1836: The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, TX. 1855: German mathematician and experimenter in magnetism Carl Friedrich Gauss died. 1886: Charles Hall separated aluminum for ore using an electrolytic process. 1893: Rudolf Diesel (I kid you not) received a German patent for the diesel engine. 1927: The Federal Radio Commission (FRC, later became the FCC) began assigning frequencies, hours of operation and power allocations for radio broadcasters. 1936: The first (and last) rocket-powered air mail flight was made from Greenwood Lake, NY to NJ in the rocketplane Gloria. 1944: Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite, which played a large role as an insulator in early electronics, died. 1945: U.S. Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima, creating the subject for the infamous photo & statue. 1954: The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh, PA. 1987: At 10:42 am, the Minister for Communications for Australia received his country's first official call via an analogue mobile phone. 1995: The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed above 4,000 for the first time. 1997: A fire erupted on the Mir space station. 2006: The 1 billionth tune was downloaded from the iTunes music store website.