takes to the airwaves to announce that the attempt on his life has failed and that "accounts will be settled."

Hitler had survived the bomb blast that was meant to take his life. He had suffered punctured eardrums, some burns and minor wounds, but nothing that would keep him from regaining control of the government and finding the rebels. In fact, the coup d'etat that was to accompany the assassination of Hitler was put down in a mere 11 1/2 hours. In Berlin, Army Major Otto Remer, believed to be apolitical by the conspirators and willing to carry out any orders given him, was told that the Fuhrer was dead and that he, Remer, was to arrest Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda. But Goebbels had other news for Remer-Hitler was alive. And he proved it, by getting the leader on the phone (the rebels had forgotten to cut the phone lines). Hitler then gave Remer direct orders to put down any army rebellion and to follow only his orders or those of Goebbels or Himmler. Remer let Goebbels go. The SS then snapped into action, arriving in Berlin, now in chaos, just in time to convince many high German officers to remain loyal to Hitler.

Arrests, torture sessions, executions, and suicides followed. Count Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who actually planted the explosive in the room with Hitler and who had insisted to his co-conspirators that "the explosion was as if a 15-millimeter shell had hit. No one in that room can still be alive." But it was Stauffenberg who would not be alive for much longer; he was shot dead the very day of the attempt by a pro-Hitler officer. The plot was completely undone.

Now Hitler had to restore calm and confidence to the German civilian population. At 1 a.m., July 21, Hitler's voice broke through the radio airwaves: "I am unhurt and well.... A very small clique of ambitious, irresponsible...and stupid officers had concocted a plot to eliminate me.... It is a gang of criminal elements which will be destroyed without mercy. I therefore give orders now that no military authority...is to obey orders from this crew of usurpers.... This time we shall settle account with them in the manner to which we National Socialists are accustomed."

World Today More:

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:27:00 +0000

In 1944, American forces landed on Guam during World War II.

In 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the lunar module.

World Recently- Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:26:00 +0000

Ten years ago: President Clinton announced a crackdown on nursing homes that were lax about quality and on states that were doing a poor job of regulating them. The Pentagon said it found no evidence to support allegations in a CNN report that U.S. troops had used nerve gas during a 1970 operation in Laos designed to hunt down American defectors. Astronaut Alan Shepard died in Monterey, Calif., at age 74. Actor Robert Young died in Westlake Village, Calif., at age 91.

Five years ago: President Bush said he was working to persuade more nations to help in Iraq. Carlton Dotson Jr., the roommate of missing Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy, was arrested and charged with Dennehy's murder. (Dotson later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.)

One year ago: Doctors removed five small growths from President Bush's colon after he temporarily transferred the powers of his office to Vice President Dick Cheney under the rarely invoked 25th Amendment. Ruediger Diedrich, one of two Germans kidnapped in southern Afghanistan on July 18, was found dead. David Beckham made his debut with the Los Angeles Galaxy in front of a sellout crowd of 27,000. (Beckham got into the exhibition game in the 78th minute of Chelsea's 1-0 victory.) "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final volume of the wizard series by J.K. Rowling, went on sale.

Indian History Of The Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:22:00 +0000

21-July-1658 Aurangzeb celebrated his being the emperor of Mugal Empire at Delhi. He was informally enthroned.

21-July-1883 Star Theatre was opened in Calcutta.

21-July-1891 Jairamdas Doulatram, great leader, journalist and freedom fighter, was born at Karachi.

21-July-1906 W.C. Bonerjee, first President of Indian National Congress, passed away.

21-July-1907 Gulam Mohamad Bakshi, former Prime Minister Jammu and Kashmir, was born.

21-July-1911 Umashankar Jethalal Joshi, famous Gujarati poet, Hindi writer and educationist, was born at Bamna in Gujarat.

21-July-1930 Anand Bakshi, famous lyrisist, was born.

21-July-1934 Chandrakant Gulabrao Borde, cricket batsman (55 Tests for India 1959-67), was born in Pune.

21-July-1935 Establishment 'Mumabi Marathi Sahitya Sangh'.

21-July-1936 Vasantrao Vishnu Limye, senior journalist and President of 'Ratnagiri District Parishad', was born.

21-July-1947 Indian Constitution Assembly accepted the tricolour flag as its National Flag. This flag is with three equal horizontal stripes of Saffron (Sacrifice), White (Truth) and Green

(Prosperity) and a Chakra is superimposed on white (Dharma Chakra on the capitol of Ashoka's Pillar at Sarnath) in blue colour having 24 spokes. The ratio of the width to length is two to three.

21-July-1962 Passenger Train and Freight Train collided near Dumraon killing 69 persons.

21-July-1963 Kashi Vidyapeeth was given recognisation as University.

21-July-1975 Hindi Post Guards was established by Government.

21-July-1977 K.S. Hegde elected Lok Sabha Speaker.

21-July-1977 Neelam Sanjiva Reddi was elected as the President of India.

21-July-1977 Bhudevchandra Basu, famous animal expert, passed away.

21-July-1984 Terrorists breach Bhakra canal in Punjab.

21-July-1988 Indian National Satellite (INSAT-1C) launched. This is operational multi-purpose communication and meteorology satellite. It served for only one and a half years. It was launched by European Ariane launch vehicle Ariane-3.

21-July-1993 Jayalalitha ends fast, Centre to set up a committee; Karnataka rejects the proposal.

21-July-1994 The Supreme Court declares that SC/ST will lose status on migration to other states.

21-July-1995 Sajjad Husain, famous film music director, passed away.

21-July-1999 Bansi Lal, Haryana Chief Minister, quits before seeking a trust vote; and rebels form a separate party.

21-July-1999 The Janata Dal splits under Deve Gowda and Sharad Yadav. The latter group to support NDA.

21-July-2000 A. B. Vajpayee, Prime Minister, announces a special fund for population projects with the Planning Commission providing seed money of Rs. 100 crores. He was addressing the maiden meeting of the National Population Commission.

World History Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:36:00 +0000

Armstrong walks on moon

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

The American effort to send astronauts to the moon has its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission, testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination. Then, on January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire.

Despite the setback, NASA and its thousands of employees forged ahead, and in October 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing. In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the dark side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. Then in May, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled July landing mission.

At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a famous message: "The Eagle has landed."

Landing Of APOLLO 11

At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the lunar module's ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation. At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." He then planted his left foot on the gray, powdery surface, took a cautious step forward, and humanity had walked on the moon.

"Buzz" Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface at 11:11 p.m., and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests, and spoke with President Richard M. Nixon via Houston. By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon--July 1969 A.D--We came in peace for all mankind."

At 5:35 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at 12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:51 p.m. on July 24.

There would be five more successful lunar landing missions, and one unplanned lunar swing-by, Apollo 13. The last men to walk on the moon, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission, left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972. The Apollo program was a costly and labor intensive endeavor, involving an estimated 400,000 engineers, technicians, and scientists, and costing $24 billion (close to $100 billion in today's dollars). The expense was justified by Kennedy's 1961 mandate to beat the Soviets to the moon, and after the feat was accomplished ongoing missions lost their viability.

July 20, 1951

King of Jordan assassinated

While entering a mosque in the Jordanian sector of east Jerusalem, King Abdullah of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist.

Abdullah was a member of the Hashemites, an Arab dynasty said to be directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad. During World War I, with British support, Abdullah led an Arab revolt against Turkish rule in Jordan. In 1921, the British made him the emir of Transjordan, and with Jordanian independence in 1946 he became the country's monarch. Two years later, he led his armies against the newly declared state of Israel, and Jordan annexed east Jerusalem along with the portions of Palestine now known as the West Bank. In 1951, his efforts to create an Arab federation under Hashemite rule ended when he was assassinated in Jerusalem.

After a brief sojourn on the Jordanian throne, Abdullah's son was declared mentally unfit to rule and was replaced by Abdullah's grandson, Hussein bin Talal. King Hussein ruled until he died in 1999; he was succeeded by his son, Abdullah.

July 20, 1976

Viking 1 lands on Mars

On the seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the Viking 1 lander, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, becomes the first spacecraft to successfully land on the surface of Mars.

Viking 1 was launched on August 20, 1975, and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. The first month of its orbit was devoted to imaging the surface to find appropriate landing sites. On July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander separated from the orbiter, touched down on the Chryse Planitia region of Mars, and sent back the first close-up photographs of the rust-colored Martian surface.

