Saturday, 31 August 2013

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's serious interest in airship development dates from 1884, when he was inspired by a recent lecture given by Heinrich von Stephan on the subject of "World Postal Services and Air Travel" to outline the basic principle of his later craft in a diary entry dated 25 March 1874. This describes a large rigidly-framed outer envelope containing a number of separate gasbags. He had previously encountered Union Army balloons in 1863, during the American Civil War, where he was a military observer.

He began to seriously pursue his project after his early retirement from the military in 1890 at the age of 52. Convinced of the potential importance of aircraft designs, he started working on various designs in 1891, and had completed detailed designs by 1893 These were reviewed by an official committee in 1894, and were the subject of a patent granted on 31 August 1895,with Theodor Kober producing the technical plans.

Construction of the first Zeppelin began in 1899 in a floating assembly hall in the Bay of Manzell on Lake Constance, Friedrichshafen. This was intended to facilitate the difficult launching procedure, as the hall could easily be aligned with the wind. The prototype airship LZ 1 (LZ for Luftschiff Zeppelin, or "Airship Zeppelin") had a length of 128 metres (420 ft), was driven by two 14.2 horsepower (10.6 kW) Daimler engines and was controlled in pitch by moving a weight between its two nacelles.The first Zeppelin flight took place on 2 July 1900 over Lake Constance (the Bodensee).


The World War I defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily halted the airship business. But under the guidance of Hugo Eckener, the deceased Count's successor, civilian Zeppelins became popular again. In 1919 DELAG established scheduled daily services between Berlin, Munich, and Friedrichshafen. Their heyday was during the 1930s when the airships LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and LZ 129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Art Deco spire of the Empire State Building was originally, if impractically, designed to serve as a mooring mast for Zeppelins and other airships to dock at. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along with political and economic issues, hastened the demise of the Zeppelins.

Friday, 30 August 2013

The other Pandora's Box



The Pandora reached Tahiti on 23 March 1791 via Cape Horn. Fourteen men from the Bounty were initially recovered. These fourteen men were locked up in a makeshift prison cell, measuring eleven-by-eighteen feet, on the Pandora's quarter-deck, which they called "Pandora's Box".


The location of the wreck of the Pandora was first pin-pointed in November 1977. he Queensland Museum has been excavating the wreck according to a research design. Archaeologists and historians at the Museum of Tropical Queensland are still gradually fitting together pieces of the Pandora story puzzle, using the archaeological evidence as well as the extant historical evidence. A large collection of artefacts is on display at the museum.

Thursday, 29 August 2013

One of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time".

Electromagnetic induction was discovered independently by Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry in 1831; however, Faraday was the first to publish the results of his experiments. In Faraday's first experimental demonstration of electromagnetic induction (August 29, 1831), he wrapped two wires around opposite sides of an iron ring or "torus" (an arrangement similar to a modern toroidal transformer). Based on his assessment of recently discovered properties of electromagnets, he expected that when current started to flow in one wire, a sort of wave would travel through the ring and cause some electrical effect on the opposite side. He plugged one wire into a galvanometer, and watched it as he connected the other wire to a battery. Indeed, he saw a transient current (which he called a "wave of electricity") when he connected the wire to the battery, and another when he disconnected it.This induction was due to the change in magnetic flux that occurred when the battery was connected and disconnected.Within two months, Faraday had found several other manifestations of electromagnetic induction. For example, he saw transient currents when he quickly slid a bar magnet in and out of a coil of wires, and he generated a steady (DC) current by rotating a copper disk near the bar magnet with a sliding electrical lead ("Faraday's disk").



Faraday in his laboratory.

Wednesday, 28 August 2013

"No case of which we are aware more deeply affects the character of the Royal Navy..."

The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle between squadrons of frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy. The battle was fought during 20–27 August 1810 over possession of the harbour of Grand Port on Isle de France (now Mauritius) during the Napoleonic Wars. The British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade the port to prevent its use by the French through the capture of the fortified Île de la Passe at its entrance. This position was seized by a British landing party on 13 August, and when a French squadron under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré approached the bay nine days later the British commander, Captain Samuel Pym, decided to lure them into coastal waters where his superior numbers could be brought to bear against the French ships.

