The Indian Panorama

Tag: Thomas Edison

  • History This Week- December 31 – Jan 6

    “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”― James Baldwin

    December 31

    December 31st – New Year’s Eve, the final evening of the Gregorian calendar year, traditionally a night for merry-making to welcome in the new year.

    December 31, 1781 – The first bank in the U.S., the Bank of North America, received its charter from the Confederation Congress. It opened on January 7, 1782, in Philadelphia.

    Thomas Edison

    December 31, 1879 – Thomas Edison provided the first public demonstration of his electric incandescent lamp at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

    December 31, 1971 – Austrian Kurt Waldheim became U.N. Secretary-General following the retirement of U Thant. Waldheim served until 1981 then resumed his career in Austrian politics. In 1986, he ran for the presidency. During the campaign, it was revealed he had likely given false information concerning his military service in the German Army during World War II. He claimed he left the army in 1942 after being wounded on the Russian Front, but allegations arose that he was actually lieutenant in 1943-44 stationed in the Balkans when Greek Jews were rounded up and sent to Nazi death camps and when atrocities were committed against Yugoslav resistance fighters.

    Birthday – George C. Marshall (1880-1959) was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He had genius for organization and served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army throughout World War II, expanding the Army from 130,000 to 8,300,000 men. He then served as Secretary of State under President Truman and designed the Marshall Plan for the relief of war-torn Europe and to halt the spread of Communism.

    January 1

    New Year’s Day – The most celebrated holiday around the world.

    January 1, 1502 – Portuguese explorers landed at Guanabara Bay on the coast of South America and named it Rio de Janeiro (River of January). Rio de Janeiro is currently Brazil’s second largest city.

    January 1, 1660 – Samuel Pepys began his famous diary in which he chronicled life in London including the Great Plague of 1664-65 and the Great Fire of 1666.

    January 1, 1776 – During the American Revolution, George Washington unveiled the Grand Union Flag, the first national flag in America.

    January 1, 1801 – Ireland was added to Great Britain by an Act of Union thus creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

    January 1, 1863 – The Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the states rebelling against the Union.

    Queen Victoria

    January 1, 1877 – Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.

    January 1, 1892 – Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened. Over 20 million new arrivals to America were processed until its closing in 1954.

    January 1, 1901 – The Commonwealth of Australia was founded as six former British colonies became six states with Edmund Barton as the first prime minister.

    January 1, 1915 – During World War I, the British Battleship Formidable was hit by a torpedo in the English Channel, killing 547 crewmen.

    January 1, 1942 – Twenty-six countries signed the Declaration of the United Nations, in Washington, D.C., reaffirming their opposition to the Axis powers and confirming that no single nation would make a separate peace.

    January 1, 1958 – The EEC (European Economic Community) known as the Common Market was formed by Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and The Netherlands in order to remove trade barriers and coordinate trade policies.

    January 1, 1959 – Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba after leading a revolution that drove out Dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro then established a Communist dictatorship.

    January 1, 1973 – Britain, Ireland and Denmark became members of the Common Market (EEC).

    January 1, 1975 – During the Watergate scandal, former top aides to President Nixon including former Attorney General John Mitchell, Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, were found guilty of obstruction of justice.

    January 1, 1979 – China and the U.S. established diplomatic relations, 30 years after the foundation of the People’s Republic.

    January 1, 1993 – Czechoslovakia broke into separate Czech and Slovak republics.

    January 1, 1999 – Eleven European nations began using a new single European currency, the Euro, for electronic financial and business transactions. Participating countries included Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

    Birthday – American Patriot Paul Revere (1735-1818) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Best known for his ride on the night of April 18, 1775, warning Americans of British plans to raid Lexington and Concord.

    Birthday – Betsy Ross (1752-1836) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a seamstress credited with helping to originate and sew the Stars and Stripes flag of America in 1776.

    January 2

    January 2, 1905 – The Russians surrendered to the Japanese after the Battle of Port Arthur during the Russian Japanese War. A peace conference was later held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with President Theodore Roosevelt serving as a mediator. In September of 1905, the Russians agreed to the Treaty of Portsmouth yielding Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan. Russia also agreed to evacuate Manchuria and recognize Japan’s interests in Korea.

    January 2, 1942 – During World War II in the Pacific, the Japanese captured the Philippines capital of Manila and the nearby air base at Cavite.

