Day in Engineering History Archive - August 22

August 22

Today is New Mexico Annexation Day. 1834: Aeronautical pioneer Samuel Langley was born. 1868: Willis Whitney, who founded the General Electric research laboratory, was born. 1902: In Hartford, CT, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to ride in an automobile. 1906: The Victor Talking Machine Company began to manufacture the Victrola record player. 1910: Japan formally annexed Korea. 1932: The BBC began its first TV broadcast in England. 1940: Analog design legend Bob Pease was born. 1940: Sir Oliver Lodge, who perfected the radio detection coherer, died. 1962: The world's first nuclear-powered ship, the Savannah, completed its maiden voyage from Yorktown, VA, to Savannah, GA. 1890: James McDonnell, founder of the McDonnell Aircraft Company, died. 1992: Vicki Weaver was killed by an FBI sharpshooter as she stood with her baby in her arms at Ruby Ridge, OR, compliments of Janet Reno. 1989: The first complete ring around Neptune was discovered.

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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.