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Harald Sack

literature
Thomas Mann and the illustrious Mann Family

Thomas Mann and the illustrious Mann Family

Harald Sack
On June 6, 1875, German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann was born. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. “Space, like time, engenders…
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history
Bede the Venerable – Father of English History

Bede the Venerable – Father of English History

Harald Sack
On May 26, 735 CE, Anglo-Saxon Benedictine, theologian and historian Bede, also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable, passed away. He is famous as a scholar and author of numerous works, of which the best known is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), which gained him the title “The Father of English History”.  Bede the Venerable – Early Life “It is reported…
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physics
Andrei Sakharov and the Soviet Thermonuclear Bomb

Andrei Sakharov and the Soviet Thermonuclear Bomb

Harald Sack
On May 21, 1921, Russian nuclear physicist, Soviet dissident, an activist for disarmament, peace and human rights Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born.Sakharov became renowned as the designer of the Soviet Union‘s thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov later became an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he faced state persecution; these efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. “We regard as “scientific” a method based on…
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engineering
Hideo Shima and the Bullet Train

Hideo Shima and the Bullet Train

Harald Sack
On May 20, 1901, Japanese engineer Hideo Shima was born. Shima was the driving force behind the building of the first bullet train, the Shinkansen, linking Tokyo and Osaka in Oct 1964. Shima also led Japan‘s space development programme until 1977 at Japan’s National Space Development Agency. The Son of a Railway Engineer Hideo Shima was born in Osaka as the son of a prominent railway engineer and educated at the Tokyo…
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chemistry
John Jacob Abel and the Endocrine Glands

John Jacob Abel and the Endocrine Glands

Harald Sack
On May 19, 1857, American biochemist and pharmacologist John Jacob Abel was born. Abel made important contributions to a modern understanding of the ductless, or endocrine, glands. He extracted a derivative of epinephrine, also known as adrenaline and successfully purified and isolated crystalline insulin. His interest in kidney functions led to his invention of a primitive artificial kidney that was able to remove toxins from the blood of living animals, the precursor…
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art
The Paris Salon des Refusés of 1863

The Paris Salon des Refusés of 1863

Harald Sack
On May 15, 1863, the Salon des Refusés in Paris was opened, an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon. In 1863 the Salon jury refused two thirds of the paintings presented, including the works of Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissaro and Johan Jongkind, marking the birth of the avant-garde. Upon the protest of the artists, emperor Napoleon III decided to let the public judge and…
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engineering
Betamax and the Legendary Video Format Wars

Betamax and the Legendary Video Format Wars

Harald Sack
On May 10, 1975, Sony released a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format called Betamax. Today, the format is obsolete, having lost the videotape format war to VHS with Betamax recorders ceased production in 2002. A Brief History of Video Recording The first efforts at video recording, using recorders similar to audio recorders with fixed heads, were unsuccessful. The problem was that a video signal has a much wider bandwidth than…
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explorer
Jules Dumont d’Urville and his South-Pacific Voyages

Jules Dumont d’Urville and his South-Pacific Voyages

Harald Sack
On May 8, 1842, French explorer, naval officer and rear admiral Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville passed away. D’Urville commanded voyages of exploration to the South Pacific (1826–29) and the Antarctic (1837–40), resulting in extensive revisions of existing charts and discovery or redesignation of island groups. As a botanist and cartographer he left his mark, giving his name to several seaweeds, plants and shrubs, and places such as D’Urville Island. Jules Dumont d’Urville…
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history
The Murder of August von Kotzebue and the Supression of the Liberal Press

The Murder of August von Kotzebue and the Supression of the Liberal Press

Harald Sack
On May 3, 1761, German dramatist and writer August von Kotzebue was born. In 1817, one of Kotzebue‘s books was burned during the Wartburg festival. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften, which gave Metternich the pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees, which dissolved the Burschenschaften, cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom in the states of the German Confederation.…
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computer science
George Stibitz and the Electromechanical Digital Computer

George Stibitz and the Electromechanical Digital Computer

Harald Sack
On April 30, 1904, U.S. mathematician George Robert Stibitz was born. Stibitz is recognized as one of the fathers of the modern first digital computer. He was a Bell Labs researcher known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s on the realization of Boolean logic digital circuits using electromechanical relays as the switching element. “Part of the charm in solving a differential equation is in the feeling that we are getting…
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