Four of the five French ships managed to break past the British blockade, taking shelter in the protected anchorage, which was only accessible through a series of complicated reefs and sandbanks that were impassable without an experienced harbour pilot. When Pym ordered his frigates to attack the anchored French on 22 and 23 August, his ships became trapped in the narrow channels of the bay: two were irretrievably grounded; a third, outnumbered by the combined French squadron, was defeated; and a fourth was unable to close to within effective gun range. Although the French ships were also badly damaged, the battle was a disaster for the British: one ship was captured after suffering irreparable damage, the grounded ships were set on fire to prevent their capture by French boarding parties and the remaining vessel was seized as it left the harbour by the main French squadron from Port Napoleon under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.

The battle is noted as the most significant defeat for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Not only had four frigates been lost with their entire crews, but 105 experienced sailors had been killed and 168 wounded in one of the bloodiest frigate encounters of the war. French losses were also heavy, with Duperré reporting 36 killed and 112 wounded on his squadron and among the soldiers firing from the shore.

In France the action was greeted with celebration, and it became the only naval battle commemorated on the Arc de Triomphe. The British response was despondent, although all four captains were subsequently cleared and praised at their courts-martial inquiring into the loss of their ships. The only criticism was of Willoughby, who was accused of giving a misleading signal in indicating that the French were of inferior force on 22 August. Contemporary historian William James described British reaction to the battle as "that the noble behaviour of her officers and crew threw such a halo of glory around the defeat at Grand Port, that, in public opinion at least, the loss of four frigates was scarcely considered a misfortune." However, he also notes that "No case of which we are aware more deeply affects the character of the Royal Navy than the defeat it sustained at Grand Port."

The battle subsequently attracted the attention of authors from both Britain and France, featuring in the 1843 novel Georges by Alexandre Dumas, and the 1977 novel The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian. On 30 December 1899, a monument was erected at the harbour of Grand Port in the memory of the British and French sailors who were killed in the engagement.
Inscription celebrating the battle on the Arc de Triomphe

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

Texas Pennsylvania!

Titusville is a city in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. Titusville was a slow-growing community until the 1850s, when petroleum was discovered in the region.






Monday, 26 August 2013

"I shall never sign another work!"




Sunday, 25 August 2013

"An immense telescope of an entirely new principle."


The story was advertised on August 21, 1835, as an upcoming feature allegedly reprinted from The Edinburgh Courant.The first in a series of six was published four days later on August 25.


The author of the narrative was ostensibly Dr. Andrew Grant, the travelling companion and amanuensis of Sir John Herschel, but Grant was fictitious.Eventually, the authors announced that the observations had been terminated by the destruction of the telescope, by means of the Sun causing the lens to act as a "burning glass," setting fire to the observatory.


The story may also have inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write and publish "The Balloon-Hoax" in the same newspaper.

Saturday, 24 August 2013

" Never shall I forget when the men in the mailboat struck up the tune of Rule Britannia."

Captain Matthew Webb (19 January 1848 – 24 July 1883) was the first recorded person to swim the English Channel without the use of artificial aids. On 25 August 1875 he swam from Dover to Calais in less than 22 hours.


On August 24th 1875 smeared in porpoise oil, Webb dived into the water near Dover 's Admiralty Pier.  Backed by three escort boats , he set off into the ebb tide at a steady breaststroke. Despite stings from jellyfish and strong currents off Cap Gris Nez which prevented him reaching the shore for five hours. Twenty-one hours and 45 minutes after setting off he waded ashore at Calais much to the delight of the passengers & crew of the mailship The Maid of Kent, who witnessed his final effort's. His zig-zag course across the Channel was over 39 miles (64 km) long.



Friday, 23 August 2013

More deaths than the Hindenburg!

The R38 class (also known as the A class) of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of World War I, intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four such airships were originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of them (R39, R40 and R41) were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and work on the lead ship of the class, R38, continued only after the United States Navy had agreed to purchase her. At the time of her first flight in 1921, she was the world's largest airship.

The airship took off from Howden for her fourth test flight on 23 August 1921, which had an intended destination of RNAS Pulham, Norfolk where she could be moored to a mast, a facility lacking at Howden. In the event, mooring proved impossible because of low cloud and so the airship returned out to sea with the intention of running some high speed tests and then returning to Howden. The speed runs proved successful and as there was still daylight left it was decided to try some low altitude rudder tests to simulate the effects of the rough weather that could be expected on the Atlantic crossing. 

