This Day In History: July 25, 1978 On this day in history, 1978, the first “test tube” baby, Louise Brown, was born weighing 5 lb. 12 oz. (2.6 kg) to Leslie and John Brown who had up to this point been unable to have a child due to Leslie’s lack of proper fallopian tubes. The couple eventually learned of and […]
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This Day In History: June 23, 1917 On this day in history, 1917, Babe Ruth was on the mound for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park against the Washington Senators. He threw four straight balls, at least as far as the umpire, Clarence “Brick” Owens, was concerned, walking Ray Morgan. Ruth thought the second and the fourth pitch were […]
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This Day In History: May 9, 1961 Yesterday Josh Hamilton tied an MLB record with 15 other players, hitting four home runs in one game. Something even more rare happened on this day in history, Baltimore Orioles first basemen, ‘Diamond’ Jim Gentile, managed to hit a grand slam in two consecutive innings (the 1st and the 2nd inning, both home […]
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This Day In History: April 3, 1973 On this day in history, 1973, a Motorola employee, Martin Cooper, publicly demonstrated the world’s first handheld mobile phone by placing a call to Joel Engel, the head of research at AT&T’s Bell Labs using the phone. Engel and his team were Cooper’s chief rival and had also been attempting to make the […]
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This Day In History: February 4, 2004 On this day in history, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a site called TheFacebook, that eventually became just “Facebook” after the company acquired the domain rights to facebook.com for $200,000 in 2005. The site was originally inspired by a project done by one of Mark Zuckerberg’s high school friends, Adam D’Angelo. D’Angelo had developed […]
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This Day In History: February 1, 1709 On this day in history, 1709, Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was finally rescued from a deserted island he inhabited for over four years. The island he found himself on was Más a Tierra, the largest island of the Juan Fernández group of islands, around 400 miles west of South America. Today the island […]
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This Day In History: January 30, 1835 On this day in history, 1835, Richard Lawrence became the first known person to attempt to assassinate a U.S. President, attempting to fire two guns at Andrew Jackson at close range. His assassination attempt failed only because the guns he pointed at Jackson jammed when he pulled the trigger. Interestingly, when the guns […]
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This Day In History: January 23, 1897 On this day in history, 1897, Elva Zona Heaster was found dead in her home, apparently from natural causes. Her body was discovered by a boy who had been sent to the home by her husband of only a few months, Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue (also called “Edward”). Shue had sent the boy […]
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This Day In History: January 19, 1661 On this day in history, 1661, Thomas Venner was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Venner was originally a wine-cooper (someone who makes casks) before taking over leadership of the radical group, The Fifth Monarchy Men, after General Thomas Harrison, the previous leader of the group, was hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason himself in […]
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This Day In History: January 17, 1966 On this day in history, 1966, at around 10:30 a.m. a B-52G Bomber collided with a KC-135 Stratotanker, accidentally scattering its payload of four nuclear bombs, 70-kilotons each. Three of the bombs fell near the fishing village of Palomares, Spain, and the fourth landed in the Mediterranean Sea, taking a full 80 days […]
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This Day In History: January 13, 1842 On this day in history, 1842, Dr. William Brydon, who had part of his skull sheared off at the time, rode an exhausted horse into the British garrison at Jalalabad, Afghanistan. When asked where the rest of the army was, he replied “I am the army”. In fact, he wasn’t actually the sole […]
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This Day In History: January 10, 49 BC On this day in history, 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with a legion of his soldiers, which was against Roman law. Specifically, Governors of Roman provinces (promagistrates) were not allowed to bring any part of their army within Italy itself and, if they tried, they automatically forfeited their right to […]
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This Day In History: January 5, 1825 On this day in history, 1825, on a bitter cold day, a young Alexandre Dumas, soon to be famed playwright and novelist and current son of Thomas-Alaxandre who was once one of Napoleon’s generals, fights in his first duel. During the duel, Dumas successfully defeated his opponent almost immediately, but, according to his […]
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This Day In History: November 21, 1783 In Paris, France, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes made the first untethered manned flight in a Montgolfier hot air balloon. After several practice runs to get the feel for how to work the balloon, de Rozier and d’Arlandes finally made their first untethered flight leaving at 2:00 p.m. from the […]
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This Day In History: November 17, 1970 The Soviet Union successfully landed a remote controlled roving robot on the moon, making it the first roving robot from Earth to land on another astronomical object. The robot was the Lunokhod 1, designed by Alexander Kemurdjian. It was launched during the Soviet Luna program, which ran from 1959-1976. More specifically, the Lunokhod […]
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This Day In History: November 16th LSD, more technically known as Lysergic acid diethylamide was first synthesized on November 16th, 1938 by Swiss scientist Dr. Albert Hofmann. Dr. Hofmann was working at the Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland researching ergot alkaloid derivatives for use in pharmaceuticals. Ergot alkaloid’s are a type of ergoline alkaloid which is found in a certain type […]
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