Day in Engineering History Archive - March 6

March 6

1787: German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer, who was the first to study the dark lines in the solar spectrum (Fraunhofer lines), was born. 1834: The city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto. 1899: Felix Hoffmann trademarked "Aspirin," ("A"cetyl chloride, "spir"aea ulmaria, "in" was a then familiar name ending for medicines). 1900: Gottlieb Daimler, German engineer and pioneer automobile manufacturer, died. 1913: Niels Bohr first wrote of his idea for the atomic model in a paper to Rutherford. 1932: American conductor John Philip Sousa died. 1937: Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who was the first woman to fly in space, and is the only solo woman astronaut, was born. 1939: Ferdinand von Lindemann, who first proved that p is transcendental, died. 1981: Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time as principal anchorman of "The CBS Evening News." 1990: The SR-71 Blackbird set a transcontinental record, flying 2,404 miles in 1h:08m:17s. 1992: The long-anticipated, much-feared "ticking time bomb" Michelangelo virus struck around the world, but ended up being relatively harmless.

| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |

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.