Day in Engineering History Archive - October 7

October 7

1868: Cornell University was inaugurated in Ithaca, NY. 1885: Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, developer of the planetary Bohr atomic model, was born. 1931: The U.S. Army first tested the famous Norden bomb sight. 1939: Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Prize winner for the co-discovery of carbon Fullerenes, was born. 1940: The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney. 1950: Willis Carrier, inventor of the first practical air conditioning system, manufactured weather," died. 1956: Clarence Birdseye, inventor of deep freezing food and inventor of the TV dinner, died. 1959: The dark* far side of the Moon was photographed for the first time and pictures relayed back to Earth by Russia's Luna E-3 spacecraft. 1985: Four Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro of the coast of Egypt, and pushed a wheelchair-bound passenger overboard. 2003: Arnold "the Governator" Schwarzenegger was elected as governor of CA.

* Note: There is no 'dark' side of the moon since at any given time fully half of the moon is illuminated by the sun, in the same

            manner as half the Earth is illuminated, depending on its orientation toward the sun. The meaning of 'dark' as applied

            to the far side of the moon, which always faces away from Earth, can be taken as per Merriam-Webster:

              4  a :  not clear to the understanding

                  b :  not known or explored because of remoteness

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.