Today’s Motto: ‘No is easier to do. Yes is easier to say’.

This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History!

On this day, June 26………

1498 – The bristle toothbrush was invented in China. Coarse hairs taken from the back of a hog’s neck were used for the bristles, attached at right angles to a bone or bamboo handle, similar to the modern type. The best bristles came from hogs raised in the colder climates of China and Siberia, where the animals grew stouter and firmer hair. (Since 3000 BC, ancient civilizations had been cleaning  teeth with a

“chew-stick” by using a thin twig with a frayed end).

1797 – Charles Newbold was issued the first US patent for a cast-iron plow. (When agriculture was first developed, simple hand-held digging

sticks and hoes were used. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, although written references to the plow do not appear in English until c. 1100 at which point it is referenced frequently. The plow represents one of the major advances in agriculture).

1888 – The first American patent for a gasoline-driven automobile was issued to Karl Benz of Mannheim,

Baden, Germany.

1914 – The Indian Relief Act, passes after a protracted period of Passive Resistance led by Gandhi; it recognizes “the validity of Indian customary marriages”.

1954 – Nehru, Chou En-lai pledged a good-neighbor policy at New Delhi.

1974 – At 8:01 a.m., a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum with a bar code printed on it passed over a scanner at the Marsh Supermarket, Troy, Ohio, and became the first product ever logged under the new Universal Product Code (UPC) computerized recognition system. Invented by IBM, and approved for use in 1973, the UPC is a 12-number bar code representing the manufacturer’s identity and an assigned product number. Within nanoseconds, this information is read with a laser beam moving at around 10,000 inches per second and transfers it to the store’s database computer for price lookup and inventory management.

1975 – Citing what she called a “deep and widespread conspiracy” against her government, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency, which lasted till 1977.

1992 – India leases Tin Bigha corridor to Bangladesh.

1995 – Madhya Pradesh declared “Tiger State” as it homes one-sixth of the world’s tiger population.

1997 – India declares its chemical weapon stockpiles and storage facilities as part of its obligations as signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention.

1999 – Kargil War. Pakistan gave tacit admission that its fighters were involved in the Kashmir region against Indian forces.

2004 – In Kashmir suspected Islamic rebels raided a village and shot to death 12 Muslims while they slept.

2012 – Cabinet minister Virbhadra Singh, resigned one day after a court in Himachal Pradesh charged him and his wife with conspiracy and corruption in a 23-year-old case related to one of his five terms as chief minister.

2018 – India is named the most dangerous country to be a woman because of sexual violence and slave labour by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Born….

1888 – Ghanshyam Das Birla, a great freedom fighter and social reformer.

1985 – Arjun Kapoor, Bollywood actor (image credit- Bollywood Hangama)

RIP….

2004 – Yash Johar, Bollywood film producer.

2005 – Eknath Solkar, Indian cricketer.

Titbits….

1963 – US President John F. Kennedy gives his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” (intended to mean “I am a Berliner”, but may actually mean “I am a doughnut”) speech in West Berlin.

You may have known….

Approximately one out of every 200 people has an extra rib.

{Compiled by Lt. Gen. (R) Raj Kadyan}