In September 1976, Viking 2--launched only three weeks after Viking 1--entered into orbit around Mars, where it assisted Viking 1 in imaging the surface and also sent down a lander. During the dual Viking missions, the two orbiters imaged the entire surface of Mars at a resolution of 150 to 300 meters, and the two landers sent back more than 1,400 images of the planet's surface.

July 20, 1894

Errett Lobban Cord is born

Errett Lobban Cord was born in Warrensburg, Missouri, on this day in 1894. Cord moved to Los Angeles while he was in high school and remained there after his graduation, starting a number of car dealerships. His prowess as a salesman led him to pursue bigger goals and to look for a way to invest the $100,000 he had managed to save in a few years of work. "Then I started looking around," he said, "I wanted to do something with that $100,000."

Cord found the struggling Auburn Automobile Company in Auburn, Indiana, a company on its last legs, having completed only 175 cars in 1923. Cord convinced Ralph Bard, head of a Chicago group that had purchased Auburn, to take him on as general manager at no cost, with the stipulation that if Cord turned the company around he would be allowed to purchase controlling interest. He launched a sales blitz, rapidly clearing out Auburn's inventory and enabling it to show a profit.

By 1926, Cord was company president and the following year the company established dividends at $4 a share and eight percent in stock. Cord then launched an aggressive business strategy, purchasing companies in many manufacturing fields and trading his stock on the New York Stock Exchange. He acquired Duesenberg in order to add a luxury car line to his Auburn cars. Sound stock management allowed Cord to expand his operations during the Depression while many other companies were merely struggling to survive.

Cord established an empire consisting of Auburn, Duesenberg, Stinson Aircraft, Lycoming Motors, Limousine Body, and a number of engineering plants. He placed his new acquisitions in a holding company called the Cord Corporation. In 1933, he added New York Shipbuilding and Checker Cab to his conglomerate. During the 1930s, sales of Cord's cars stumbled. Their heavy price tags could not be born by the tightening market. Nevertheless, during the late 1930s, Cord's company produced some of the finest classic cars in automotive history, but Cord's empire fell as precipitously as it had risen. He and Morris Markin, President of Checker, were investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for stock manipulation. In one case Cord and Markin had purchased 70,000 shares of Checker at $7. Their action created the illusion of great activity in their stock, driving the price up. Markin and Cord unloaded their shares at an average price of $59 per share. Both men denied the charges, but neither contested a court injunction preventing them from further impropriety. The same day of the verdict Cord sold all of his interest in the Cord Corporation for $2.6 million.

Cord died from cancer, in Reno, Nev., in 1974.

July 20, 1948

Truman issues peacetime draft

President Harry S. Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months. Truman's action came during increasing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union.

Following World War II, the United States moved quickly to demobilize the vast military it had constructed during the conflict. During the war, more than 16 million men and women served in the U.S. military; when the war ended in August 1945, the American people demanded rapid demobilization. By 1948, less than 550,000 men remained in the U.S. Army. This rapid decline in the size of America's military concerned U.S. government officials, who believed that a confrontation with the Soviet Union was imminent. During the years following World War II, relations between the Russians and Americans deteriorated rapidly. In 1947, the president issued the Truman Doctrine, which provided aid to Greece and Turkey to oppose communist subversion. In that same year, Secretary of State George C. Marshall warned that Western Europe was on the brink of political and economic chaos that would leave it defenseless against communist aggression; the following year, Congress approved billions of dollars in financial assistance to the beleaguered nations. In June 1948, the Soviets cut all land traffic into the U.S.-British-French zones of occupation in West Berlin. The United States responded with the Berlin Airlift, in which tons of food and supplies were flown in to sustain the population of the besieged city. In light of these events, many Americans believed that actual combat with the Soviet Union was not far away. In response to this threat, President Truman announced on July 20, 1948, that the United States was re-instituting the draft and issued a proclamation requiring nearly 10 million men to register for military service in the next two months.

Truman's decision underlined the urgency of his administration's concern about a possible military confrontation with the Soviet Union. It also brought home to the American people in concrete terms the possibility that the Cold War could, at any moment, become an actual war. In 1950, possibility turned to reality when the United States entered the Korean War, and the size of America's armed forces once again increased dramatically.

July 20, 1977

Second great flood hits Johnstown

A flash flood hits Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1977, killing 84 people and causing millions of dollars in damages. This flood came 88 years after the infamous Great Flood of 1889 that killed more than 2,000 people in Johnstown. As they had in the first flood, the dams in the Conemaugh Valley failed, bringing disaster to the town.

The flood occurred when an extraordinary amount of rain came down in the Conemaugh Valley in a short period of time. Nearly 12 inches were measured in 10 hours. The National Weather Service later estimated that this amount of rain in that location should happen less than once every 1,000 years.

The largest dam that burst was at Laurel Run. This 10-year-old earthen dam held back 100 million gallons of water. Despite having a 42-foot-high spillway, the dam failed and the resulting flood devastated the town of Tanneryville. Five other dams in the area also burst, releasing another 30 million gallons of water over the landscape.

The failure of the dams came as a big surprise. Johnstown had constructed an entire system designed to completely eliminate the flood risk. In addition, regular inspections had turned up no defects. Still, the dams were no match for the thunderstorm that stalled over the area on July 20.

In addition to the 84 people who lost their lives to the flood, $300 million in damages were suffered and hundreds of people lost their homes. President Carter declared the region a federal disaster area and the National Guard was sent to assist in the relief efforts. Despite millions spent to rehabilitate the Johnstown area, the economy never recovered. The city’s population decreased nearly 15 percent in the aftermath of the flood, as people moved away to rebuild their lives elsewhere.

July 20, 1869

Mark Twain's book The Innocents Abroad is published

Mark Twain's book The Innocents Abroad is published, recounting his journey to Europe and the Holy Land in 1869. The book became a bestseller.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain, was born in Hannibal, Missouri. Apprenticed to a printer at age 13, he later worked for his older brother, who established the Hannibal Journal.

In 1857, Clemens became a steamboat pilot's apprentice, earned his license, and piloted his own boats for two years. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term "Mark Twain," a boatman's call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by "Mark Twain" and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years.

In 1866, Clemens went to Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union. Later, he traveled the world writing accounts for papers in California and New York, which became The Innocents Abroad.

In 1870, Clemens married the daughter of a wealthy New York coal merchant and settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he continued to write travel accounts and lecture. In1875, his novel Tom Sawyer was published, followed by Life on the Mississippi (1883). Bad investments left Clemens bankrupt after the publication of his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn in 1885, but he won back his financial standing with his next three books. In 1903, he and his family moved to Italy, where his wife died. Her death left him sad and bitter, and his work, while still humorous, grew distinctly darker. He died in 1910.

July 20, 1894

Pullman strike turns deadly

During the summer of 1894, the Pullman Palace Car Company was embroiled in what proved to be one of the most bitter strikes in American history. The strike was a direct response to company chief George Pullman and his hardball tactics, most notably his decision in the midst of the Depression of 1893 to preserve profits by slashing wages and hiking up workers' rents. A band of frustrated employees implored Pullman to ease rents and restore wages; Pullman responded by firing three of the workers. In May, the workers fired back at their avaricious boss by calling a strike. Backed by the organizational muscle of Eugene Debs and the mighty American Railway Union (ARU), the workers touched off a round of sympathy strikes and boycotts that effectively crippled the Chicago-based company. However, Pullman had has own network of powerful allies, including other rail honchos and a number government officials. In hopes of enlisting the aid of the federal military, Pullman and his cronies convinced the government that the strikes and boycotts were inhibiting the delivery of America's mail. Though Pullman's cars didn't carry any mail, the scheme proved effective: in early July, the government banned the boycotts and swiftly shipped troops to Chicago. Fighting broke out shortly after the government forces hit the scene; by the time the militia left Chicago on July 20, the "war" between the troops and the strikers had left thirty-four men dead. But, the damage had already been done to the Pullman strikers: their ranks and clout had been depleted, and, when American Federation of Labor chief Samuel Gompers' refusal to lend them any substantial support, the rail workers were forced to capitulate to management. In the wake of the settlement, many of the strikers were barred from working in the rail industry.