At 17:37, fifteen degrees of rudder was applied over the city of Hull. Eye witnesses reported seeing creases down the envelope and then both ends drooped. This was followed by a fire in the bow and then a large explosion which broke windows over a large area. The airship had failed structurally and fell into the shallow waters of the Humber estuary. Sixteen of the 17 Americans and 28 of the 32 Britons in the crew were killed. The only American to survive was Rigger Norman C. Walker.The five who survived were in the tail section.

This disaster resulted in more deaths than the more famous Hindenburg disaster that killed 36. A memorial was erected at Hull, Yorkshire.

Thursday, 22 August 2013



Richard's reign began in 1483 when he was handed the throne after his twelve-year-old nephew Edward V, for whom he was acting as Lord Protector, was declared illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. The boy and his younger brother disappeared in mysterious circumstances, and Richard's support was eroded by rumours of his involvement in the death of his wife. Across the English Channel in Brittany, Henry Tudor, a descendant of the greatly diminished House of Lancaster, seized on Richard's difficulties to challenge for and claim to the throne. Henry's first attempt to invade England was frustrated by a storm in 1483, but at his second attempt he arrived unopposed on 7 August 1485 on the southwest coast of Wales. Marching inland, Henry gathered support as he made for London. Richard mustered his troops and intercepted Henry's army south of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. Thomas, Lord Stanley, and Sir William Stanley brought a force to the battlefield, but held back while they decided which side it would be more advantageous to support.



Richard III, Rex Angliae et Franciae et Dominus Hiberniae

Wednesday, 21 August 2013

"Picasso did it!"



French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once called for the Louvre to be "burnt down", came under suspicion; he was arrested and put in jail. Apollinaire tried to implicate his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.

Vincenzo Peruggia


"Carried further the spirit of depredation."








Tuesday, 20 August 2013






On 24 May 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his home by armed Stalinist assassins led by GPU agent Iosif Grigulevich, Mexican painter and Stalinist David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Vittorio Vidale. Trotsky's young grandson, Vsievolod Platonovich "Esteban" Volkov (born 1926), was shot in the foot and a young assistant and bodyguard of Trotsky, Robert Sheldon Harte, was abducted and later murdered, but other guards saw off the attack.


Trotsky was taken to a hospital, operated on, and survived for more than a day, dying at the age of 60 on 21 August 1940 as a result of blood loss and shock. Mercader later testified at his trial:


Monday, 19 August 2013




In 1829, Daguerre partnered with Nicéphore Niépce, an inventor who had produced the world's first heliograph in 1822 and the first permanent camera photograph four years later. Niépce died suddenly in 1833, but Daguerre continued experimenting.





"Boulevard du Temple"


Sunday, 18 August 2013

Fear in the sky!

Phobos is the larger and closer of the two natural satellites of Mars. With a mean radius of 11.1 km (6.9 mi), Phobos is 7.24 times as massive as the second moon Deimos. It is named after the Greek god Phobos (which means "fear"), a son of Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (Venus) . Both moons were discovered in 1877.

A small, irregularly shaped object, Phobos orbits about 9,400 km (5,800 mi) from the center of Mars, or about 6,000 km (3,700 mi) from the Martian surface, closer to its primary than any other known planetary moon. Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, and features a large impact crater, Stickney. It orbits so close to the planet that it moves around Mars faster than Mars rotates. As a result, from the surface of Mars it appears to rise in the west, move across the sky in 4 h 15 min or less, and set in the east twice each Martian day. Due to its short orbital period and tidal interactions, Phobos's orbital radius is decreasing and it will eventually break up into a planetary ring.

Phobos was discovered by astronomer Asaph Hall on August 18, 1877, at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., at about 09:14 Greenwich Mean Time (contemporary sources, using the pre-1925 astronomical convention that began the day at noon, give the time of discovery as August 17 at 16:06 Washington mean time). Hall also discovered Deimos, Mars's other moon, on August 12, 1877 at about 07:48 UTC. The names, originally spelled Phobus and Deimus respectively, were suggested by Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of Eton, based on Book XV of the Iliad, in which the god Ares summons Dread (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos).

Asaph Hall

Saturday, 17 August 2013

The "Saviour of Vienna and Western European civilization."

John III Sobieski (Polish: Jan III Sobieski, Lithuanian: Jonas Sobieskis; 17 August 1629 – 17 June 1696) was one of the most notable monarchs of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1674 until his death King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Sobieski's 22-year-reign was marked by a period of the Commonwealth's stabilization, much needed after the turmoil of the Deluge and Khmelnytsky Uprising.Popular among his subjects, he was an able military commander. Following his victories over the Ottoman Empire, he was called by the Turks the "Lion of Lechistan" and held as the saviour of European Christendom by the pope.

