(1279 BCE) A great pharaoh takes the Egyptian throneA reign that will last 66 years begins, as Ramesses II becomes Pharaoh of Egypt under the 19th Dynasty. He will go on a building spree of massive proportions, soundly defeat many enemies, bolster his kingdom’s economy and territory, and live an impressive 90 or so years.Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great and Ozymandias, was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. He often is regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire. His successors and later Egyptians called him the “Great Ancestor”. Ramesses II led several military expeditions into the Levant, reasserting Egyptian control over Canaan. He also led expeditions to the south, into Nubia, commemorated in inscriptions at Beit el-Wali and Gerf Hussein.
wiki/Ramesses_II(1859) London’s parliament building gets a really large timepieceSet 316 feet above the Houses of Parliament, a new clock looks out over London, calibrated twice daily with Greenwich Observatory to ensure exact timekeeping. The booming chimes from its 13.5-ton ‘Big Ben’ bell, and its four 23-foot-diameter clock faces, will come to symbolize London.Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London and is usually extended to refer to both the clock and the clock tower as well. The tower is officially known as Elizabeth Tower, renamed to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2012; previously, it was known simply as the Clock Tower.
Address: Bridge St, Westminster, London SW1A 0AA Phone: 020 7219 4272 Opened: 1859 Height: 316 feet (96.30 m) (Architectural) Architect: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin Architectural style: Gothic Revival architecture
wiki/Big_Ben(1889) 20 million tons of water wipes out Johnstown, PennsylvaniaA deluge of rainfall and a deteriorating dam lead to one of America’s worst disasters when the South Fork Dam breaks apart above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, releasing a torrent of destruction. A 60-foot-high wall of water and debris half a mile wide roars 14 miles downriver, killing 2,209.The Johnstown Flood occurred on May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River 14 miles upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, releasing 14.55 million cubic meters of water from the reservoir known as Lake Conemaugh. With a volumetric flow rate that temporarily equaled that of the Mississippi River, the flood killed 2,209 people and caused US$17 million of damage.
Fatalities: 2,200 Date: May 31, 1889
wiki/Johnstown_Flood(1902) UK claims more of South Africa after bloody Boer WarThe 20th century’s first large-scale international conflict ends when the British Empire claims victory over the South African Republic and the Orange Free State in South Africa. Tens of thousands of human lives were lost, and an astounding 300,000 horses perished, in the Second Boer War.The Second Boer War, usually known as the Boer War and also at the time as the South African War, started on 11 October 1899 and ended on 31 May 1902. Great Britain defeated two Boer states in South Africa: the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. Britain was aided by its Cape Colony, the Colony of Natal and some native African allies. The British war effort was further supported by volunteers from the British Empire, including Southern Africa, the Australian colonies, Canada, India and New Zealand. All other nations were neutral, but public opinion in them was largely hostile to Britain. Inside Britain and its Empire there also was significant opposition to the Second Boer War.
(1642) French missionaries found MontrealHired to build a Catholic mission near the St. Lawrence River, 30-year-old Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve and his group of settlers found Ville-Marie de Montreal. The future city of Montreal faces an uncertain future at first, and the population will dwindle to 50 by a decade later.
The history of Montreal, located in Quebec, Canada, spans some 8,000 years. At the time of European contact, the area was inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, a discrete and distinct group of Iroquoian-speaking indigenous people. They spoke Laurentian. Jacques Cartier became the first European to reach the area now known as Montreal in 1535 when he entered the village of Hochelaga on the Island of Montreal while in search of a passage to Asia during the Age of Exploration. Seventy years later, Samuel de Champlain unsuccessfully tried to create a fur trading post but the Mohawk of the Iroquois defended what they had been using as their hunting grounds.
A mission named Ville Marie was built in 1642 as part of a project to create a French colonial empire. Ville Marie became a centre for the fur trade and French expansion into New France until 1760, when it was surrendered to the British army, following the French defeat of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. British immigration expanded the city. The city’s golden era of fur trading began with the advent of the locally owned North West Company.
