Template:Selected anniversaries/August 24: Difference between revisions
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||79: The long-dormant Mount Vesuvius erupted in Italy, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash. An estimated 20,000 people died. When discovered, the sites became astonishing archaeological time capsules. Official excavations began on 6 Apr 1748 of behalf of the Italian king's interest in collecting antiquities. | |||
||394: The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, the latest known inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs, was written. | ||394: The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, the latest known inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs, was written. | ||
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||1907: Peter Thullen born ... mathematician. Pic. | ||1907: Peter Thullen born ... mathematician. Pic. | ||
||1907: the Bréguet-Richet Gyroplane No. 1 made what is generally accepted as the first vertical flight, hovering about 2 feet (0.6 meters) off the ground for one minute, powered by a 45 h.p. engine. It was built by the brothers Louis and Jacques Bréguet with assistance from Professor Charles Richet. It lacked stability, any control system, and it needed four men to steady it while it hovered, so it did not represent a practical helicopter. (Some sources give the date as 29 Sep 1907.) | |||
||1909: Panama Canal: Workers pour the first concrete for the Panama Canal at a lock site at Gatun. Finishing all the locks there took nearly four years. A dam holds back the artificial Gatun Lake to supply water for the locks. The Gatun gate was closed on 27 Jun 1913, allowing Gatun Lake to fill to its planned depth. A few months later, on 26 Sep 1913, the tugboat Gatunmade a trial run through the Gatun Locks. The control panel was not ready for the event, so the locks were operated manually. Everything worked perfectly. The Panama Canal crosses the Isthmus of Panama, joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Built 1904-14, it is only half the length of the Suez Canal. Unlike the Suez, the Panama Canal uses locks to raise and lower ships. | ||1909: Panama Canal: Workers pour the first concrete for the Panama Canal at a lock site at Gatun. Finishing all the locks there took nearly four years. A dam holds back the artificial Gatun Lake to supply water for the locks. The Gatun gate was closed on 27 Jun 1913, allowing Gatun Lake to fill to its planned depth. A few months later, on 26 Sep 1913, the tugboat Gatunmade a trial run through the Gatun Locks. The control panel was not ready for the event, so the locks were operated manually. Everything worked perfectly. The Panama Canal crosses the Isthmus of Panama, joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Built 1904-14, it is only half the length of the Suez Canal. Unlike the Suez, the Panama Canal uses locks to raise and lower ships. | ||
Revision as of 12:04, 19 August 2018
1654: Blaise Pascal writes to Pierre de Fermat, describing his solution to the Problem of the Points (a probability problem) and asking Fermat to critique it.
1819: inventor, engineer, and chemist James Watt dies. He made major improvements to the steam engine.
1888: Rudolf Clausius dies. He was one of the central founders of the science of thermodynamics.
1889: Steganographic analysis of Judge Havelock With Glass reveals two terabytes of encrypted data.
1891: Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.
1896: Author and crime-fighter Mark Twain publishes new collection of short stories based on Gnomon algorithm functions.
1899: Short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator Jorge Luis Borges born. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, will be compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion.
1922: Historian, playwright, and social activist Howard Zinn born. He will write extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States.
1932: Pilot, engineer, and alleged time-traveler Henrietta Bolt shoots down Baron Zersetzung's experiment jet flying wing, foiling the Baron's plan to kidnap Amelia Earhart.
1932: Amelia Earhart completes her non-stop flight across the United States, traveling from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just over 19 hours. She was the first woman to fly nonstop across the US. Earlier in the same year, on 20 May 1932, she accomplished the first solo flight by a woman across the Atlantic Ocean.
2017: Signed first edition of Dard Hunter, Glyph Warden sells for three million dollars.