    John F. Kennedy

    January 2, 1960 – In Washington, D.C., Senator John F. Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.

    January 3

    January 3, 1777 – During the American Revolution, General George Washington defeated the British at Princeton and drove them back toward New Brunswick. Washington then established winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey. During the long harsh winter, Washington’s army shrank to about a thousand men as enlistments expired and deserters fled.

    January 3, 1924 – British Egyptologist Howard Carter found the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor after several years of searching.

    January 3, 1946 – An Englishman known during World War II as “Lord Haw Haw” (William Joyce) was hanged for treason in London. Joyce had broadcast Nazi propaganda via radio from Germany to Britain during the war.

    January 3, 1959 – Alaska was admitted as the 49th U.S. state with a land mass almost one-fifth the size of the lower 48 states together.

    January 3, 1961 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba two years after Communist dictator Fidel Castro had seized power and just weeks before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the next president.

    January 3, 1990 – Manuel Noriega, the deposed leader of Panama, surrendered to American authorities on charges of drug trafficking after spending 10 days hiding in the Vatican embassy following the U.S. invasion of Panama.

    January 3, 1993 – President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the Start-II (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) Treaty, eliminating about two-thirds of each country’s long range nuclear weapons.

    January 4

    January 4, 1790 – President George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address.

    January 4, 1974 – President Richard Nixon rejected subpoenas from the Senate Watergate Committee seeking audio tapes and related documents.

    Louis Braille

    Birthday – Louis Braille (1809-1852) was born in France. Blinded as a boy, he later invented a reading system for the blind using punch marks in paper.

    January 5

    January 5, 1919 – German Communists in Berlin led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht attempted to take over the government by seizing a number of buildings. However, ten days later, they were both assassinated by German soldiers.

    January 5, 1919 – The German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) was founded by Anton Drexler in Munich. Adolf Hitler became member No. 7 and changed the name in April of 1920 to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) commonly shortened to Nazi or Nazi Party.

    January 5, 1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first female governor inaugurated in the U.S.

    January 5, 1968 – Alexander Dubcek became first secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party. He introduced liberal reforms known as “Communism with a human face” which resulted in Soviet Russian troops invading Prague to crack down.

    January 5, 1972 – President Richard Nixon signed a bill approving $5.5 billion over six years to build and test the NASA space shuttle.

    January 5, 1976 – In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot announced a new constitution which legalized the Communist government and renamed the country as Kampuchea. During the reign of Pol Pot, over 1 million persons died in “the killing fields” as he forced people out of the cities into the countryside to create an idyllic agrarian society. Educated and professional city people were especially targeted for murder and were almost completely annihilated. In January of 1979, the Pol Pot was overthrown by Cambodian rebels and Vietnamese troops.

    Birthday – King Juan Carlos I of Spain was born in Rome on January 5, 1938. He was chosen by Francisco Franco to inherit his right-wing dictatorship and was sworn in as King on November 22, 1975, two days after Franco’s death. The new King then announced his intention to mold Spain into a broadly based democratic society.

    January 6

    January 6, 1066 – Harold, Earl of Wessex, was crowned King of England following the death of his brother-in-law Edward the Confessor. Harold II was England’s last Anglo-Saxon king. In October of 1066, Harold met the invading army of William the Conqueror at Hastings and died on the field of battle.

    January 6, 1941 – President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address to Congress asking for support for the lend-lease program aiding Allies fighting the Axis powers. Roosevelt also defined four essential freedoms worth defending; freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

    January 6, 1990 – Poland’s Communist Party disbanded and then reorganized as the Social Democratic Party, an opposition party to Solidarity.

    Capitol in Washington is attacked

    January 6, 2020-President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington with the intention of disrupting the certification of election results by the Congress. The violent mob assaulted law enforcement officers, vandalized property and occupied the building for several hours. Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes. Many people were injured, including 138 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.

    Joan of Arc

    Birthday – Joan of Arc (1412-1431) was born in France. After a series of mystic visitations by saints, she inspired French troops to break the British siege at Orleans and win several important victories during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between France and Britain. She was eventually captured and sold to the British who tried her for heresy and burned her at the stake. In 1920, Joan of Arc was canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

  • History This Week- Oct. 15 to 21, 2021

    “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” – MAHATMA GANDHI

    October 15

    October 15, 1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on the Island of St. Helena beginning a British-imposed exile following his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

    Mata Hari

    October 15, 1917 – World War I spy Mata Hari was executed by a French firing squad at Vincennes Barracks, outside Paris.