Montreal was incorporated as a city in 1832. The city’s growth was spurred by the opening of the Lachine Canal and Montreal was the capital of the United Province of Canada from 1844 to 1849. Growth continued and by 1860 Montreal was the largest city in British North America and the undisputed economic and cultural centre of Canada. Annexation of neighbouring towns between 1883 and 1918 changed Montreal back to a mostly Francophone city. The Great Depression in Canada brought unemployment to the city, but this waned in the mid-1930s, and skyscrapers began to be built.
World War II brought protests against conscription and caused the Conscription Crisis of 1944. Montreal’s population surpassed one million in the early 1950s. A new metro system was added, Montreal’s harbour was expanded and the St. Lawrence Seaway was opened during this time. More skyscrapers were built along with museums. International status was cemented by Expo 67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics. A major league baseball team, the Expos, played in Montreal from 1969 to 2004 when the team relocated to Washington, DC. Historically business and finance in Montreal was under the control of Anglophones. With the rise of Quebec nationalism in the 1970s, many institutions relocated their headquarters to Toronto.
wiki/History_of_Montreal(1875) First Kentucky Derby heldWith African-American jockey Oliver Lewis on board, Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby at a new track founded by the grandson of explorer William Clark. Eight years later, the venue will become known as Churchill Downs.The Kentucky Derby is a horse race that is held annually in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbreds at a distance of one and a quarter miles at Churchill Downs. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds and fillies 121 pounds.
2017 winner: Always Dreaming First occurred: 1875
wiki/Kentucky_Derby(1902) 2,000-year-old computer discoveredA Greek archaeologist examining finds from the haul of the Antikythera shipwreck notices a gear wheel embedded in rock. Decades later, examinations by X-ray and gamma ray will reveal the bronze gear clockwork Antikythera mechanism to be a complex ancient analog computer.
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient Greek analogue computer and orrery used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendrical and astrological purposes. It could also track the four-year cycle of athletic games which was similar, but not identical, to an Olympiad, the cycle of the ancient Olympic Games.
Found housed in a 340 millimetres (13 in) × 180 millimetres (7.1 in) × 90 millimetres (3.5 in) wooden box, the device is a complex clockwork mechanism composed of at least 30 meshing bronze gears. Using modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University peered inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine. Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests it dates back to 150-100 BC and had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac, predict eclipses and even recreate the irregular orbit of the moon. The motion, known as the first lunar anomaly, was developed by the astronomer Hipparchus of Rhodes in the 2nd century BC, and he may have been consulted in the machine’s construction, the scientists speculate. Its remains were found as one lump, later separated into three main fragments, which are now divided into eighty-two separate fragments after conservation works. Four of these fragments contain gears, while inscriptions are found on many others. The largest gear is approximately 140 millimetres (5.5 in) in diameter and originally had 224 teeth.
The artefact was recovered on May 17, 1902 from the Antikythera shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, which in antiquity was known as Aigila. Believed to have been designed and constructed by Greek scientists, the instrument has been variously dated to about 87 BC, or between 150 and 100 BC, or in 205 BC, or within a generation before the date of the shipwreck (in about 150 BC).
After the knowledge of this technology was lost at some point in antiquity, technological works approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the development of mechanical astronomical clocks in Europe in the fourteenth century.
All known fragments of the Antikythera mechanism are kept at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, along with a number of artistic reconstructions of how the mechanism may have looked.
wiki/Antikythera_mechanism(1954) US Supreme Court rules school segregation unconstitutionalA lawsuit against unfair segregation is heard before the Supreme Court, and the unanimous ruling finds that establishing separate public schools for black and white students is unconstitutional. ‘Brown v. Board of Education’ will be a major landmark in the growing civil rights movement.Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court’s unanimous decision stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases. However, the decision’s fourteen pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court’s second decision in Brown II, 349 U.S. 294 only ordered states to desegregate “with all deliberate speed”.
