| (1786) Farmers rise up in Massachusetts | |
|---|---|
 |
Protesting high taxes and political corruption, American farmers begin a military standoff that closes the federal court in Springfield. Shays’ Rebellion will eventually be defeated by a private militia, but it will sufficiently rattle national leaders to call for a stronger national government to suppress future uprisings.. |
Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising in Massachusetts during 1786 and 1787. Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led four thousand rebels in rising up against perceived economic injustices and suspension of civil rights by Massachusetts, and in a later attempt to capture the United States’ national weapons arsenal at the U.S. Armory at Springfield. Although Shays’ Rebellion met with defeat militarily against a privately raised militia, it prompted numerous national leaders to call for a stronger national government to suppress future rebellions, resulting in the U.S. Constitutional Convention and thereby “altering the course of U.S. history.” | |
| (1831) Faraday demonstrates electromagnetism | |
| English chemist and autodidact Michael Faraday publically demonstrates his discovery of electromagnetism, or as he calls it, a ‘wave of electricity,’ via electromagnetic induction. His discovery of this energy transmission will help generate mankind’s electrical revolution. . |  |
Michael Faraday is generally credited with the discovery of induction in 1831, and mathematically described it as Faraday’s law of induction. Lenz’s law describes the direction of the induced field. Faraday’s law was later generalized to the Maxwell-Faraday equation, which is one of the equations in James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. Electromagnetic induction has found many applications in technology, including electrical components such as inductors and transformers, and devices such as electric motors and generators. | |
| (1949) ‘First Lightning’ detonates and the atomic arms race is on | |
 |
Twenty kilotons of nuclear fission flatten a purpose-built ‘town’ in a remote part of the USSR’s Kazakh Republic, and the Soviet Union is now on par with the US as the only other nuclear power on the globe. Called ‘First Lightning,’ the Soviet’s atom bomb is born of espionage and scientific brilliance.. |
The RDS-1 (Russian: РДС-1), also known as Izdeliye 501 (device 501) and First Lightning (Первая молния, Pervaya molniya), was used in the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapon test. The United States assigned it the code-name Joe-1, in reference to Joseph Stalin. It was exploded on 29 August 1949 at 7:00 AM, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR, after a top-secret research and development project. | |
| (2005) US Gulf Coast hammered by Hurricane Katrina | |
| Once roiling with Category 5 strength over the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Katrina has weakened, but it’s still packing ferocious winds, as it makes landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana. A massive storm surge will breach levies, devastating that city as Katrina becomes one of the worst natural disasters in US history.. |  |
Hurricane Katrina was the eleventh named storm and fifth hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. The storm is currently ranked as the third most intense United States landfalling tropical cyclone, behind only the 1935 Labor Day hurricane and Hurricane Camille in 1969. Overall, at least 1,245 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, making it the deadliest United States hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. Total property damage was estimated at $108 billion, roughly four times the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. | |