Source : www.History.com

Today In Science

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:35:00 +0000

Gerd Binnig

Born 20 Jul 1947
German-born physicist who co-invented the scanning tunneling microscope with Heinrich Rohrer. They shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics with Ernst Ruska, who designed the first electron microscope. This instrument is not a true microscope ( i.e. an instrument that gives a direct image of an object) since it is based on the principle that the structure of a surface can be studied using a stylus that scans the surface at a fixed distance from it. Vertical adjustment of the stylus is controlled by means of what is termed the tunnel effect - hence the name of the instrument.

Robert D. Maurer
Born 20 Jul 1924
American research physicist, who with his colleagues at Corning Glass Works, Dr. Donald B. Keck and Dr. Peter Schultz invented fused silica optical waveguide - optical fiber. This was a breakthrough creating a revolution in telecommunications, capable of carrying 65,000 times more information than conventional copper wire. In 1970, Maurer, Keck, and Schultz solved a problem that had previously stumped scientists around the world. They designed and produced the first optical fiber with optical losses low enough for wide use in telecommunications. The light loss was limited to 20 decibels per kilometer (at least one percent of the light entering a fiber remains after traveling one kilometer). He retired in 1989.

Tadeus Reichstein Born 20 Jul 1897; died 1 Aug 1996.
Polish-born Swiss chemist who identified the steroid hormones of the adrenal cortex and studied their structure and biological effects. For his role in this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1950 with Philip S. Hench and Edward C. Kendall.

John Reith
Born 20 Jul 1889
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, first Director-General of BBC (1927-38) died in Stonehaven, Grampian. As the BBC's founding father, he looked westwards in the 1920s to America's unregulated, commercial radio, and then east to the fledgling Soviet Union's rigidly controlled state system. Reith's vision was of an independent British broadcaster able to educate, inform and entertain. the whole nation, free from political interference and commercial pressure. In doing that he believed it would enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC annually invites a leading figure to deliver a series of Reith lectures in his memory using the medium of radio to advance greater public understanding of their field.

Tadeus Reichstein
Born 20 July 1897
Swiss chemist who, with Philip S. Hench and Edward C. Kendall, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1950 for his discoveries concerning hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects. With his co-workers, Reichstein accomplished the first isolation of four active hormones from the adrenal cortex, the first synthesis of one of them, the proof of the steroid nature of said hormones, and numerous details on the structure and properties of these important bodies. This made synthesis possible, leading to the creation of new medications.

Errett Lobban Cord

Born 20 Jul 1894; died 1974.
U.S. automobile manufacturer, advocate of front-wheel-drive vehicles. Cord, still in his twenties when he arrived at the Auburn Automobile Company, had a talent for seeking and hiring young, innovative minds, full of drive and ambition. Cord was a brilliant, complex industrialist who helped personal and public transportation come of age. He is best known today for Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg automobiles, Cord's greatest talent may have been his unparalleled ability to construct an automotive empire durable enough to thrive during the darkest years of the Great Depression. Photo: 1929 Cord L-29 Sedan, America's first front-drive production car. Built by the Auburn Automobile Company, Auburn, Indiana.

Alberto Santos-Dumont
Born 20 Jul 1873; died 23 Jul 1932.
Alberto Santos-Dumont was a Brazilian aviation pioneer, deemed the Father of Aviation by his countrymen. At the age of 18, Santos-Dumont was sent by his father to Paris where he devoted his time to the study of chemistry, physics, astronomy and mechanics. His first spherical balloon made its first ascension in Paris on 4 July 1898. He developed steering capabilities, and in his sixth dirigible on 19 Oct 1901 won the "Deutsch Prize," awarded to the balloonist who circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower. He turned to heavier-than-air flight, and on 12 Nov 1906 his 14-BIS airplane flew a distance of 220 meters, height of 6 m. and speed of 37 km/h. to win the "Archdecon Prize." In 1909, he produced his famous "Demoiselle" or "Grasshopper" monoplanes, the forerunners of the modern light plane.

J. J. Sederholm
Born 20 Jul 1863; died 26 June 1934
Jakob Johannes Sederholm was a pioneering geologist who studied the Precambrian rocks of Finland. He was appointed geologist to the Geological Commission of Finland in 1888, where later he became its director (1893 to 1933). The Precambrian period ran from 3.96 billion to 570 million years ago. Precambrian rocks, called sheilds can only be found today in Africa, Europe, and North America. Not much of these rocks can be found, but the ones that are display evidence of having been altered by intense metamorphosism. The minerals that the sheilds are made of are generally granite, schist, or gneiss.

Georg Elias Müller
Born 20 Jul 1850; died Dec 1934.
Georg Elias Nathanael Müller was a German psychologist whose research work encompassed four principal areas: psychophysical method, memory, thought psychology, and color perception theory. The psychophysics anticipated the color theory, which was founded on Hering. The memory work led into the thought psychology, which was founded on Herbart and Külpe. Whereas earlier in his career his published works lacked original data, he sharpened his approach and became known as the methodologist of psychological experimentation. The experiments carried out in his lab were the gold standard of experimental results. He was directed one of the major centres of psychological research at the University of Göttingen (1881-1921).«

Julius Cohnheim
Born 20 July 1839; died 1884
Julius Friedrich Cohnheim was a pioneer of experimental pathology who helped determine the morbid changes that occur in animal tissue affected by inflammation, tuberculosis, and other disease states. He demonstrated that inflammation was an active dynamic process. He was the first to scientifically classify tumors the way we still do today (ex. carcinomas, fibroma, sarcoma). Cohnheim proposed the first great theory of cancer's origin, the theory of embryonal rests. He thought more germ cells are produced with a developing embryo than are needed to form any given part and that cancer's development involves this excess material.

Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt

Born 20 July 1836; died 22 Feb 1925.
English physician, the inventor of the short clinical thermometer. The need for suitable equipment to measure the progress of a fever by temperature at the bedside was solved in 1866 when Allbutt invented the conveniently portable six-inch clinical thermometer, able to take a temperature in five minutes. It replaced a foot-long model that required 20 minutes to determine a patient's temperature. His investigations also led to the improved treatment of arterial diseases when he proved than angina is caused by the narrowing of the coronary artery. Image: Allbutt, detail of a portrait by Sir William Orpen (EB) Sir William

Bowman
Born 20 Jul 1816; died 1892.
(1st Baronet) was an English surgeon and histologist who obtained a European reputation for medical research long before he was thirty years of age. He described (1842) the histologic structure of the nephron, the functional unit of the kidney, where the process of of urine takes place as a by-product of blood filtration that is carried on in the kidney. The "Bowman's capsule" of the kidney carries his name. The kidney contains millions of very tiny sacs called Bowman's capsules that filter blood to produce urine. He also made important discoveries concerning the structure and function of the eye and of striated muscle. He collaborated with Todd in writing The Physiological Anatomy.

Sir Richard Owen
Born 20 Jul 1804; died 18 Dec 1892.
English anatomist and paleontologist who is remembered for his contributions to the study of fossil animals and for his strong opposition to the views of Charles Darwin. He created the word "Dinosaur" meaning "terrible reptile" (1842). Owen synthesized French anatomical work, especially from Cuvier and Geoffroy, with German transcendental anatomy. He gave us many of the terms still used today in anatomy and evolutionary biology, including "homology". In 1856, he was appointed Superintendent of the British Museum (Natural History). Image: Detail from portrait by William Holman Hunt. Sir James Kay-

Shuttleworth

Born 20 Jul 1804
(1st Baronet, original surname Kay) was a physician, public-health reformer, and chief founder of the English system of publicly financed elementary education. A medical graduate of Edinburgh University, he was also a cholera doctor in Manchester, a pioneer social scientist and town planner, an assistant Poor Law commissioner, the manager of a large landed estate (Gawthorpe Hall), a would-be politician and a novelist. His surname, Kay, changed in 1842 upon marriage to Janet Shuttleworth. His turbulent political, personal and family life is fascinating in itself and, in addition, sheds light on many aspects of nineteenth century social history.

World History Recently-Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:35:00 +0000

Five years ago: Gen. John Abizaid, the top commander of coalition forces in Iraq, predicted that resistance to U.S. forces in Iraq would grow in coming months as progress was made in creating a new government to replace the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein. President Bush welcomed Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi to his Texas ranch for a two-day visit. Ben Curtis, an unknown PGA Tour rookie in his first major championship, won the British Open.

