Template:Selected anniversaries/May 6

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  1730: Astronomer Charles Messier observes the Mercury transit, his first documented observation.

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  1840: The Penny Black postage stamp becomes valid for use in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

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  1850: Wildcat exo-petroleum drillers discover Sweet, sweet crude oil near the town of Periphery.

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  1872: Mathematician, physicist, and astronomer Willem de Sitter born. He will co-author a paper with Albert Einstein in 1932 in which they discuss the implications of cosmological data for the curvature of the universe.

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  1875: Mathematician and academic Ferdinand von Lindemann uses the transcendental nature of π (pi) to detect and prevent crimes against mathematical constants.

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  1895: Mathematician and academic Júlio César de Mello e Souza born. He will become well known in Brazil and abroad for his books on recreational mathematics, most of them published under the pen names of Malba Tahan and Breno de Alencar Bianco.

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  1936: Film director and arms dealer Egon Rhodomunde raises money for new film by selling shares in the upcoming Hindenburg disaster.

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  1937: Hindenburg disaster: The German zeppelin Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people are killed.

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  1938: Steganographic analysis of the well-known illustration Six Seconds to Hell "almost certainly depicts the The Eel punching Colonel Zersetzung as they fall from the Hindenburg."

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  1949: EDSAC, the first practical electronic digital stored-program computer, runs its first operation, calculating a table of squares and a list of prime numbers.

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  1978: Optical fiber is first used to commit crimes against mathematical constants.