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Harald Sack

physics
Thomas Young – The Last Man who Knew Everything

Thomas Young – The Last Man who Knew Everything

Harald Sack
On June 13, 1773, British polymath and physician Thomas Young was born. Young made notable scientific contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology. He “made a number of original and insightful innovations” in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs (specifically the Rosetta Stone) before Jean-François Champollion eventually expanded on his work.[1] The Youth of a Polymath Young came from a family of Quakers, of…
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engineering
John A. Roebling – The Father of the Brooklyn Bridge

John A. Roebling – The Father of the Brooklyn Bridge

Harald Sack
On June 12, 1806, engineer John Augustus Roebling was born. He was best known for the design of the Brooklyn Bridge. Sadly Roebling passed away 14 years before the famous bridge in New York City City was opened. Born in Mühlhausen, Thuringia John A. Roebling was born in Mühlhausen, he spent all his school life in Thuringia and later enrolled at the Bauakademie in Berlin. He studied architecture, bridge construction, dyke construction,…
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history
The Legendary Annual Boat Race of Oxford and Cambridge

The Legendary Annual Boat Race of Oxford and Cambridge

Harald Sack
On June 10th 1829 the very first of now legendary annual boat races of Oxford and Cambridge on the river Thames took place. The race came about because two friends from Harrow School, Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth and later bishop of St Andrews), of Christ Church College, Oxford, and Charles Merrivale of St. John’s, Cambridge, met during the vacation in Cambridge, where Wordsworth’s father was master of Trinity.[1] Wordsworth went…
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mathematics
Although I Cannot Prove it… – The Famous Goldbach Conjecture

Although I Cannot Prove it… – The Famous Goldbach Conjecture

Harald Sack
On the 7th of June 1742, Prussian mathematician Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to his famous colleague Leonard Euler, which should make history. Well, at least in the mathematical world. In this letter Christian Goldbach refined an already previously stated conjecture from number theory concerning primes to his friend Euler, which by today is known as the famous Goldbach conjecture. It states: Every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the…
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literature
The Short but Influential Life of Stephen Crane

The Short but Influential Life of Stephen Crane

Harald Sack
On June 5, 1900, famous American writer Stephen Crane died at age 28. Despite of his youth, he already had become one of the icons of American literature. Most famous is his American civil war novel ‘The Red Badge of Courage‘, which has been read by almost every American high school kid. Crane was one of America’s foremost realistic writers, and his works have been credited with marking the beginning of modern…
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history
Only the Good Die Young – the Very Short Life of Évariste Galois

Only the Good Die Young – the Very Short Life of Évariste Galois

Harald Sack
On June 1st, 1832, French mathematician Évariste Galois was killed in a duel. He was only 20 years of age. He left an elaborate manuscript three years earlier, in which he established that an algebraic equation is solvable by radicals, if and only if the group of permutations of its roots has a certain structure, thereby solving a problem standing for 350 years. But why did he have to die so young? Just because…
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history
Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West

Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West

Harald Sack
On May 29, 1880, German historian and philosopher Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was born. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. He proposed a new theory, according to which the lifespan of civilizations is limited and ultimately they decay. “What the myth of Götterdämmerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of…
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engineering
The Opening of The Golden Gate Bridge

The Opening of The Golden Gate Bridge

Harald Sack
On May 27, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco spanning over the opening of the San Francisco Bay and connecting the city with Marin County was opened for public traffic. When the planning for the bridge started back in 1916 many experts said that a bridge couldn’t be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait. It had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water 372 ft (113 m) deep at the center of…
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history
Kaspar Hauser, the Mysterious Story of a Foundling

Kaspar Hauser, the Mysterious Story of a Foundling

Harald Sack
On 26 May 1828, a teenage boy appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. The boy, who answered to the name Kaspar Hauser, claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell. Hauser’s claims, and his subsequent death by stabbing, sparked much debate and controversy. Some theories about him at the time linked him with the grand ducal House of Baden to be the hereditary “Prince of Baden”.…
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communication
Dit dit dit da dit – The first Morse Telegram

Dit dit dit da dit – The first Morse Telegram

Harald Sack
On May 24th 1844 the first Morse telegram went over the line. Samuel Morse and his colleague Alfred Vail knew that the very first phrase to be sent with the new telecommunication medium was to be remembered. So what should they transmit? Morse came up with a quote from the bible, certainly well chosen for an historic occasion like this: “What God had wrought” sent by Morse in Washington to Alfred Vail at…
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