Day in Engineering History Archive - April 17

April 17

1790: Benjamin Franklin died. 1843: American engineer Samuel Morey, inventor of the internal combustion engine, died. 1941: Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter lift-off from water near Stratford, CT. 1964: Jerrie Mock became first woman to fly an airplane solo around the world. 1964: Ford introduced the Mustang at the New York World's Fair (see original Mustang TV ad). 1970: The astronauts of Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft. 1986: French aircraft designer Marcel Dassault died. 1996: Arnold Neustadter, inventor of the Rolodex (rolling index), 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.