On This Show…
- Dr. Robert Ballard
- Star Wars according to a 3yr old
- Kick butt retro calulator watch
On This Day in Tech History
- 1496 – England King Henry VII issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to explore unknown lands.
- 1836 – Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver (.34-caliber).
- 1850 – The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened.
- 1872 – George Westinghouse patents the air brake.
- 1904 – Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of ball lightning formation.
- 1912 – Italian forces are the first to use airships for military purposes, using them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines.
- 1936 – First flight of the Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft..
- 1943 – First flight of Gloster Meteor jet aircraft in the United Kingdom.
- 1958 – Explorer 2 spacecraft launches, fails to reach Earth orbit.
- 1960 – Aquatic Ape Hypothesis originates when Alister Hardy
publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due
to a coastal phase. - 1968 – U.S. launches Solar Explorer B, aka Explorer 37 from Wallops Island to study the Sun.
- 1970 – Dubnium atoms are first detected conclusively.
- 1978 – Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg AFB in California.
- 1979 – Detection equipment picks up a gamma ray burst
originating from the Large Magellanic Cloud, leading to the discovery
of soft gamma repeaters. - 1979 – Voyager 1’s closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.
- 1979 – Earth satellites record gamma rays from remnants of supernova N-49.
- 1982 – Venera 14, a Soviet satellite arrives at the planet Venus.
- 1998 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water to support a human colony.
Births
- 1512 – Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer (d. 1594)
- 1575 – William Oughtred, English mathematician (d. 1660)
- 1794 – Jacques Babinet, French physicist (d. 1872)
- 1910 – J
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