August 24

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  1561: Mathematician, astronomer, and theologian Bartholomaeus Pitiscus born. Pitiscus will coin the word "trigonometry".

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  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.

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  1819: inventor, engineer, and chemist James Watt dies. He made major improvements to the steam engine.

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  1877: Canada grants Alexander Graham Bell a patent for the telephone.

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  1888: Rudolf Clausius dies. He was one of the central founders of the science of thermodynamics.

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  1891: Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.