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, after whom Philco TVs are named, 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.