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 July 4
 Today is
Independence
Day! 1753:
Jean-Pierre-François Blanchard, who was the first to fly across
the English Channel (in a balloon), was born. 1776: The amended
Declaration of Independence, prepared by Thomas Jefferson, was
approved and signed by John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress in America.
1817: Construction started on the Erie Canal. 1868: Astronomer
Henrietta
Swan Leavitt, who discovered the relationship between period and luminosity
in Cepheid variables, was born. 1883: The first 3-wire central-station incandescent-lighting
plant, built by the
Edison Electric Illuminating Co., started operations in Sunbury,
PA. 1883: Rube Goldberg, engineer famous for his drawings of Mouse Trap-like
contraptions, was born. 1903: President Theodore Roosevelt sent the
first official
message over the new cable across the Pacific Ocean between Honolulu, Guam,
Midway and Manila. 1906:
Vincent Schaefer, who invented cloud seeding for making rain,
was born. 1922: Lothar von Richthofen, WWI flying ace and brother of the Red Baron,
died. 1933:
William Coolidge obtained a patent for the X-ray tube. 1934: Chemist
Marie Marja Sklodowska Curie, discoverer of radium and polonium,
died. 1960: The
50-star U.S. flag made its debut in Philadelphia, PA. 1976: Israeli commandos
rescued the Entebbe
Airport hostages held by Arab terrorists. 1997: The
Mars Pathfinder, an unmanned space vehicle, landed on the Martian
surface.
Note: These
historical tidbits (see daily
list) have been collected from various sources, mostly on the Internet.
As detailed in my
It Happened When? Factoid 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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