Interesting tidbits: 1633 - Galileo Galilei is forced by the Inquisition to abjure, curse, & detest his Copernican heliocentric views. 1834 - Cyrus Hall McCormick patents the reaping machine. 1857 - Dr. Pepper was Released. 1893 - First Ferris wheel premieres at the Chicagos Columbian Exposition. 1900 – Baron Eduard Toll, leader of the Russian Polar Expedition of 1900, departed Saint Petersburg in Russia on the explorer ship Zarya, never to return. In 1885-1886, Toll took part in an expedition to the New Siberian Islands, organized by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and led by Alexander Bunge. Toll explored the Great Lyakhovsky Island, Bunge Land, Faddeyevsky Island, Kotelny Island, as well as the western shores of the New Siberia Island. In 1886 Toll thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny. He guessed that this was the so-called Sannikov Land that Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom claimed to have seen during their 1808-1810 expedition, but whose existence had never been proved. In 1893 Toll led an expedition of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences to the northern parts of Yakutia and explored the region between the lower reaches of the Lena and Khatanga Rivers. Toll was the first one to map the plateau between the Anabar and Popigay Rivers and a mountain ridge between the Olenek and Anabar Rivers. He also carried out the geological surveys in the basins of the Yana, Indigirka, and Kolyma rivers. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 km, of which 4,200 km were up the rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route. In 1900-1902, Toll headed an expedition of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences to the New Siberian Islands on the ship Zarya. The main aim of the expedition was to find the legendary Sannikov Land. During this voyage and especially during the winterings near the northwestern part of the Taymyr Peninsula and western part of the Kotelny Island, Toll conducted extensive hydrographical, geographical, and geological research. Due to severe ice conditions the expedition was forced to spend two winters in the region of the bleak New Siberian Archipelago, during which Toll and a small party continued their explorations. Eventually the Zarya attempted to reach Bennett Island to evacuate Tolls party but was unable to do so because of severe ice conditions. Apparently, Toll made a decision to go south to the continent but no further traces of the party were ever found. Two search parties were dispatched in the spring 1903. One of them searched the shores of the New Siberian Islands and the other traveled by whaleboat to Bennet Island. They did not find the lost explorers but they found the diaries and the collections of the Zarya expedition, which shed light on the tragic fate of Baron Eduard von Toll and his companions. 1913 - Tiny Broadwick becomes the first woman to parachute from an airplane. 2004 – SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight. SpaceShipOne is a suborbital air-launched spaceplane that completed the first manned private spaceflight and won the $10 million Ansari X Prize. Its mother ship was named White Knight. Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutans aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million. The vehicle first achieved supersonic flight on December 17, 2003, which was also the one-hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers historic first powered flight. SpaceShipOnes first official spaceflight was piloted by Mike Melvill. A few days before that flight, the Mojave Air and Space Port became the first commercial spaceport licensed in the United States. A few hours after that flight, Melvill became the first licensed U.S. commercial astronaut. Todays birthday crew: 1863 – Max Wolf, German pioneer in astrophotography, discoverer of comets and nova, determined the nature of dark nebula, discoverer of over 200 asteroids, and publisher of a catalog of the locations of over one thousand stars along with their measured proper motion. These stars are still commonly identified by his name and catalog number. Among the stars he discovered is Wolf 359, a dim red dwarf that was later found to be one of the nearest stars to our solar system. When the Borg beat the Federation off Wolf 359, this was the star referred to. 1896 – Charles Momsen, American admiral, inventor of the Momsen lung, a primitive underwater rebreather used before and during World War II by American submariners as emergency escape gear. The device recycled the breathing gas by using a counterlung containing soda lime to scrub carbon dioxide. The lung was initially filled with oxygen and connected to a mouthpiece via twin hoses containing one-way valves: one for breathing in and the other for breathing out. The lung was used in an emergency only once with generally poor results, but the need for such a device was one of the contributing reasons Jacques Cousteau worked on the invention of SCUbA gear. 1938 – Ron Ely, American actor best known for having portrayed Tarzan in the 1966 series Tarzan and for playing the lead role in the 1975 film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. 1940 – Mariette Hartley, American actress who worked with Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry. She appeared in an episode of The Twilight Zone called The Long Morrow and in the penultimate episode of Star Trek (TOS), All Our Yesterdays. She also appeared in several science fiction films, Marooned (1969), Earth II (1971), and the pilot for the post-apocalyptic Genesis II (1973), another Roddenberry production. In 1978, she appeared in the television series Logan’s Run (based on the film of the same name) and in The Incredible Hulk in two episodes. As Dr. Carolyn Fields, she marries Bill Bixbys character, the alter ego of the Hulk. For her performance, Hartley won an Emmy Award. Happy birthday guys!
Posted on: Sat, 21 Jun 2014 10:41:34 +0000
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