March 4

1832: French archaeologist Jean-François Champollion, who first deciphered the Rosetta Stone, unlocking the language of ancient Egypt, died. 1859: Aleksandr Popov, considered in Russia to be the inventor of radio, was born. 1881: Richard Tolman, who demonstrated electrons to be charge-carrying particles in flow of electricity in metals, was born. 1822: Jules Lissajous, the French mathematician after whom Lissajous figures are named, was born. 1890: The Forth Railway Bridge was opened, spanning the Forth river between Edinburgh and Dundee, Scotland. 1902: The American Automobile Association (AAA) was founded in Chicago. 1915: William Willett, who invented the concept of Daylight Saving Time, died. 1917: Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. 1930: President Calvin Coolidge dedicated the Coolidge Dam on Gila River in AZ. 1962: The first nuclear power plant in Antarctica began operating at McMurdo Sound. 1976: Walter Schottky, of diode fame, died. 1977: The first Freon-cooled Cray-1, 133 megaFLOPS supercomputer, was shipped to Los Alamos Laboratories, NM (<20 years later, Pentium IIs beat that benchmark). 1997: President Bill Clinton barred spending federal money on human cloning due to, "troubling prospects." 2006: The final attempt to communicate with Pioneer 10 was made.