Motto for Today: ‘Don’t wait for others to light your fire.’

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

On this day, Feb.12……

1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal on his second voyage to India.
1851 – Gold was discovered at Lewis Ponds Creek, Australia. English prospector, Edward Hargraves, was travelling on horseback with his guide, John Lister, when they stopped at a water hole. Hargreaves was excited. After the California Gold Rush began on 24 Jan 1848, these surroundings resembled the terrain he had seen there. Hargraves dug in, panned the dirt in the water hole and found a few specks of gold. After further weeks of exploration, he had a tiny amount more to take to the colonial secretary and claim a reward. (The gold found from 1851 onwards created gold rushes and led to significant immigration of workers).
1877 – A news dispatch was sent using Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention, the telephone, for the first time in the U.S.
1898 – The first car crash resulting in a fatality happened to Henry Lindfield whose electric car’s steering gear failed, and he crashed at the bottom of a hill at Purley Corner, Surrey.
1914 – “The Squaw Man”, 1st feature-length film shot in Hollywood, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar Apfel, is released in the US.
1928 – Bardoli Satyagrah (Gujarat) was led by Vallabhbhai Patel against the Bombay government’s decision to hike the revenue on cotton by 22 percent while its prices declined Internationally. Ultimately the government quashed the hike.
1941 – First penicillin injection into a human test subject was administered by Ernst Chain and Howard Walter Florey, who developed this antibiotic.
1946 – 14 killed in Calcutta riots; Muslim leader Jinnah threatens civil war.
1950 – Albert Einstein warns against hydrogen bomb.
1960 – Chinese army kills 12 Indian soldiers.
1990 – The Berlin Wall is taken down. Germany is reunited over the next year. Warsaw Pact is dissolved.
2013 – The International Olympic Committee announces that the sport of wrestling has been dropped from the 2020 Summer Olympics.

2014 – Intel entrepreneur and co-founder of the X-PRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis, claims that 50% of US jobs are under threat of being mechanized within 10 years.

2016 – Student leader Kanhaiya Kumar is arrested on “anti-nationalism” charges at an anniversary event of the death of Afzal Guru, at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

2019 – NASA data shows the world has got greener – 5% more leafier since early 2000s, mostly due to tree planting in China, intensive farming in India.

Born….
1824 – Maha Rishi Dayanand Sarsvati, metaphysician, social reformer, religious leader founder of Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement of the Vedic tradition.
1920 – Pran Krishan Sikand, film actor often cast as the villain in Hindi cinema.
1947 – Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Indian leader of Damdami Taksal.
1949 – Gundappa Viswanath, cricketer.
1982 – Shiv Kapur, golfer.
RIP….
1998 – Om Prakash, 78, Hindi film comedian.
You may have known….
Octopuses sometimes eat their own arms.

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