One year ago: President Bush signed an executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects. Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire, then watched it collapse in disgrace, died at age 65 near Kansas City, Mo.

1991 - The five permanent members of U.N. Security Council tell Iraq's ambassador his country must swiftly disclose extent of its nuclear program or face serious consequences.

2000 - The long-delayed International Space Station's service module is lifted off into orbit.

World History - Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:33:00 +0000

1810

Colombia declared independence from Spain.

1881

Fugitive Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull surrendered to federal troops.

1985

Treasure hunters found the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank off the coast of Key West, Fla., in 1622 during a hurricane. The ship contained over 400 million in coins and silver ingots.

1944 Adolf Hitler was only slightly wounded when a bomb planted by would-be assassins exploded at the German leader's Rastenburg headquarters.

1960: Ceylon chooses world's first woman PM

Sirimavo Bandaranaike makes history when she becomes the first-ever female head of government.

1999 After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was lifted to the surface.

Medival History Of The Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:32:00 +0000

514:

Hormisdas becomes pope

World History Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:59:00 +0000

July 18, 1940

FDR nominated for unprecedented third term

On this day in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America's 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

Roosevelt was born January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, and went on to serve as a New York state senator from 1911 to 1913, assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920 and governor of New York from 1929 to 1932. In 1932, he defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover to be elected president for the first time. During his first term, Roosevelt enacted his New Deal social programs, which were aimed at lifting America out of the Great Depression. In 1936, he won his second term in office by defeating Kansas governor Alf Landon in a landslide.

On July 18, 1940, Roosevelt was nominated for a third presidential term at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago. The president received some criticism for running again because there was an unwritten rule in American politics that no U.S. president should serve more than two terms. The custom dated back to the country's first president, George Washington, who in 1796 declined to run for a third term in office. Nevertheless, Roosevelt believed it was his duty to continue serving and lead his country through the mounting crisis in Europe, where Hitler's Nazi Germany was on the rise. The president went on to defeat Republican Wendell Wilkie in the general election, and his third term in office was dominated by America's involvement in World War II.

In 1944, with the war still in progress, Roosevelt defeated New York governor Thomas Dewey for a fourth term in office. However, the president was unable to complete the full term. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt, who had suffered from various health problems for years, died at age 63 in Warm Springs, Georgia. He was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.
On March 21, 1947, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stated that no person could be elected to the office of president more than twice. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states in 1951.

July 18, 1986

Video of Titanic wreckage released

On this day in 1986, new close-up videotapes of the sunken ocean liner Titanic are released to the public. Taken on the first manned expedition to the wreck, the videotapes are stunning in their clarity and detail, showing one of the ship's majestic grand staircases and a coral-covered chandelier swinging slowly in the ocean current.

At the time of its launch, the RMS Titanic was the largest ocean liner ever built, measuring nearly 900 feet long and 150 feet from its water line to its highest beam. It was considered unsinkable owing both to its vast size and its special construction. On its maiden voyage, the Titanic carried more than 2,200 people, including several of the world's most rich and famous. Its collision with an iceberg and subsequent sinking in the icy waters of the North Atlantic resulted in the death of some 1,500 people, many of whom could have been saved if the ship had carried a sufficient number of lifeboats.

It was not until 73 years later, in 1985, that the Titanic wreck was discovered. Marine geologist Robert Ballard, in conjunction with Jean-Louis Michel of the Institute of Research for the Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), located the remains of the Titanic 350 miles southeast of Newfoundland, 13,000 feet down on the ocean floor. Ballard, who was from Massachusetts' Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, had the help of the U.S. Navy, which supplied him with Argo, a high resolution sonar device and submersible photographic sled.

Ballard's discovery caused a great stir among the public, and touched off a new era in underwater exploration and scientific research, especially around the topic of the Titanic. The following year, Ballard returned to the wreck, this time to dive down to the bottom in a submersible craft called Alvin and acquire photo footage of the ghost ship. Ballard was accompanied by Ralph Hollis, the Alvin's pilot, and Mark Bowen, who piloted Jason, Jr., a robotic submarine, or "swimming eyeball," used to explore the interior of the liner. Two miles beneath the surface, the explorers found, frozen in time, trappings of life aboard the Titanic, including a wood-burning stove and unopened champagne bottles being readied for a toast. Jason, Jr. also found the ship's safes, but left them as they lay: It was decided that the Titanic expedition would leave the ship's debris undisturbed on the ocean floor.

Even after several years of visiting the wreckage, not a trace of human remains has been found. Like other soft, degradable materials such as wood and carpet, human body parts were most likely scavenged by sea creatures not long after the ship's sinking.

July 18, 1792

Naval hero John Paul Jones dies in Paris

On this day in 1792, the Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones dies in his Paris apartment, where he was still awaiting a commission as the United States consul to Algiers. Commander Jones, remembered as one of the most daring and successful naval commanders of the American Revolution, was born in Scotland, on July 6, 1747. He became an apprentice to a merchant at 13 and soon went to sea, traveling first to the West Indies and then to North America as a young man. In Virginia at the onset of the American Revolution, Jones sided with the Patriots and received a commission as a first lieutenant in the Continental Navy on December 7, 1775. After departing from Brest, Jones successfully executed raids on two forts in Englands Whitehaven Harbor, despite a disgruntled crew more interested in gain than honor. Jones then continued to his home territory of Kirkcudbright Bay, Scotland, where he intended to abduct the earl of Selkirk and then exchange him for American sailors held captive by Britain. Although he did not find the earl at home, Jones crew was able to steal all his silver, including his wifes teapot, still containing her breakfast tea. From Scotland, Jones sailed across the Irish Sea to Carrickfergus, where his Ranger captured the HMS Drake after delivering fatal wounds to the British ships captain and lieutenant. In September 1779, Jones fought one of the fiercest battles in naval history when he led the USS Bonhomme Richard frigate, named for Benjamin Franklin, in an engagement with the 50-gun British warship HMS Serapis. After the Bonhomme Richard was struck, it began taking on water and caught fire. When the British captain of the Serapis ordered Jones to surrender, he famously replied I have not yet begun to fight! A few hours later, the captain and crew of the Serapis admitted defeat and Jones took command of the British ship.

One of the greatest naval commanders in history, Jones is remembered as a Father of the American Navy, along with fellow Revolutionary War hero Commodore John Barry. At the conclusion of the American War for Independence, Jones briefly served Empress Catherine II of Russia, before retiring to Paris. John Paul Jones is buried in a crypt at the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Maryland, where a Marine honor guard stands at attention in his honor whenever the crypt is open to the public.

July 18, 1948

"The Maestro" makes Formula One debut

Juan Manuel Fangio, a.k.a. "the Maestro," made his Formula One debut finishing 12th at the Grand Prix de l'ACF in France. Fangio was 37 years old at the start of his first Formula One race, but his late appearance onto the racing scene did not diminish his impact. Born to an Italian immigrant family outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fangio learned to race on the death-trap tracks of Argentina for little reward. Finally, his excellence was recognized by Argentine dictator Juan Peron, who agreed to sponsor Fangio's racing career. Formula One Grand Prix racing began in 1950, and Fangio took second place in the World Driver's Championship driving for Alpha Romeo. The next year he won. A crash kept him out of the circuit for the next two years, but in 1954, he switched to the Mercedes team and won his first of four consecutive World Driver's Championships. He is the only man to ever have won five titles. Fangio was known for his spectacular technical ability and for his demure manner. He spoke always with the quiet confidence that comes from a specific talent. Said Fangio, "great drivers can do their best times in two or three laps of a circuit, while others take 10, 20, or 30." Fangio's greatest achievement came in his last full season at the German Grand Prix in Nurburgring. He needed to fend off Ferrrari's driving team of Hawthorne and Collins to wrap up his fifth world title. Fangio started the race with half-full tanks, intending to build an insurmountable lead in his lighter car. When he pitted, however, the Ferrari's thundered by, stretching to a 56-second lead. The chances looked dim for the Maestro. Gradually, though, he pulled himself back into the race. On three consecutive laps he bettered the track record for the 14.2 mile Nordeschlifer ("North Ring") by an incredible 12 seconds. Fangio was racing faster than his qualifying times recorded on an empty course. Hand over fist he pulled the Ferrari cars in, their team managers urging them on in disbelief. Fangio stated, "I believe that on that day in 1957 I finally managed to master the Nurburgring, making those laps in the dark on those curves where I had never before had the courage to push things so far." After a few races in 1958, Fangio retired. The mild-mannered Argentine reflected that since he retired, the only racers to have approached his mastery of the sport were Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna. Both men died in their cars.