(1877) First Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show heldA group of hunters who had formed the Westminster Kennel Club hold their first dog show at Gilmore’s Garden, later renamed Madison Square Garden. The show is an immediate success and will become the second-longest running continuously held sporting event in the U.S.The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is a prestigious all-breed conformation show that has been held in New York City annually since 1877. Currently, the breed and Junior Showmanship competitions are held at Piers 92 and 94, while the group and Best in Show competitions are held at Madison Square Garden. The number of entries is so large at nearly 3000 that two days are required for all dogs to be judged.
Website: hwww.westminsterkennelclub.org First occurred: May 08, 1877
wiki/Westminster_Kennel_Club_Dog_Show(1886) First bottles of Coca-Cola soldJacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, begins offering a bubbly beverage called Coca-Cola, a patent medicine said to ease ailments such as dyspepsia, headache, impotence, and morphine addiction. The drink will become rather popular as time goes by.Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company. Originally intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Pemberton and was bought out by businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coca-Cola to its dominance of the world soft-drink market throughout the 20th century. The drink’s name refers to two of its original ingredients, which were kola nuts and coca leaves. The current formula of Coca-Cola remains a trade secret, although a variety of reported recipes and experimental recreations have been published.
Website: www.cocacola.com Inventor: John Pemberton
wiki/Coca-Cola(1902) Saint-Pierre buried after Mount Pelée erupts on MartiniqueCalled “the Paris of the Caribbean,” Saint-Pierre is wiped off the map as Martinique’s Mount Pelée volcano erupts with a fury, sending black clouds of superheated gases and dust 420 mph over the seaside town. More than 30,000 will perish in what will be the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century.Mount Pelée is a semi-active volcano at the northern end of Martinique, an island and French overseas department in the Lesser Antilles island arc of the Caribbean. Its volcanic cone is composed of layers of volcanic ash and hardened lava. The volcano is currently in a quiescent state, which means it is not active, but is registering seismic activity.
Last eruption: 1932 Elevation: 4,583 feet (1,397 m) Prominence: 4,583 feet (1,397 m) Mountain range: Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc
wiki/Mount_Pelée(1945) German surrender ends WWII in EuropeWith the unconditional surrender of the German military now official, the Allies and their supporters celebrate with massive VE Day demonstrations around the globe. The deadliest conflict in world history is over in Europe, but WWII still rages on in the Pacific.Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day, was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces. It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe.
(1902) Madame and Monsieur Curie isolate radioactive radiumThe married scientific research team of Marie and Pierre Curie chemically isolate one-tenth gram of pure radium chloride, an element not naturally occurring in isolation. Their work with radium and radioactivity will lead to the first Nobel Prize awarded to a woman.Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.
Lived: Nov 07, 1867 – Jul 04, 1934 (age 66) Spouse: Pierre Curie (m. 1895 – 1906) Awards: Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911) · Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) · Elliott Cresson Medal (1909) · Davy Medal (1903) · Matteucci Medal (1904) · Benjamin Franklin Medal (1921) · John Scott Medal Discovered: Radium · Polonium Children: Irène Joliot-Curie (Daughter) · Ève Curie (Daughter)
Highlights
1867: Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skłodowski.
1891: In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work.
1895: Maria Sklodowska-Curie married Pierre Curie on July 26, 1895; their marriage lasted 11 years till April 19, 1906.
1898: She named the first chemical element that she discovered—polonium, which she isolated in 1898—after her native country.
1925: In 1925, she visited Poland, to participate in the ceremony that laid foundations for the Radium Institute in Warsaw.
1934: A few months later, on 4 July 1934, she died at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoie, from aplastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation.
wiki/Marie_CuriePierre Curie was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”.
Lived: May 15, 1859 – Apr 19, 1906 (age 46) Spouse: Maria Sklodowska-Curie (m. 1895 – 1906) Discovered: Radium · Polonium Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) · Davy Medal (1903) · Matteucci Medal (1904) Children: Ève Curie (Daughter) · Irène Joliot-Curie (Daughter)
Highlights
1880: In 1880, Pierre and his older brother Jacques (1856–1941) demonstrated that an electric potential was generated when crystals were compressed, i.e. piezoelectricity.
