Day in Engineering History Archive - March 19

March 19

On this date every year, swallows traditionally return to the San Juan Capistrano Mission in CA. 1858: Britain's first planetarium, the London Planetarium, opened. 1886: Aircraft manufacturer Giuseppe Bellanca (Citabria, Decathlon, Viking) was born. 1918: Congress approved daylight-saving time (DST). 1932: The Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia opened for traffic. 1933: The Civilian Conservation Corps was enacted by Congress. 1987: French physicist Louis de Broglie, known for his research on quantum theory and for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons, died. 1989: Boeing B-22 Osprey VTOL aircraft made its maiden flight. 1991: Patent #5,000,000 was issued for a method of ethanol production. 2001: California officials declared a power alert, ordering the first of two days of rolling blackouts. 2007: A partial solar eclipse lined up for Asia. 2008: Sci-Fi author Arthur C. Clark (2001 Space Odyssey) died.

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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. Many 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. Images used in the logos are often from open source websites like Wikipedia, and are specifically credited with a hyperlink back to the source where possible. Fair Use laws permit small samples of copyrighted content.