Juan Manuel Fangio died on July 17, 1995, and was buried in Balcarce, Argentina.

July 18, 1945

Charges of communists in the U.S. Army raised

In testimony before the House Military Affairs subcommittee, the subcommittee's chief counsel, H. Ralph Burton, charges that 16 officers and non-commissioned officers in the U.S. Army have pasts that "reflect communism." The charges, issued nearly 10 years before Senator Joseph McCarthy would make similar accusations, were hotly denied by the U.S. Army and government.

By July 1945, with the war in Europe having ended just two months before, Cold War animosities between the United States and the Soviet Union were already beginning to arise. The two nations, allies against Hitler during World War II, were dividing over issues such as the postwar fate of Germany and the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. One aspect of the growing tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States involved charges that communist agents were at work in various sectors of American society, such as Hollywood and the federal government. In July 1945, House Military Affairs subcommittee chief counsel H. Ralph Burton testified that his investigations revealed at least 16 officers and non-commissioned officers in the U.S. Army had communist backgrounds. As evidence, Burton cited the fact that some of the men had contributed writings to radical journals such as New Masses. In addition, some of the men had served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer fighting force that battled against the fascist forces of Franco in Spain during that nation's civil war in the 1930s. The U.S. Army quickly fired back, declaring that its own investigation revealed that none of the men named by Burton "was disaffected or disloyal." Whatever activities prior to their military service the men might have engaged in, "the real criterion always remains: Is the individual at the present time whole-heartedly loyal to the United States?" In the celebration that accompanied the U.S. victory over Japan less than three weeks after Burton's testimony, the charges against the U.S. Army were forgotten.

Burton's charges are of interest, however, coming nearly 10 years prior to Senator Joseph McCarthy's similar accusations against the U.S. Army in 1954. In the latter case, McCarthy was completely disgraced during his hearings into communism in the Army. The 1945 accusations indicate that McCarthy was not the creator of the so-called Red Scare that swept the nation after World War II. Indeed, even before World War II came to an end, charges of communist infiltration of the U.S. government and military were being issued.

July 18, 1984

Twenty-one people are shot to death at McDonald's

James Oliver Huberty opens fire in a crowded McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro, California, killing 21 people and wounding 19 others with several automatic weapons. Minutes earlier, Huberty had left home, telling his wife, "I'm going hunting . . . hunting for humans."

Huberty, who had a history of mental problems, lost his job in Ohio the previous year. He brought his family to San Diego and worked as a security guard until he was fired again, a month before the shootings. His wife claimed that Huberty called a mental health clinic to make an appointment for counseling but was never called back. Huberty had a love affair with guns, keeping a small arsenal in his bedroom. Neighbors described him as very angry.
Bringing several of these guns, including a 9mm automatic pistol and semiautomatic rifle, into the McDonald's two miles from the Mexican border, Huberty demanded that the 45 patrons get on the floor. He then walked around the restaurant, calmly shooting people. He killed 20 in the first ten minutes, including four who tried to escape. There were so many shots fired that the police first assumed that there was more than one gunman inside. Firing at a fire truck that responded to the scene, Huberty also grazed one firefighter with a bullet.

An hour after the shooting began, an employee managed to escape through the basement and inform the SWAT team that Huberty was alone and without hostages. With this information, sharpshooters were told to "take him out." A marksman sent a shot through Huberty's chest and killed him. After making sure that he was dead, police finally entered the restaurant. San Diego Police Chief William Kolender said, "I hope to God I never see such a thing again."

July 18, 64

Nero’s Rome burns

The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda.

The fire began in the slums of a district south of the legendary Palatine Hill. The area’s homes burned very quickly and the fire spread north, fueled by high winds. During the chaos of the fire, there were reports of heavy looting. The fire ended up raging out of control for nearly three days. Three of Rome’s 14 districts were completely wiped out; only four were untouched by the tremendous conflagration. Hundreds of people died in the fire and many thousands were left homeless.

Although popular legend holds that Emperor Nero fiddled while the city burned, this account is wrong on several accounts. First, the fiddle did not even exist at the time. Instead, Nero was well known for his talent on the lyre; he often composed his own music. More importantly, Nero was actually 35 miles away in Antium when the fire broke out. In fact, he let his palace be used as a shelter.

Legend has long blamed Nero for a couple of reasons. Nero did not like the aesthetics of the city and used the devastation of the fire in order to change much of it and institute new building codes throughout the city. Nero also used the fire to clamp down on the growing influence of Christians in Rome. He arrested, tortured and executed hundreds of Christians on the pretext that they had something to do with the fire.

July 18, 1947

Truman signs second Presidential Succession Act

On this day in 1947, President Harry S. Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act. This act revised an older succession act that was passed in 1792 during George Washington’s first term.

The original succession act designated the Senate president pro tempore as the first in line to succeed the president should he and the vice president die unexpectedly while in office. If he for some reason could not take over the duties, the speaker of the house was placed next in the line of succession. In 1886, during Grover Cleveland’s administration, Congress removed both the Senate president and the speaker of the house from the line of succession. From that time until 1947, two cabinet officials, (their order in line depended on the order in which the agencies were created) became the next in line to succeed a president should the vice president also become incapacitated or die. The decision was controversial. Many members of Congress felt that those in a position to succeed the president should be elected officials and not, as cabinet members were, political appointees, thereby giving both Republican and Democratic parties a chance at controlling the White House.

In 1945, then-Vice President Truman assumed the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt died of a stroke during his fourth term. As president, Truman advanced the view that the speaker of the house, as an elected official, should be next in line to be president after the vice president. On July 18, 1947, he signed an act that resurrected the original 1792 law, but placed the speaker ahead of the Senate president pro tempore in the hierarchy. Truman’s critics at the time claimed that the president did so because he had a close friendship with then-Speaker Sam Rayburn, and a less congenial relationship with Kenneth McKellar, the president pro tempore.

Fortunately for the country, there has never been an instance in which the presidency has had to pass to anyone other than the vice president.

July 18, 1996

Johnson makes bid for Prince

On this day in 1996, erstwhile car seating manufacturer Johnson Controls, Inc. made a bid to become the king of automotive interiors by acquiring Prince Holding Corporation. For the regal sum of $1.35 billion, Johnson snapped up a company that, for the past thirty years, had strove to "surprise and delight" drivers and passengers. Towards that end, Prince pioneered the use of electronics in car interiors; one of the company's main claims to fame was grafting lighted mirrors on to car's sun visors. This and other luxury-minded novelties made Prince an attractive partner for Johnson. Indeed, as company honcho James Keyes noted, Johnson had been looking to expand beyond the world of automotive seating "systems." Viewed in purely fiscal terms, the addition of Prince and its lucrative roster of products promised to fatten Johnson's already healthy coffers. In a statement released shortly after the deal, the companies estimated that their combined sales muscle would skyrocket Johnson's annual sales from $850 million to $6 billion.

July 18, 1925

Mein Kampf is published

On this day in 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler's philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. The book sold a total of 9,473 copies in its first year.

Hitler began composing his tome while sitting in Landsberg prison, convicted of treason for his role in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch in which he and his minions attempted to stage a coup and grasp control of the government in Bavaria. It ended in disaster, with some allies deserting and others falling into the hands of the authorities. Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment (he would serve only nine months). His time in the old fortress at Landsberg was hardly brutal; he was allowed guests and gifts, and was treated as something of a cult hero. He decided to put his leisure time to good use and so began dictating Volume One of his opus magnus to Rudolph Hess, a loyal member of the German National Socialist Party and fellow revolutionary.

The first part of Mein Kampf, subtitled "A Reckoning," is a 400-plus page diatribe on the problems besetting Germany-the French, who wished to dismember Germany; the lack of lebesraum, "living space," and the need to expand east into Russia; and the baleful influence of "mongrel" races. For Hitler, the state was not an economic entity, but a racial one. Racial purity was an absolute necessity for a revitalized Germany. "[F]or men do not perish as the result of lost wars, but by the loss...of pure blood."