Sobieski's greatest success came in 1683 with his victory at the Battle of Vienna, in joint command of Polish, Austrian and German troops, against the invading Turks under Kara Mustafa. Upon reaching Vienna, Sobieski's army of about 81,000 men attacked a Turkish force of about 130,000 men on 12 September 1683. At about five o'clock in the afternoon, after observing the infantry battle from the hilltop, Sobieski led Polish husaria cavalry along with Austrians and Germans into a massive charge down the hillside. Soon, the Turkish battle line was broken and the Ottoman forces scattered in confusion. At 17:30 Sobieski entered the deserted tent of Kara Mustafa and the battle of Vienna ended.


King John III Sobieski died in Wilanów, Poland on 17 June 1696. His wife, Maria Kasimira, died in 1716 in Blois, France, and her body was returned to Poland. They are interred together in Wawel Cathedral, Kraków, Poland.

King John III was succeeded by Augustus II who stayed in power primarily because of Russian support. On his death in 1733, a struggle for the crown of Poland ensued, referred to as the War of the Polish Succession.


The North River Steamboat or North River is widely regarded as the world's first commercially successful steamboat.



Fulton wrote to a friend, Joel Barlow:

Robert Fulton

Friday, 16 August 2013

Neither Golden Eagle nor Miss Doran were ever seen again.

The Dole Air Race, also known as the Dole Derby, was a tragic air race across the Pacific Ocean from northern California to the Territory of Hawaii in August 1927.

Inspired by Charles A. Lindbergh's successful trans-Atlantic flight, James D. Dole, the Hawaii pineapple magnate, put up a prize of US$25,000 for the first fixed-wing aircraft to fly the 3,870 kilometers (2,400 mi) from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii, and US$10,000 for second place.

Of the 15-18 airplanes entered, eleven were certified to compete but three crashed before the race, resulting in three deaths.

The race began on 16 August 1927. The fifteen competitors were seen off by a crowd estimated to include 75,000 to 100,000 persons. Of the 15-18 airplanes entered, eleven were certified to compete but three crashed before the race, resulting in three deaths. Eight eventually participated in the race, with two crashing on takeoff and two going missing during the race. A third, forced to return for repairs, took off again to search for the missing and was itself never seen again. In all, before, during, and after the race, ten lives were lost and six airplanes were total losses. Two of the eight planes successfully landed in Hawaii.

Thursday, 15 August 2013


Mac Bethad mac Findlaích (Modern Gaelic: MacBheatha mac Fhionnlaigh, anglicised as Macbeth, and nicknamed Rí Deircc, "the Red King"; died 15 August 1057) was King of the Scots (also known as the King of Alba, and earlier as King of Moray and King of Fortriu) from 1040 until his death. He is best known as the subject of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth and the many works it has inspired, although the play presents a highly inaccurate picture of his reign and personality.


 It may be that the events of 1054 are responsible for the idea, which appears in Shakespeare's play, that Malcolm III was put in power by the English.Macbeth did not survive the English invasion, for he was defeated and mortally wounded or killed by the future  Malcolm III ("King Malcolm Ceann-mor", son of Duncan I) on the north side of the Mounth in 1057. The Prophecy of Berchán has it that he was wounded and died at Scone, sixty miles to the south, some days later. Macbeth's stepson Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin was installed as king soon after.


In Shakespeare's play, which is based mainly upon Raphael Holinshed's account, Macbeth is initially a valorous and loyal general to the elderly King Duncan, but is corrupted by narcissism and ambition. After being flattered by Three Witches and his own wife, Macbeth rationalizes that murdering his king and usurping the throne is the right thing to do. Ultimately, however, the propehicies of the witches prove misleading, Macbeth alienates the nobility of Scotland, and is defeated in battle by Prince Malcolm. As the King's armies disintegrate, he encounters MacDuff, a refugee nobleman whose wife and children had earlier been murdered by Macbeth's death squads. Upon realizing that he will die if he fights MacDuff, Macbeth at first refuses to do so. But when MacDuff explains that if he surrenders he will be subjected to ridicule by his former subjects, Macbeth vows, "I will not yield to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, to be baited by a rabble's curse." He chooses instead to fight MacDuff to the death. Macbeth is then slain and beheaded and the play ends with Prince Malcolm planning his coronation at Scone.

