Day in Engineering History Archive - May 8

May 8

1786: Thomas Hancock, who founded the British rubber industry, was born. 1792: The U.S. established the military draft. 1847: The rubber tire (for a carriage) was patented in the U.S. by Robert W. Thompson, of England. 1886: Pharmacist Dr. John Stith Pemberton produced the syrup for Coca-Cola, and carried a jug of the new product down the street to Jacobs' Pharmacy and placed it on sale for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink. 1919: The first transatlantic flight took off by a navy seaplane. 1926: The first flight over North Pole was made by Bennett and Byrd. 1945: Victory was won in Europe (V-E Day), as Winston Churchill officially announced the end of the war with Germany. 1952: Mad Magazine debuted. 1961: The first practical seawater conversion plant in the U.S. was opened in Freeport, TX. 1962: The era of the trolleybus in London ended. 1999: The first female cadet graduated from The Citadel military college.

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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.