As for leadership, Hitler's Third Reich would mimic the Prussian ideal of absolute authoritarian rule. "There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons.... Surely every man will have advisers...but the decision will be made by one man."

So there it was: War with France, war with Russia, the elimination of "impure" races, and absolute dictatorship. Hitler laid out his political agenda a full 14 years before the outbreak of war.

Volume Two of Mein Kampf, focusing on national socialism, was published in 1927. Sales of the complete work remained mediocre throughout the 1920s. It was not until 1933, the first year of Hitler's tenure as chancellor of Germany, that sales soared to over 1 million. Its popularity reached the point where it became a ritual to give a newly married couple a copy.

Source

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do

Today In Science

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Hartmut Michel
Born 18 Jul 1948
German biochemist who, along with Johann Deisenhofer and Robert Huber, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of certain proteins that are essential for photosynthesis. They are the first to succeed in unravelling the full details of how a membrane-bound protein is built up, revealing the structure of the molecule atom by atom. The protein is taken from a bacterium which, like green plants and algae, uses light energy from the sun to build organic substances. All our nourishment has its origin in this process, which is called photosynthesis and which is a condition for all life on earth.

Roald Hoffmann
Born 18 Jul 1937
Polish-born American chemist, corecipient, with Fukui Kenichi of Japan, of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1981 for their independent investigations of the mechanisms of chemical reactions. His work aims at theoretically anticipating the course of chemical reactions. It is based on quantum mechanics (the theory whose starting point is that the smallest building blocks of matter may be regarded both as particles and as waves), which attempts to explain how atoms behave. Orbital interaction and symmetry relations between molecules or parts of molecules are fundamental to this theory of conservation of orbital symmetry in chemical reactions.

Thomas S. Kuhn
Born 18 Jul 1922; died 17 June 1996.
Thomas S(amuel) Kuhn was an American historian of science, MIT professor, noted for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), one of the most influential works of history and philosophy written in the 20th century. His thesis was that science was not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge, but it is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions." Then appears a Lavoisier or an Einstein, often a young scientist not indoctrinated in the accepted theories, to sweep the old paradigm away. Such revolutions, he said, came only after long periods of tradition-bound normal science. "Frameworks must be lived with and explored before they can be broken,"

Charles Palache

Born 18 Jul 1869; died 5 Dec 1954
One of the most eminent crystallographers and mineralogists of the world, he lived in a period of revolutionary developments in mineralogical science. At the University of California (PhD 1887), he did the field work for the first geologic maps of the San Francisco Peninsula and the BerkleyHeidelberg taking courses in petrography, he was introduced to morphological crystallography by Victor Goldschmidt. Palache threw himself with enthusiasm into the study of crystals, and laid the foundation for the work he pursued vigorously for the next fifty-five years. Image: Crystal drawing of usual graphite crystal from Sterling Hill, NJ, from Palache's 1941 paper in American Mineralogist. area. In 1895, while at

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz
Born 18 Jul 1853; died 4 Feb 1928.
Dutch physicist and joint winner (with Pieter Zeeman) of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1902 for his theory of the influence of magnetism upon electromagnetic radiation phenomena. The theory was confirmed by findings of Zeeman and gave rise to Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. From the start, Lorentz made it his task to extend James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electricity and of light. Already in his doctor's thesis, he treated the reflection and refraction phenomena of light from this new standpoint. His fundamental work in the fields of optics and electricity revolutionized conceptions of the nature of matter. In 1878, he published an essay relating the velocity of light in a medium, to its density and composition..

Jean Robert Argand

Born 18 Jul 1768; died 13 Aug 1822.
Swiss mathematician who was one of the earliest to use complex numbers, which he applied to show that all algebraic equations have roots. He invented the Argand diagram - a geometrical representation of complex numbers as a point with the real portion of the number on the x axis and the imaginary part on the y axis.«

Gilbert White

Born 18 Jul 1720; died 26 Jun 1793
English cleric and pioneering naturalist, known as the "father of English natural history." Over the course of 20 years of his observations and two colleagues' letters, he studied a wide range of flora and fauna seen around his hometown of Selborne, Hampshire. In 1789, he published this studious work. His book The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne contained observations of nature drawn from life. The book has been in print continuously since 1789, and is the fourth most published book in the English language.

Samuel Molyneux

Born 18 Jul 1689; died 13 Apr 1728.
British astronomer (Royal Observatory at Kew) and politician. Together with assistant James Bradley, he made measurements of abberation - the diversion of light from stars. They made observations of the star Â Draconis with a vertical telescope. Starting in 1725 they had the proof of the movement of the earth giving support to the Copernican model of the earth revolving around the sun. The star oscillated with an excursion of 39 arcsecs between its lowest declination in May and its the highest point of its oscillation in September. He was unfortunate to fall ill in 1728 and into the care of the Anatomist to the Royal Family, Dr Nathaniel St Andre, whose qualifications were as a dancing master. Molyneux died shortly thereafter.

Robert Hooke
Born 18 Jul 1635; died 3 Mar 1703.
English physicist, born Freshwater, Isle of Wight, who discovered the law of elasticity, known as Hooke's law, and invented the balance spring for clocks. He was a virtuoso scientist whose scope of research ranged widely, including physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology, architecture and naval technology. On 5 Nov 1662, Hooke was appointed the Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society, London. After the Great Fire of London (1666), he served as Chief Surveyor and helped rebuild the city. He also invented or improved meteorological instruments such as the barometer, anemometer, and hygrometer. Hooke authored the influential Micrographia (1665)

More Today In World

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:36:00 +0000

1991 - The five permanent members of U.N. Security Council tell Iraq's ambassador his country must swiftly disclose extent of its nuclear program or face serious consequences.

1994 - Germany's highest court clears the way for German forces to take part in military operations beyond the country's borders, reversing a post-World War II strategy intended to keep the country from becoming a threat.

1995 - Bosnian Serbs separate men from women and children among the captured after the fall of Srebrenica and take over the U.N. base that was supposed to protect them.

1997 - Basque separatists in Spain shoot hostage Miguel Angel Blanco in the head and dump his body. The murder sets off days of protests, some of more than a million people, against separatist violence.

1998 - Three young Catholic boys burn to death in a sectarian attack in Northern Ireland.

1999 - The 52-member Organization of African Unity begins a conference in Algeria to address African problems ranging from a dlrs 220 billion debt to civil conflicts.

2000 - The long-delayed International Space Station's service module is lifted off into orbit.

2001 - Bulgaria's former king, Simeon II, is named prime minister.

2002 - U.N. Security Council approves a resolution that grants U.S. peacekeepers serving in U.N. missions immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, for at least a year.

2003 - Salamat Hashim, the leader of the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front, dies. The group had been fighting to establish a breakaway Islamic state in the southern Philippines.

2004 - Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asks the opposition Labor Party to join his coalition - an alliance that would strongly boost chances for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

2005 - Prince Albert II of Monaco accedes to the throne of a 700-year-old dynasty, a bachelor prince coming into his own as a retiring but modern ruler.

2006 - Dozens of attacks against police and civilians leave five people dead in Sao Paulo. Authorities suspect they were ordered by one of Brazil's most notorious organized crime groups.

2007 - French First Lady Cecilia Sarkozy visits five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with HIV. The diplomatic efforts of Cecilia and husband Nicolas Sarkozy eventually win their release

Today In War

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:34:00 +0000

Today In War

1863: Nearly half of the men in the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, one of the first black U.S. Army regiments, are killed or wounded in an assault on Confederate Fort Wagner in South Carolina.

1936: Led by generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola, a rebellion of the army against the Spanish Second Republic begins the Spanish Civil War.

1969: Senator Edward Kennedy drives his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Although his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowns, he fails to report the accident until the following morning.

1999: Golfer Paul Lawrie wins the British Open despite beginning the last round 10 shots behind, after Jean Van de Velde blows a three-shot lead on the final hole.

World Recently on this Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:32:00 +0000

Ten years ago: South African President Nelson Mandela capped his 80th birthday by marrying Graca Machel, the widow of a Mozambican president and black liberation leader.

Five years ago: Basketball star Kobe Bryant was charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman at a Colorado spa; Bryant denied the charge, saying he was guilty only of adultery. (Prosecutors later dropped the case.) The body of British scientist David Kelly, a weapons expert at the center of a storm over British intelligence on Iraq, was found a day after he'd committed suicide.