1895: Pierre Curie married Maria Sklodowska-Curie on July 26, 1895.
1903: In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”.
1903: Pierre Curie was awarded Davy Medal in 1903.
1904: Radium written by Pierre Curie was first published in 1904.
1906: Pierre Curie died in a street accident in Paris on 19 April 1906.
wiki/Pierre_Curie(1939) Billie Holiday records landmark civil rights songOne of the first songs to explicitly call out the murderous brutality suffered by African Americans in the Jim Crow South, the painful and poetic ‘Strange Fruit’ is recorded by Billie Holiday. A relatively small jazz label, Commodore, records it after Holiday’s label, Columbia Records, refuses to.“Strange Fruit” is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century, but continued there and in other regions of the United States. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 1,953 Americans were murdered by lynching, about three fourths of them black. The lyrics are an extended metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with lynching victims. Meeropol set it to music and, with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden.
Album: The Great American Songbook Artist: Billie Holiday Release year: 1939 Duration: 3:17 Genre: Pop music, Easy Listening
wiki/Strange_Fruit(1986) Michael Jordan scores 63 points in playoff gameThough the Boston Celtics win the game, 135-131 in double overtime, Jordan scores nearly half the points for the Chicago Bulls. It’s a performance for the ages from the second-year Bulls star and a sign of things to come for Air Jordan and the Bulls.Michael Jeffrey Jordan, also known by his initials, MJ, is an American retired professional basketball player, businessman, and principal owner and chairman of the Charlotte Hornets. Jordan played 15 seasons in the National Basketball Association for the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards. His biography on the NBA website states: “By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time.” Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation and was considered instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.
Born: Feb 17, 1963 (age 54) · Brooklyn, NY Height: 6′ 6″ (1.98 m) Net worth: $1.20 billion USD (2017) Spouse: Yvette Prieto (m. 2013) · Juanita Jordan (m. 1989 – 2006) Children: Jeffrey Jordan (Son) · Marcus Jordan (Son) · Jasmine Mickael Jordan (Daughter) · Victoria Jordan (Daughter) · Ysabel Jordan (Daughter) Education: Emsley A Laney High · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1981 – 1984)
Highlights
1982: He made the game-winning jump shot in the 1982 NCAA Championship game against Georgetown, which was led by future NBA rival Patrick Ewing.
1988: In the 1988–89 season, Jordan again led the league in scoring, averaging 32.5 ppg on 53.8% shooting from the field, along with 8 rpg and 8 assists per game (apg).
1989: Jordan married Juanita Vanoy in September 1989, and they had two sons, Jeffrey Michael and Marcus James, and a daughter, Jasmine.
1992: In the 1992 Summer Olympics, he was a member of the star-studded squad that included Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and David Robinson and was dubbed the “Dream Team”.
1999: With Phil Jackson’s contract expiring, the pending departures of Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman looming, and being in the latter stages of an owner-induced lockout of NBA players, Jordan retired for the second time on January 13, 1999.
2003: Playing in his 14th and final NBA All-Star Game in 2003, Jordan passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the all-time leading scorer in All-Star Game history (a record since broken by Kobe Bryant).
wiki/Michael_Jordan(1999) Columbine High School shooting shocks a nationTwo students enter a Colorado high school armed with semi-automatic handguns, carbine rifles, and explosives, and begin a massacre that leaves 13 people dead and 21 wounded. The incident will be one of the deadliest modern-day mass shootings.The Columbine High School massacre was a school shooting that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County in the American state of Colorado. In addition to the shootings, the complex and highly planned attack involved a fire bomb to divert firefighters, propane tanks converted to bombs placed in the cafeteria, 99 explosive devices, and carbombs. The perpetrators, senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. They injured 21 additional people, and three more were injured while attempting to escape the school. The pair subsequently committed suicide.
