March 30

239 B.C.: The first recorded passage of Halley's Comet was noted by Chinese astronomers. 1791: The French Académie des sciences finally decided that a metre would be a 1/10 000 000 of the distance between the north pole and the equator. 1811: Robert Bunsen, of laboratory burner fame, was born. 1842: Dr. Crawford Long first used ether as anesthetic during minor operation. 1858: The first U.S. patent was issued for a combination lead pencil and eraser. 1879: German astronomer Bernhard Schmidt, who invented the type of reflecting telescope named after him (Schmidt telescope, Schmidt-Cassegrain, etc.), was born. 1891: Arthur Herrington, designer of the famous Jeep, was born. 1914: John Poynting, who introduced a theorem that assigns a value to the rate of flow of electromagnetic energy known as the Poynting vector, died. 1981: President Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinkley. 1993: Charlie Brown of the Peanuts comic strip (my favorite), hit his first home run. 2006: Marcos César Pontes became the first Brazilian in space.