One year ago: Senate Republicans torpedoed legislation to force the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq. An underground steam pipe exploded on a New York City street, swallowing a tow truck and claiming the life of a woman who suffered a heart attack. Armed men kidnapped two Germans and five Afghans working on a dam project in central Afghanistan. (One of the Germans, Ruediger Diedrich, was found shot dead three days later; the others were later released.) Opera tenor Jerry Hadley, 55, died at a hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., a week after he'd shot himself with an air rifle.

Today In War

1863: Nearly half of the men in the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, one of the first black U.S. Army regiments, are killed or wounded in an assault on Confederate Fort Wagner in South Carolina.

Medieval History Of The Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:29:00 +0000

Medieval History

1216:

Honorius III elected Pope

Chosen out of compromise, Honorius focused on the plans of his predecessor, Innocent III, working actively for Church reform. He is generally considered one of the ablest administrators ever to serve the papacy.

1610:

Caravaggio

Instrumental in the Baroque movement of art, Caravaggio had such influence that his style became known as "Caravaggism." Some of his works can be found at Carol Gerten's Virtual Art Museum.

Indian History of The Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:26:00 +0000

INDIAN HISTORY of the Day

18-July-1634 Joannes Camphuys, Governor General of Dutch-Indies (1684-91), was born.

18-July-1695 Joannes Camphuys, Governal General of Dutch-Indies, died at the age of 61.

18-July-1857 The Calcutta, Mumbai and Madras Universities were established.

18-July-1908 Fourteen thousand mill workers go on strike at Bombay.

18-July-1909 Vishnu Dey, Gyanpeeth awardee and famous Bengali poet, was born.

18-July-1946 U.K. Parliament approves British Cabinet mission report on India but Churchill says that the mission went too far in offering India independence outside of the Commonwealth.

18-July-1947 Indian Independence Act, signed by King George VI, was proclaimed as Indian Freedom Act, 1947.

18-July-1953 Riots against increase in streetcar fares continue with demonstrators taking control of parts of Calcutta.

18-July-1980 Second Experimental launch of Space Launch Vehicle -3 (SLV-3) by Indian made 35 kilogram Rohini satellite (RS-1) successfully placed in orbit. It was used for measuring in-flight performance of second experimental launch of SLV-3. The launch took from Sriharikota and India became the sixth nation to put a satellite into orbit.

18-July-1980 Madras Doordashan Centre transmitted their first colour transmission for one hour in the afternoon, and this programme was re-transmitted simultaneously by Delhi Doordarshan, India.

18-July-1980 Naoomal Jeoomal, cricketer (3 Tests for India 1932-34, 108 runs), died.

18-July-1987 Amitabh Bachhan resigns his Lok Sabha membership.

18-July-1987 Arun Singh, union minister of state for defence, resigns from the cabinet.

18-July-1990 Following the end of six months Governor's rule, President's rule imposed in J&K.

18-July-1992 Kanandevi, famous Bengali actress, passed away.

18-July-1993 Dr. Banoo Coyaji, 75, gets Magsaysay Award for Public Service.

18-July-1993 India beats France 3-2 in a sensational Davis Cup tie to enter into the semi-final.

18-July-1993 Jayalalitha goes on fast on Cauvery issue.

18-July-1993 Rail, road traffic disrupted.

18-July-1993 Girilal Jain, 71, The Times of India editor, died.

18-July-1994 Munis Raza, famous educationist and former Chancellor of Delhi University, passed away.

18-July-1996 Union Finance Ministry gives final clearance to the Enron power project in terms of issuance of counter-guarantee.

18-July-1997 Fifth Pay Commission report approved by Central Govt.

18-July-1998 The Maharashtra Government bans the controversial Marathi play on Nathuram Godse, assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. It was produced by Mr. Udhay Dhurat.

2002 - A.J.P. Abdul Kalam, a scientist known as the father of India's nuclear missile program, is elected as the nation's 12^th president. Kalam, an ethnic Tamil, is the third Muslim to hold the post.

World History Today

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:00:00 +0000

July 17, 1955

Disneyland opens

Disneyland, Walt Disney's metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion.

Walt Disney, born in Chicago in 1901, worked as a commercial artist before setting up a small studio in Los Angeles to produce animated cartoons. In 1928, his short film Steamboat Willy, starring the character "Mickey Mouse," was a national sensation. It was the first animated film to use sound, and Disney provided the voice for Mickey. From there on, Disney cartoons were in heavy demand, but the company struggled financially because of Disney's insistence on ever-improving artistic and technical quality. His first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), took three years to complete and was a great commercial success.

Disney is present all over the world.Countries in which Disney world is present

Brazil, Disney Latino, U.S.A, Canada, Australia, China, Taiwan, Middle East, Japan, Korea, Belgique, Danmark, Finland, France, Deutschland, Italia, Nederland, Norge, España, Sverige, Polska, Portugal, Россия, UK, South Africa

July 17, 1975

Superpowers meet in space

As part of a mission aimed at developing space rescue capability, the U.S. spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19 rendezvous and dock in space. As the hatch was opened between the two vessels, commanders Thomas P. Safford and Aleksei Leonov shook hands and exchanged gifts in celebration of the first such meeting between the two Cold War adversaries in space. Back on Earth, United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim congratulated the two superpowers for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and praised their unprecedented spirit of cooperation and peace in planning and executing the mission.

July 17, 1996

Flight 800 explodes over Long Island

Shortly after takeoff from New York's Kennedy International Airport, a TWA Boeing 747 jetliner bound for Paris explodes over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people aboard. Flight 800 had just received clearance to initiate a climb to cruise altitude when it exploded without warning. Because the plane was loaded with fuel for the long transatlantic journey, it vaporized within moments, creating a fireball seen almost all along the coastline of Long Island.

When it was revealed that several U.S. Navy vessels were training in the Long Island area on the night of the blast, some began to suspect that Flight 800 had been accidentally downed by a navy test missile. U.S. authorities ruled out the possibility of an errant missile strike by the navy, but a number of conspiracists, including former White House press secretary Pierre Salinger, supported the theory. The much-criticized Flight 800 investigation ended in late 1998, with investigators concluding that the explosion resulted from mechanical failure, not from a bomb or a missile.

July 17, 1862

Confiscation Act approved

In a big step toward emancipation, President Lincoln approves the Confiscation Act, which declares that any slaves whose owners were in rebellion against the government, would be freed when they came into contact with the Union army.

July 17, 1793

French assassin Charlotte Corday is guillotined

Assassin Charlotte Corday is executed by guillotine in Paris, France. The 25-year-old woman had killed leading French politician Jean Paul Marat four days earlier in his home. Blaming him for the revolutionary war that was breaking out in France, Corday confessed to the murder.

Marat was a scientist-turned-politician who always championed the populist cause. During the French Revolution, Marat's opposition to the entrenched powers made him a very popular figure. But he was also the target of powerful interests in France, and thus he required heavy protection.

Although Corday denied the existence of a conspiracy, many people refused to believe that a young woman would commit such a crime without being prompted and encouraged.

July 17, 1944

Port Chicago disaster

An ammunition ship explodes while being loaded in Port Chicago, California, killing 332 people on this day in 1944. The United States’ World War II military campaign in the Pacific was in full swing at the time. Poor procedures and lack of training led to the disaster.

Port Chicago, about 30 miles north of San Francisco, was developed into a munitions facility when the Naval Ammunition Depot at Mare Island, California, could not fully supply the war effort. By the summer of 1944, expansion of the Port Chicago facility allowed for loading two ships at once around the clock. The Navy units assigned to the dangerous loading operations were generally segregated African-American units. For the most part, these men had not been trained in handling munitions. Additionally, safety standards were forgotten in the rush to keep up frenetic loading schedules.

On the evening of July 17, the SS Quinault Victory and SS E.A. Bryan, two merchant ships, were being loaded. The holds were being packed with 4,600 tons of explosives--bombs, depth charges and ammunition. Another 400 tons of explosives were nearby on rail cars. Approximately 320 workers were on or near the pier when, at 10:18 p.m., a series of massive explosions over several seconds destroyed everything and everyone in the vicinity. The blasts were felt as far away as Nevada and the resulting damage extended as far as San Francisco. Every building in Port Chicago was damaged and people were literally knocked off their feet. Smoke and fire extended nearly two miles into the air. The pilot of a plane flying at 9,000 feet in the area claimed that metal chunks from the explosion flew past him.

