Day in History Archive May 9

| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
 

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. All will eventually be either verified or removed.
Please submit significant historical events and dates for inclusion in these lists. I will be glad to include your name and birthday. Please do not submit your death date ;-)
 

May 9

1850: Edward Weston, founder of the Weston Electrical Instrument Company, was born. 1865: A patent was issued to Richard Gatling for his Gatling gun. 1882: William Ford was issued a patent for his now-familiar stethoscope. 1893: Thomas Edison exhibited the first public motion picture (kinetoscope) to an audience in Brooklyn, NY. 1914: Paul-Louis-Toussaint Héroult, inventor of the electric arc furnace, died. 1926: Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first men to fly an airplane over the North Pole. 1927: Canberra replaced Melbourne as the capital of Australia. 1931: Nobel physicist Albert Michelson, who first accurately measured the speed of light, died. 1961: Then FCC chairman Newton N. Minow condemned television programming as a "vast wasteland" in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters.  1962: A laser beam was successfully bounced off the Moon for the first time.