    October 15, 1945 – Pierre Laval, the former premier of Vichy France, was executed for collaborating with Nazi Germany during World War II.

    October 15, 1946 – Nazi leader Hermann Goering committed suicide by swallowing poison in his Nuremberg prison cell just hours before his scheduled hanging for war crimes.

    October 15, 1964 – Soviet Russia’s leader Nikita Khrushchev was deposed as First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev.

    October 15, 1991 – The U.S. Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court by a 52-48 vote following several days of tumultuous hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning sexual harassment charges made by a former aide. Thomas became the second African American to sit on the Court, replacing retired Justice Thurgood Marshall, an African American.

    Birthday – German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was born in the Province of Saxony. Best known for stating, “God is dead,” and for his prediction in the late 1800s, “There will be wars such as there have never been on Earth before.” He eventually succumbed to mental illness.

    Birthday – Lee Iacocca was born to Italian immigrant parents in Allentown, Pennsylvania, October 15, 1924 (as Lido Anthony Iacocca). Dubbed “America’s first corporate folk hero,” he was a mechanical engineer who became an automobile executive at Ford and later helped save Chrysler from bankruptcy. He also served as foundation chairman for the rehabilitation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

    October 16

    October 16, 1701 – Yale University was founded in Killingworth, Connecticut (as the Collegiate School of Connecticut). The school moved to New Haven in 1716. Two years later, the name was changed to Yale College to honor Elihu Yale, a philanthropist. In 1886, it became Yale University.

    October 16, 1793 – Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. She was the wife of King Louis XVI and had become the symbol of the people’s hatred for the old regime due to her extravagance and frivolity. According to legend, she responded, “Let them eat cake,” when told poor people had no bread.

    October 16, 1853 – The Crimean War began after the Turkish Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, Britain, France and portions of Italy allied with the Turks against Russia. It became the first war observed up close by newspaper reporters and photographers. One of the battles was immortalized in Tennyson’s poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Amid poor sanitary conditions, disease killed many wounded French and British troops. British nurse Florence Nightingale then pioneered modern-style sanitation methods, saving many lives.

    October 16, 1859 – Fanatical abolitionist John Brown seized the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry with about 20 followers. Three days later, Brown was captured and the insurrection was put down by U.S. Marines under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee. Brown was convicted by the Commonwealth of Virginia of treason, murder, and inciting slaves to rebellion, and was hanged on December 2, 1859.

    October 16, 1916 – The first birth control clinic in America was opened in Brooklyn, New York, by Margaret Sanger, a nurse who worked among the poor on the Lower East Side of New York City.

    October 16, 1946 – Ten former Nazi leaders were hanged by the Allies following their conviction for war crimes at Nuremberg, Germany.

    October 16, 1964 – China detonated its first nuclear bomb at the Lop Nor test site in Sinkiang.

    October 16, 1978 – Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland was elected Pope. He was the first non-Italian Pope chosen in 456 years and took the name John Paul II.

    October 16, 1995 – The Million Man March took place in Washington, D.C., under the direction of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who delivered the main address to the gathering of African American males.

    Noah Webster

    Birthday – American teacher and journalist Noah Webster (1758-1843) was born in West Hartford, Connecticut. His name became synonymous with “dictionary” after he compiled the first American dictionaries of the English language.

    Birthday – Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin, Ireland. Best known for his comedies including The Importance of Being Earnest. And his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which he wrote, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”

    Birthday – David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) was born in Plonsk, Poland. He was largely responsible for founding the modern state of Israel in 1948 and is revered as “Father of the Nation.”

    Birthday – American playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) was born in New York City. He wrote more than 35 plays and was the first American dramatist awarded a Nobel Prize for literature. He also received four Pulitzers. His dramas, which dealt realistically with psychological and social problems, included Beyond the Horizon, The Iceman Cometh, The Emperor Jones and Long Day’s Journey into Night.

    Birthday – American jurist William O. Douglas (1898-1980) was born in Maine, Minnesota. He served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court for 36 years and was also a world traveler, conservationist, outdoorsman and author.