The Port Chicago disaster eventually led to the implementation of far safer procedures for loading ammunition. In addition, greater emphasis was put on proper training in explosives handling and the munitions themselves were altered for greater safety. There is now a national memorial to the victims at the site.

July 17, 1916

Farmers get relief

America's cash-strapped farmers got a dose of relief on this day in 1916, as Congress passed the Federal Farm Loan Act. The legislation called for the creation of a land bank that would dole out loans to farmers who sorely needed funds to preserve and upgrade their crops. The passage of the bill was celebrated by the nation's farm owners, who had long struggled to secure equitable loans from commercial banks. The farmer's credit woes were only compounded by Federal laws, which, until 1913, had capped the maturity of commercial loans at a mere five years. In turn, the Farm Loan Act was something of a conscious attempt by the government to redress this situation. Indeed, the legislation was an outgrowth of a Federal investigation of America's farm finances, as well as the agrarian credit plans used by other nations. The Farm Loan Act, which was signed by President Woodrow Wilson later in 1916, featured a number of the recommendations from the government study, including the recommendation to model the farm bank on a German cooperative credit system from the late eighteenth century. But, neither the passage of the Farm Loan Act nor the concurrent establishment of the Federal Farm Bureau could prevent America's economy from sinking into a mild depression in 1920; the economic slump was particularly cruel to the nation's farmers and suppressed both crop prices and profits well into the decade.

Source:

http://www.history.com/ ( find much more update here)

Today In Medieval History

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:20:00 +0000

1429 : Charles VII anointed King of France

With considerable help from Joan of Arc, the Dauphin gained popular and noble support as the next king at a time when the Hundred Years' War had thoroughly disrupted France. After Joan's victory at Orléans, Charles made his way to Reims, where tradition had it that kings had to be crowned for their kingship to be true.

Science Today In History

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:10:00 +0000

JULY 17 - BIRTHS

Gordon Gould

Born 17 Jul 1920; died 16 Sep 2005.

American physicist who coined the word "laser" from the initial letters of "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." Gould was inspired from his youth to be an inventor, wishing to emulate Marconi, Bell, and Edison. He contributed to the WWII Manhattan Project, working on the separation of uranium isotopes. On 9 Nov 1957, during a sleepless Saturday night, he had the inventor's inspiration and began to write down the principles of what he called a laser in his notebook Although Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow, also successfully developed the laser, eventually Gould gained his long-denied patent rights.

Nils Bohlin

Born 17 Jul 1920; died 26 Sep 2002

Swedish engineer who invented the familiar three-point lap and shoulder seatbelt which is considered one of the most important innovations in automobile safety. Bohlin left the aircraft industry, where he worked on jet ejector seats, including restraints, and joined AB Volvo in 1958 as safety engineer, where he invented and patented this device. In Aug 1959, Volvo was the first car manufacturer to introduce the three-point seat belt in their cars. They made this design freely available to other car manufacturers to save more lives. Bohlin holds several patents related to automotive and aviation design. After retiring form Volvo in 1985, he continued to give lectures and present papers relating to automotive restraint issues

Georges Lemaître

Born 17 Jul 1894; died 20 June 1966.

Georges (Henri) Lemaître was a Belgian astronomer and cosmologist, born in Charleroi, Belgium. He was also a civil engineer, army officer, and ordained priest. He did research on cosmic rays and the three-body problem. Lemaître formulated (1927) the modern big-bang theory. He reasoned that if the universe was expanding now, then the further you go in the past, the universe’s contents must have been closer together. He envisioned that at some point in the distant past, all the matter in the universe was in an exceedingly dense state, crushed into a single object he called the "primeval super-atom" which exploded, with all its constituent parts rushing away. This theory was later developed by Gamow and others.

Alexius Meinong

Born 17 Jul 1853; died 27 Nov 1920.

Alexius Meinong was an Austrian philosopher and psychologist who worked at the University of Graz. He was a pupil of Franz Brentano and is most famous for his belief in nonexistent objects. He distinguished several levels of reality among objects and facts about them. Thus, existent objects participate in actual (true) facts about the world; subsistent (real but non-existent) objects appear in possible (but false) facts; and objects that neither exist nor subsist can only belong to impossible facts. He is remembered for his contributions to axiology, or theory of values, and for his Gegenstandstheorie, or the Theory of Abstract Objects.

Ephraim Shay

1880

Born 17 Jul 1839; died 19 Apr 1916

American logger who invented the Shay geared, small steam locomotive to haul heavy logging trains at low speeds over rough terrain with poorly-laid, uneven track, sharp curves, and grades up to 14 percent. His 1880 prototype had a steam boiler mounted amidships; fuel and water on opposite ends; and the unusual arrangement of two vertical cylinders. The wheels were driven by bevelled gears on a shaft. Power was transferred through a crankshaft and universal joints. On 14 Jun 1881, he was issued a U.S. patent for a Locomotive Engine (No. 242,992). In 1882, Ephraim assigned manufacturing rights to the company that would become Lima Locomotive Works. By the end of production in 1945, 2,771 Shays had been built.« [Image right: Shay locomotive and tender.]

Sir Frederick Abel

Born 17 Jul 1827; died 6 Sep 1902.

Sir Frederick (Augustus) Abel was an English chemist and military explosives specialist who, with the chemist Sir James Dewar, invented cordite (1889). This smokeless gunpowder was later adopted as the standard explosive of the British army, and proved vital in WWI. Battles could now be fought without the obscuring smoke clouds of gunpowder weapons. Cordite was mixed from purified ingredients of nitroglycerine, nitrocellulose and petroleum jelly then extruded as cords. When dried, this explosive could be measured more precisely and handled more safely than gunpowder. Abel also studied dust explosions in coal mines, invented a device for testing the flash point of petroleum, and found a way to prevent guncotton from exploding.

Amanz Gressly

Born 17 Jul 1814; died 1865.

Swiss geologist and paleontologist who originated the study of stratigraphic facies when he discovered lateral differences in the character and fossil content of strata in the Jura Mountains, reflecting a variation of the original environment of deposition. The "Gressly's lizard" dinosaur was named Gresslyosaurus (1857) to honour Amanz Gressly. (to replace the preoccupied Dinosaurus Ruetimeyer 1856)

Indian History Of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nura) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:08:00 +0000

17-July-1489 Nizam Shah became the Sultan of Dehli.

17-July-1893 Lokmanya Tilak was arrested for 18 months.

17-July-1903 Joseph, versatile author in Malyalam language and critic Butshshor, was born.

17-July-1930 Lord Irwin,British Viceroy, allows Indian moderates to visit Gandhi in prison.

17-July-1935 Dr. Ram Babu Gupta, cricket test umpire for 11 tests from 1986-89, was born at Delhi.

17-July-1937 Delhi-Calcutta Express Train derailed near Patna killing 95.

17-July-1947 Ramdas Coastal Steamer sank off Bombay claiming 550 lives.

17-July-1948 Govt. announced that all discriminations against women in matter of employment will be done away with and in future, women will be eligible for any public service including administrative sevice and police service.

17-July-1974 J.P. Narain leads an agitation for dissolution of the Bihar Assembly.

17-July-1976 Mudliyar A. Ramaswami, Padmabhushan awardee, politician and industrialist, passed away.

17-July-1979 Jagjivan Ram elected Janata parliamentary party leader. Charan Singh is PM heading Janatha (S)-Congress coalition and Jagjivan Ram is leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha.

17-July-1987 V. P. Singh announces resignation from Congress; R. Venkataraman elected President of India.

17-July-1992 Lok Sabha rejects no-trust motion.

17-July-1996 All 47 ministers in Madhya Pradesh submit resignations to CM Digvijay Singh.

17-July-1996 Madras to be known as 'Chennai' henceforth.

17-July-1997 K.R. Narayanan,Vice President, wins in the Presidential election with a record margin to become the next head of state.

17-July-2000 55 persons die as a Boeing 737 of Alliance Air from Calcutta to Delhi via Patna and Lucknow crashes at Gardanibagh, one km from the runway at the Patna airport.