Today’s Motto: ‘Fear defeats more people than anything else’

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

On this day, July 14……..
1791 – Chemist Joseph Priestley’s laboratory, home and library in Birmingham were burned to destruction by a mob of people angry at his support of the French Revolution. Within a few years, on 7 Apr 1794, he forever left England and travelled to the United States. (Priestley discovered oxygen nearly 20 years earlier, on 1 Aug 1774).
1850 – The first public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration in the U.S. took place during a dinner.
1867 – Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey. In 1866 Nobel produced what he believed was a safe and manageable form of nitroglycerin called dynamite. He established his own factory to produce it but in 1864 an explosion at the plant killed Nobel’s younger brother and four other workers. Deeply shocked by this event, he now worked on a safer explosive and in 1875 came up with gelignite.
1868 – Alvin J. Fellows of New Haven, Connecticut received the first U.S. patent for a spring tape measure. The tape measure was enclosed in a circular case with a spring click lock to hold the tape at any desired point.
1933 – A sterilization law was passed in Nazi Germany, known as Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, to be effective 1 Jan 1934. Most operations, often by female tubal ligations or male vasectomies, were done in 1934-37.
1942 – Britishers Quit India resolution was passed by Congress Working Committee. They demanded departure of British and agreed on passive resistance until India’s independence. It was declared on 8th August, 1942 at August Kranti Maidan (Gowalia Tank).
1944 – General Omar Bradley inspected the invention of Sgt. Curtis G. Culin, the heavy steel, tusk-like prongs welded on the front of a Sherman tank. During the Normandy campaign in France, the advance of the U.S. Sherman tanks had been seriously obstructed by the local terrain. Hedgerows between small fields were tall, very thickly overgrown. Only with the prongs, dubbed the Rhinocerous, could the tanks ram through without the front end rising high and exposing their vulnerable underbelly to shells from the enemy hidden by hedgerows. Impressed by the demonstration, Bradley ordered emergency construction of many more using steel beams from the German beach defences.
1951 – 1st colour telecast of a sporting event (CBS-horse race).
1999 – Scientists uncover possible reason for SS Waratah’s disappearance 100 years later. (The SS Waratah was a 500-foot long cargo liner steamship that operated between Europe and Australia in the early 1900s. In July 1909, the ship, en-route from Durban to Cape Town, disappeared with 211 passengers and crew aboard. To this day, no trace of the ship has been found).

2013 – The world’s last telegram was sent in India. It was the last major country to shut down telegram service. India’s 163-year-old telegram service was no longer needed, as e-mail and texting had replaced bicycle telegram messengers. (The first formal telegram was sent by Samuel Morse in Washington to his business partner Alfred Vail in Baltimore, on 24 May 1844. In time, wires were strung across the U.S. and other countries, which eventually were connected by a c cable under the ocean and more submarine cables).

2019 – US President Donald Trump ignites racial controversy by tweeting four Democrat women of color “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.
2020 – New study shows Andean condor, world’s heaviest bird, can fly for 5 hours without flapping its wings (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
Born….
1656 – Guru Har Krishan, the eight Sikh Guru, was born.

RIP….
1963 – Swami Sivanand Saraswati, a versatile  religious leader.

You may have known….
The African penguin is also commonly referred to as the “Jackass penguin” because it makes donkey-like varying sounds.

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