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Note: These historical tidbits have been collected from various sources, mostly on the Internet.
As detailed in
this article, there is a lot of
wrong information that is repeated hundreds of times because most websites do not validate with
authoritative sources.
On RF Cafe, events with
hyperlinks
have been verified. All will eventually be either verified or removed.
Please
submit significant
historical events and dates for inclusion in these lists. I will be glad to include your name and
birthday. Please do not submit your death date ;-)
A couple years ago, I began commemorating the birthdays of notable people and events with special
RF Cafe logos. Where available, I like to use images from postage stamps from the country where
the person or event occurred.
August 12
1865:
Joseph Lister (hence
Listerine mouthwash) became the first surgeon to use disinfectant during an operation. 1877:
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and made the first sound recording. 1882:
Vincent Bendix, who manufactured aircraft and automobile systems, was born. 1887:
Erwin Schrödinger, the famous physicist with the dead cat (maybe), was born. 1896: Gold was discovered in the
Klondike River in the Northwest Territories of Canada. 1948:
Harry Brearley, inventor of stainless steel, died. 1957: My sister,
Gayle, was born - Happy Birthday! 1953: The
Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb. 1957:
Lt. Cmdr. Don Walker landed a Skyknight on USS Antietam in first test of an Automatic Carrier Landing System. 1957: My older sister, Gayl, was born - Happy Birthday! 1960:
Echo One, the first balloon satellite, was launched by the U.S. from Cape Canaveral, FL. 1962:
Vostok 3 and
Vostok 4 astronauts were the first two humans in space at the same time. 1946: President Harry Truman signed a bill establishing the National Air Museum, which eventually became the
National Air and Space Museum - the most visited museum in the world. 1977: The first test glide of the
Space Shuttle Enterprise occurred. 1981: IBM introduced the
IBM PC personal computer and PC-DOS 1.0. 1989:
William Shockley, winner of the Nobel Prize for work on transistors (transfer/resistor) with with colleagues
John Bardeen and
Walter Brattain, died. 2004:
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, electrical engineer and co-inventor of the
CAT scan machine, died.