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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 19
1646: English astronomer
John Flamsteed, who established the Greenwich Observatory, was born. 1662: Child prodigy and mathematical genius
Blaise Pascal died. 1785: Clock maker
Seth Thomas was born. 1848: The New York Herald reported the
discovery of gold in California. 1856:
Gail Borden of Brooklyn, NY, patented his process for condensed milk. 1871: Airplane pioneer
Orville Wright was born. 1906:
Philo Farnsworth, credited with inventing the first successful television system, was born. 1950: Italian physicist
Giovanni Giorgi, who invented the Giorgi system of measurement that introduced electrical resistance (MKSΩ, precursor to the SI), died. 1960: A tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot
Francis Gary Powers of espionage. 1960:
Sputnik 5, carrying two dogs, was launched into space and were later retrieved as the first living organisms from space. 1981: Two US Navy
F-14 jet fighters
shot down two Soviet-built Libyan SU-22s. 1991: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was overthrown in a
coup as Communist hardliners took over. 1994: Nobel Prize laureate
Linus Pauling, who who applied quantum mechanics to the study of molecular structures, died.