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   December 24
1818: James Joule, discoverer of the current/resistance/heat relationship
and after whom the unit of energy is named, was born. 1865: Several veterans of
the Confederate Army formed a private social club called the
Ku
Klux Klan (U.S.
Senator Robert Byrd, of WV, was a KKK Exalted Cyclops when in
his 30s). 1872: Scottish physicist
William Rankine,
an early investigator of thermodynamics who developed the
Rankine Cycle,
died. 1873:
Johns Hopkins, endower of the college named after him, died. 1904:
Billionaire Howard Hughes was born. 1906:
Reginald
Fessenden gave what is generally considered to be the first broadcast of entertainment
by radio. 1947: The
point-contact transistor, invented days earlier by American physicists
John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley, was presented to Bell Labs
management. 1963: New York International Airport was rededicated as John F. Kennedy
Airport. 1966: The unmanned Russian
Luna 13 spacecraft
landed on Moon. 1968: The crew of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, the first manned mission
to the moon, transmitted a
Christmas message from lunar orbit. 1968: Astronauts on Apollo
8 became the first men to orbit the Moon, and took the famous
"Earthrise"
photo. 1979: The first European-built rocket,
Ariane 1, successfully completed its maiden flight.
Note: These
historical tidbits (see daily
list) 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.
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