Red, black, and green are to be the symbolic colors of the African race.

In addition to being "the premier actor of all nineteenth-century black performers on the dramatic stage," Henrietta Davis was proclaimed by Marcus Garvey to be the "greatest woman of the (African) race today". 

She has come to be considered the physical, intellectual, and spiritual link between the Abolitionist movement of Frederick Douglass and the African Redemption Movement of the UNIA-ACL and Marcus Garvey.

Her performances consisted of a diverse spectrum of works from Paul Lawrence Dunbar's Negro dialects to such works as Romeo and Juliet, As you like it; "Mary Queen of Scots"; "Cleopatra's Dying Speech"; "The Battle" by Sciller; and "How Tom Sawyer Got His Fence Whitewashed" by Mark Twain. She is considered the first African American to have made an attempt at Shakesperian delineations after Ira Aldridge. On January 17, 1884, she appeared before a crowded house in Melodeon Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1893 she started her own company in Chicago, travelled to the Caribbean, and collaborated on writing Our Old Kentucky Home with distinguished journalist and future Garveyite John Edward Bruce.

While traveling in the Caribbean, Davis learned of the work of Marcus Garvey. On June 15, 1919, she was one of the guests who spoke a meeting of the UNIA held at the Palace Casino in Harlem, She did a rendition of "Little Brown Baby With Sparkling Eyes" by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. As part of her presentation she held an African-American doll, one of the earliest manufactured. Her prop had been loaned for the occasion by the Berry & Ross company. She decided to give up her career to work with Garvey and the UNIA-ACL, becoming the UNIA's first International Organizer, a director of the Black Star Line and the second Vice-President of the corporation.

At the UNIA-ACL convention in August 1920, she was one of the signatories of the The Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. Among the 54 declarations made in this document are resolutions that the colors red, black, and green are to be the symbolic colors of the African race and the term "nigger" cease being used. Furthermore, it demands that the word "Negro" be written with a capital "N".

On November 23, 1941, she died in Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C., at the age of 81.

The largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires and largest facade of any church in the world.



With the 19th century romantic enthusiasm for the Middle Ages, and spurred on by the lucky discovery of the original plan for the facade, it was decided, with the commitment of the Protestant Prussian Court, to complete the cathedral. It was achieved by civic effort; the Central-Dombauverein, founded in 1842, raised two-thirds of the enormous costs (over US$ 1 billion in today's money), while the Prussian state supplied the remaining third. The state saw this as a way to improve its relations with the large number of Catholic subjects it had gained in 1815.



Wednesday, 14 August 2013

"Culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"


The film based on The Rocky Horror Show, a musical stage play, book, music and lyrics by Richard O'Brien. Directed by Jim Sharman from a screenplay by Sharman and O'Brien, the production is a humorous tribute to the science fiction and horror B movies of the late 1940s through early 1970s. It introduces Tim Curry and features Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick along with cast members from the original Kings Road production presented at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1973.


The film has taken in US$365 million at the US box office, DVD sales, etc. since its release. The original budget for the film was US$1,400,000.

Tuesday, 13 August 2013


Herbert George "H. G." Wells
(21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946)
Herbert George "H. G." Wells died on 13 August 1946. He is best known for his work in the science fiction genre but he was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is one person sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction", as are Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau.


Wells's literary reputation declined as he spent his later years promoting causes that were rejected by most of his contemporaries. G. K. Chesterton quipped: "Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message."

Wells was a diabetic,[and a co-founder in 1934 of what is now Diabetes UK, the leading charity for people living with diabetes in the UK.


Wells died of unspecified causes on 13 August 1946 at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, London, aged 79. Some reports also say he died of a heart attack at the flat of a friend in London. In his preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air, Wells had stated that his epitaph should be: "I told you so. You damned fools." He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 16 August 1946, his ashes scattered at sea.


Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 19, 1893) was a prominent American orator, abolitionist, and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women.In 1847, Stone became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery at a time when women were discouraged and prevented from public speaking. Stone was known for using her maiden name after marriage.



"Unstainable steel"

The pinnacle of the Chrysler Building is
clad with stainless steel



Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft built the 366-ton sailing yacht Germania featuring a chrome-nickel steel hull in Germany in 1908 In 1911, Philip Monnartz reported on the relationship between chromium content and corrosion resistance. On October 17, 1912, Krupp engineers Benno Strauss and Eduard Maurer patented austenitic stainless steel as ThyssenKrupp Nirosta.


