Day in Engineering History Archive - July 20

July 20

Today is Space Exploration Day. 1865: The Patent Act of 1865 required that patent fees to be turned over to the U.S. Treasury. 1937: Radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi died. 1942: The first unit of WAC's (Women's Army Corps) began basic training. 1960: The submerged USS George Washington off the coast of Cape Canaveral, FL, executed the first test launch of a pair of Polaris missile from a submarine at sea. 1969: At 4:18 EDT, the Apollo 11 lunar module landed at the Sea of Tranquility, and later astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon; they left an American flag and a plaque inscribed with, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon--July 1969 A.D.--We came in peace for all mankind." 1976: NASA's Viking I Lander made the first-ever successful landing on Mars. 1995: Inventure Place, home of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, was dedicated in Akron, OH. 1999: After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was recovered.

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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.