    October 17

    October 17, 1777 – During the American Revolutionary War, British General John Burgoyne and his entire army of 5,700 men surrendered to American General Horatio Gates after the Battle of Saratoga, the first big American victory.

    October 17-25, 1944 – The Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, took place off the Philippine Islands, during World War II in the Pacific. The battle involved 216 U.S. warships and 64 Japanese ships and resulted in the destruction of the Japanese Navy including the Japanese Battleship Musashi, one of the largest ever built.

    Pope John Paul I

    Birthday – Pope John Paul I (1912-1978) was born in Forno di Canale, Italy (as Albino Luciani). He was elected the 263rd Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on September 28, 1978 but died in Rome just 34 days later.

    October 18

    October 18, 1685 – The Edict of Nantes was revoked by King Louis XIV of France thus depriving Protestant Huguenots of all religious and civil liberties previously granted to them by Henry IV in 1598.

    October 18, 1945 – The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial began with indictments against 24 former Nazi leaders including Hermann Göring and Albert Speer. The trial lasted 10 months, with delivery of the judgment completed on October 1, 1946. Twelve Nazis were sentenced to death by hanging, three to life imprisonment, four to lesser prison terms, and three were acquitted.

    October 19

    October 19, 1781 – As their band played The World Turned Upside Down, the British Army marched out in formation and surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown. More than 7,000 British and Hessian troops, led by British General Lord Cornwallis, surrendered to General George Washington. The war between Britain and its American colonies was effectively ended. The final peace treaty was signed in Paris on September 3, 1783.

    October 19, 1960 – The U.S. embargo of Cuba began as the State Department prohibited shipment of all goods except medicine and food.

    October 19, 1987 – “Black Monday” occurred on Wall Street as stocks plunged a record 508 points or 22.6 per cent, the largest one-day drop in stock market history.

    Mikhail Gorbachev

    October 19, 1990 – Beset by a seriously eroding economy, Soviet Russia’s President Mikhail Gorbachev won parliamentary approval to switch to a market economy.

    October 20

    October 20, 1818 – The U.S. and Britain agreed to set the U.S.- Canadian border at the 49th parallel.

    October 20, 1935 – Mao Zedong’s 6,000 mile “Long March” ended as his Communist forces arrived at Yanan, in northwest China, almost a year after fleeing Chiang Kai-shek’s armies in the south.

    October 20, 1944 – During World War II in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur set foot on Philippine soil for the first time since his escape in 1942, fulfilling his promise, “I shall return.”

    Jacqueline Kennedy

    October 20, 1968 – Jacqueline Kennedy married multi-millionaire Greek businessman Aristotle Onassis, ending nearly five years of widowhood following the assassination of her first husband, President John F. Kennedy.

    October 20, 1973 – The ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ occurred during the Watergate scandal as President Richard M. Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned. A firestorm of political protest erupted over the firings leading to widespread demands for Nixon’s impeachment.

    Birthday – British architect Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was born in Wiltshire, in southwestern England. Considered one of the greatest minds of his time, he designed St. Paul’s Cathedral and 52 churches for the City of London. His secular buildings included the “new” wing of Hampton Court near London and Greenwich Hospital, now the Royal Naval College.

    October 21

    October 21, 1805 – The Battle of Trafalgar took place between the British Royal Navy and the combined French and Spanish fleets. The victorious British ended the threat of Napoleon’s invasion of England. British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson was mortally wounded aboard his ship Victory.

    Thomas Edison

    October 21, 1879 – Thomas Edison successfully tested an electric incandescent lamp with a carbonized filament at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, keeping it lit for over 13 hours.

    October 21, 1915 – The first transatlantic radio voice message was made by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company from Virginia to Paris.

    October 21, 1944 – During World War II in Europe, American troops captured Aachen in western Germany after a week of hard fighting. It was the first large German city taken by the Allies.

    October 21, 1967 – Thousands of anti-war protesters stormed the Pentagon during a rally against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. About 250 were arrested. No shots were fired, but demonstrators were struck with nightsticks and rifle butts.

    Birthday – Jazz great Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993) was born in Cheraw, South Carolina (as John Birks Gillespie). He was a trumpet player, composer, band leader and one of the founding fathers of modern jazz, known for his trademark puffed cheeks and bent trumpet.