(1857) US Supreme Court decides on Dred Scott caseSlave Dred Scott’s appeal that he be considered free if his owner takes him to a non-slave-holding state falls in his owner’s favor. The Court holds that slaves are property, not persons, a decision that will be strongly opposed by antislavery Northerners and serve as a catalyst for the Civil War.Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, also known simply as the Dred Scott case, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. It held that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into, and sold as slaves”, whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an enslaved man of “the negro African race” who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7–2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the court denied Scott’s request. The decision was only the second time that the Supreme Court had ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional.
Start date: 1856 End date: 1857
wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford(1902) Madrid Football Club foundedThe Madrid Football Club is officially founded in the Spanish capital. It will be renamed Real Madrid, and go on to be the top professional football (soccer) club of the 20th century and the most valuable sports team in the world.Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, commonly known as Real Madrid, or simply as Real outside Spain frontiers, is a professional football club based in Madrid, Spain.
Founded: Mar 06, 1902 Coach: Zinedine Zidane Location: Madrid Venue: Santiago Bernabéu Stadium League: La Liga Founders: Adolfo Meléndez · Juan Padrós · Carlos Padrós
wiki/Real_Madrid_C.F.(1951) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg go on trial for espionageJulius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel stand trial on the charge of spying for the Soviet Union. The couple will eventually be executed, their fate resting mainly on the testimony of Julius’ brother-in-law.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were United States citizens who were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union. They were instrumental in the transmission of information about top-secret military technology and prototypes of mechanisms related to the atomic bomb, which were of value to the Soviet nuclear weapons program and also provided top-secret radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines to the Soviet Union.
Other co-conspirators were imprisoned, including Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, who supplied documents from Los Alamos to Julius and who served 10 years of his 15-year sentence; Harry Gold, who identified Greenglass and served 15 years in Federal prison as the courier for Greenglass; and a German scientist, Klaus Fuchs, who served nine years and four months.
For decades, many defenders of the Rosenbergs, including their sons Michael and Robert Meeropol, maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent and victims of Cold war paranoia. After the fall of the USSR, much information concerning them was declassified, including a trove of decoded Soviet cables, code-named VENONA, which detailed Julius’s role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets and Ethel’s role as an accessory. Their sons’ current position is that Julius was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, though not of atomic spying, while Ethel was only generally aware of his activities. They believe that he did not deserve the death penalty and that she was wrongly convicted. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be legally exonerated.
In 2014, five historians who had published on the Rosenberg case wrote that Soviet documents show that “Ethel Rosenberg hid money and espionage paraphernalia for Julius, served as an intermediary for communications with his Soviet intelligence contacts, provided her personal evaluation of individuals Julius considered recruiting, and was present at meetings with his sources. They also demonstrate that Julius reported to the KGB that Ethel persuaded Ruth Greenglass to travel to New Mexico to recruit David as a spy.”
There is a consensus among historians that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty, but their trial was marred by clear judicial and legal improprieties and they should not have been executed. Distilling this consensus, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote that the Rosenbergs were “guilty – and framed”.
wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg(1990) The SR-71 ‘Blackbird’ flies into the history booksPilots Ed Yielding and Joseph Vida make a transcontinental flight from Los Angeles, California, to Washington, DC, in a blistering 64 minutes and with an average speed of 2,144.8 mph, a record. Their plane is the Lockheed SR-71 ‘Blackbird,’ a long-range reconnaissance aircraft.The Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” was a long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft that was operated by the United States Air Force. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by Lockheed and its Skunk Works division. American aerospace engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was responsible for many of the design’s innovative concepts. During aerial reconnaissance missions, the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes to allow it to outrace threats. If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and outfly the missile. The SR-71 was designed with a reduced radar cross-section.
Maximum speed: 2,193 mph (3,530 km/h) Length: 107 feet (32.74 m) Wingspan: 55′ 7″ (16.94 m) Passengers: 2 Retired: 1998 Introduced: 1966
(1279 BCE) A great pharaoh takes the Egyptian throne
(1859) London’s parliament building gets a really large timepiece
(1889) 20 million tons of water wipes out Johnstown, Pennsylvania
(1902) UK claims more of South Africa after bloody Boer War
Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.
Pierre Curie was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”.
