You are here: Home › Category Archives › history

history

Subscribe to this category
history
Murder in the Bathtub – Jean Paul Marat and Charlotte Corday

Murder in the Bathtub – Jean Paul Marat and Charlotte Corday

Harald Sack
On July 13, 1793, the ‘martyr of the revolution‘, Jean Paul Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a 24 year old woman. The physician, natural scientists, and political activist was a member of ‘the Mountain’, a group active during the French Revolution, and author of the radical newspaper ‘L’Ami du peuple’. “How could liberty ever have established itself amongst us? Apart from several tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web…
Read more
history
Smile! Harvey Ball and his famous Icon

Smile! Harvey Ball and his famous Icon

Harald Sack
On July 10, 1921, the inventor of the smiley, Harvey Ball, was born. The Life of a Advertising Man Ball was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts by his parents Ernest G Ball and Christine or Kitty Ross Ball. During his time as a student at Worcester South High School, he became an apprentice to a local sign painter, and later attended the Worcester Art Museum School, where he studied fine arts. Ball was…
Read more
history
“I shall be heard!” – The Case of the La Amistad

“I shall be heard!” – The Case of the La Amistad

Harald Sack
On July 2, 1839, Sengbe Pieh (later known as Joseph Cinqué) led 53 fellow Africans being transported as captives aboard the Spanish schooner ‘La Amistad‘ from Havana in a revolt against their captors. Breaking Free La Amistad, captained by Ferrer, left Havana on June 28, 1839, for the small port of Guanaja, near Puerto Principe, Cuba, with some general cargo and 53 slaves bound for the sugar plantation where they were to…
Read more
history
The Universal Product Code (UPC)

The Universal Product Code (UPC)

Harald Sack
On June 26, 1974, the Universal Product Code barcode was introduced to the public. A supermarket in Troy, Ohio scanned the first product, which was a pack of Wrigley‘s gum. The first impulse to creating barcodes was made by Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland. A food chain store owner turned to the Drexel Institute of Technology, which the two graduate students were attending. He asked for a system to automatically read…
Read more
history
It is not Certain that Everything is Uncertain – Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts

It is not Certain that Everything is Uncertain – Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts

Harald Sack
On June 19, 1623, French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian Blaise Pascal was born. “A few rules include all that is necessary for the perfection of the definitions, the axioms, and the demonstrations, and consequently of the entire method of the geometrical proofs of the art of persuading.” – Blaise Pascal, The Art of Persuasion (1660) The Son of a Tax Collector “It is not certain that everything is uncertain.”…
Read more
history
“Because it’s there” – George Mallory and Mount Everest

“Because it’s there” – George Mallory and Mount Everest

Harald Sack
“Why would you want to climb Mount Everest?” George Mallory was asked this question in 1924 and gave the most obvious answer: “Because it’s there“. The famous mountaineer was born on June 18, 1886, and is best known for his expeditions to the highest mountain on earth. “One comes to bless the absolute bareness, feeling that here is a pure beauty of form, a kind of ultimate harmony.” – George Mallory, Letter to…
Read more
history
Behold the First Commercial Computer (in the US) – the UNIVAC I

Behold the First Commercial Computer (in the US) – the UNIVAC I

Harald Sack
On June 14, 1951 the very first electronic computer produced in series (and in the United States), the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer) was delivered to the US States Census Bureau at the price of $1.6 Mio. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly,[1,2] the inventors of the first general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC.[2] Design work was begun by their company, Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, and was completed after the company…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
history
Health advocate John Harvey Kellogg and the Invention of Flaked Cereals

Health advocate John Harvey Kellogg and the Invention of Flaked Cereals

Tabea Tietz
On May 31, 1884, the health-food fanatic John Harvey Kellogg patented his ‘flaked cereal‘ during his time as the superintendent of the ‘Battle Creek Sanitarium‘ in Michigan. “A dead cow or sheep lying in a pasture is recognized as carrion. The same sort of a carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher’s stall passes as food. “ – John Harvey Kellogg John Harvey Kellogg and the Battle Creek Sanitarium John Harvey…
Read more
Relation Browser
Timeline
0 Recommended Articles:
0 Recommended Articles: