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Wright Brothers Plane
December 17, 1903
In 1903, the brothers built the powered Wright Flyer I, using their preferred material for construction, spruce, a strong and lightweight wood. They also designed and carved their own wooden propellers, and had a purpose-built gasoline engine fabricated in their bicycle shop. They thought propeller design would be a simple matter and intended to adapt data from shipbuilding. However, their library research disclosed no established formulas for either marine or air propellers, and they found themselves with no sure starting point. They discussed and argued the question, sometimes heatedly, until they concluded that an aeronautical propeller is essentially a wing rotating in the vertical plane. On that basis, they used data from more wind tunnel tests to design their propellers. The finished blades were just over eight feet long, made of three laminations of glued spruce. The Wrights decided on twin "pusher" propellers (counter-rotating to cancel torque), which would act on a greater quantity of air than a single relatively slow propeller and not disturb airflow over the leading edge of the wings.
Einstein conceives relativity
June 30, 1905
Titanic Sinks
April 15, 1912
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic departed from Southampton, England and travelled to Cherbourg, France where many first-class passengers boarded. On April 11, 1912, the Titanic left Cherbourg en route to Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland where the Titanic picked up the majority of its third-class passengers. On April 12, 1912, the Titanic sailed on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and was due to arrive in New York City on Wednesday April 17, 1912.
On the night of April 14, at 11:40 p.m., The Titanic struck an iceberg; just under three hours later, at 2:20 AM, on April 15, 1912 the ship sank. The United States Senate investigation reported that 1,517 people perished in the accident, while the British investigation has the number at 1,490. Regardless, the disaster ranks as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history, and is by far the best known. The media frenzy about the Titanic's famous victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting changes to maritime law, Walter Lord's 1955 non-fiction account A Night to Remember, the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team led by Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel, and the box office success of the 1997 film Titanic (the highest-grossing film in history as of 2007) have sustained the Titanic's fame.
Ford creates assembly line
June 1, 1913
As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in three minute intervals. This was much faster than previous methods, increasing production by eight to one (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower. It was so successful, paint became a bottleneck. Only Japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colors available before 1914, until fast-drying Durco lacquer was developed in 1926. In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay.
Ford's complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called "Fordism," and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the take off of the United States. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods.
Women Win the Vote
August 18, 1920
The 19th amendment was specifically intended to extend suffrage to women. It was proposed on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920.
The amendment was the culmination of the work of many activists in favor of women's suffrage. One such group called the Silent Sentinels protested in front of the White House for 18 months starting in 1917 to raise awareness of the issue.
On January 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the amendment. The next day, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment but the Senate refused to even debate it until October. When the Senate voted on the amendment in October, it failed by three votes.
In response, the National Woman's Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage senators up for election in the fall of 1918. After the 1918 election, most members of Congress were pro-suffrage. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89, and 2 weeks later on June 4, the Senate finally followed, where the amendment passed by a vote of 56 to 25.
It was ratified on August 18, 1920, upon its ratification by Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state to do so. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920.
On February 27, 1922, a challenge to the 19th Amendment was rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett.
Lindbergh Flies Atlantic
May 21, 1927
Lindbergh gained sudden great international fame as the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. He flew from Roosevelt Airfield in Garden City, New York, to Paris (Le Bourget Airport) on 20 May - 21 May 1927 in 33.5 hours. His plane was the single-engine aircraft, The Spirit of St. Louis. It was designed by Donald Hall and custom built by Ryan Aeronautical Company of San Diego, California. (His grandson Erik Lindbergh repeated this trip 75 years later in 2002 in 17 hours 17 minutes.) The President of France bestowed on him the French Legion of Honor and, on his arrival back in the United States, a fleet of warships and aircraft escorted him to Washington, D.C. where President Calvin Coolidge awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross on 11 June 1927.
Antibiotic penicillin discovered
September 1, 1928
The improbable chain of events that led Alexander Fleming to discover penicillin in 1928 is the stuff of which scientific myths are made. Fleming, a young Scottish research scientist with a profitable side practice treating the syphilis infections of prominent London artists, was pursuing his pet theory — that his own nasal mucus had antibacterial effects — when he left a culture plate smeared with Staphylococcus bacteria on his lab bench while he went on a two-week holiday.
When he returned, he noticed a clear halo surrounding the yellow-green growth of a mold that had accidentally contaminated the plate. Unknown to him, a spore of a rare variant called Penicillium notatum had drifted in from a mycology lab one floor below. Luck would have it that Fleming had decided not to store his culture in a warm incubator, and that London was then hit by a cold spell, giving the mold a chance to grow. Later, as the temperature rose, the Staphylococcus bacteria grew like a lawn, covering the entire plate — except for the area surrounding the moldy contaminant. Seeing that halo was Fleming's "Eureka" moment, an instant of great personal insight and deductive reasoning. He correctly deduced that the mold must have released a substance that inhibited the growth of the bacteria.
It was a discovery that would change the course of history. The active ingredient in that mold, which Fleming named penicillin, turned out to be an infection-fighting agent of enormous potency. When it was finally recognized for what it was — the most efficacious life-saving drug in the world — penicillin would alter forever the treatment of bacterial infections. By the middle of the century, Fleming's discovery had spawned a huge pharmaceutical industry, churning out synthetic penicillins that would conquer some of mankind's most ancient scourges, including syphilis, gangrene and tuberculosis.
Crash of '29
October 14, 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Crash of ’29, was one of the most devastating stock market crashes in American history. It consists of Black Thursday (October 24, 1929), the initial crash and Black Tuesday (October 29, 1929), the crash that caused general panic five days later. The crash marked the beginning of widespread and long-lasting consequences for the United States. Though economists and historians disagree on exactly what role the crash had in the subsequent economic fallout, some regard it as the start of the Great Depression. Most historians, however, agree that it was actually a symptom of the Great Depression, rather than a cause. The crash was also the starting point of important financial reforms and trading regulations.
At the time of the crash, New York City had grown to be a major financial capital and metropolis. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was the largest stock market in the world. The roaring twenties was a time of prosperity and excess in the city, and, despite warnings of speculation, many believed that the market could sustain high price levels. Irving Fisher proclaimed shortly before the crash, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." The euphoria and financial gains of that great bull market were shattered on October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, when share prices on the NYSE collapsed. Stock prices fell on that day and they continued to fall, at an unprecedented rate, for a full month.
In days leading up to Black Thursday the market was unstable. Periods of panic selling and high volumes of trading were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery. After the crash the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) recovered early in 1930, only to reverse again, reaching a low point of the great bear market in 1932. The market did not return to pre-1929 levels until late 1954, and was lower at its July 8, 1932 level than it had been since the 1800s.
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
December 7, 1941
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a pre-emptive military strike on the United States Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Empire of Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy, on the morning of Sunday, 7 December 1941.
Two attack waves, totaling 350 aircraft were launched from six IJN aircraft carriers which destroyed two U.S. Navy battleships, one minelayer, two destroyers and 188 aircraft. Personnel losses were 2,333 killed and 1,139 wounded. Damaged warships included three cruisers, a destroyer, and six battleships. Of those six, one was deliberately grounded and was later refloated and repaired. Two sank at their berths but were later repaired and both rejoined the fleet late in the war. Vital fuel storage, shipyards, and submarine facilities were not hit. Japanese losses were minimal at 29 aircraft and five midget submarines, with 65 Japanese servicemen killed or wounded.
Holocaust exposed
January 27, 1945
The Holocaust is the term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany led by Adolf Hitler.
Atomic Bombing of Japan
August 6, 1945
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks during World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States of America under US President Harry S. Truman. After six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities, on August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed on August 9, 1945 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. These are the only uses of nuclear weapons in warfare.
As many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki may have died from the bombings by the end of 1945, roughly half on the days of the bombings. Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness due to radiation. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were civilians.
On August 15, 1945 Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2 which officially ended World War II. Furthermore, the experience of bombing led post-war Japan to adopt Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which forbid Japan from nuclear armament.
DNA's structure discovered
April 25, 1953
The Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid was an article published by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in the scientific journal Nature in its 171th volume on page 737-738 (dated April 25, 1953). It was the first publication which described the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. This discovery had a major impact on genetics in particular and biology in general.
Polio vaccine
April 12, 1955
Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat polio. The first was developed by Jonas Salk, first tested in 1952, and announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955. It consists of an injected dose of inactivated (dead) poliovirus. Thereafter, Albert Sabin produced an oral polio vaccine using attenuated poliovirus. Human trials of Sabin's vaccine began in 1957 and it was licensed in 1962. The two vaccines have eradicated polio from most of the countries in the world[2][3] and reduced the worldwide incidence from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to fewer than 2000 cases in 2006.
China's famine to kill 20 million
April 30, 1958 - March 30, 1961
The Great Chinese Famine, officially referred to as the Three Years of Natural Disasters, was the period in the People's Republic of China between 1958 and 1961, in which poor economic policies caused widespread famine resulting in many millions of deaths. The phrases "Three Years of Economic Difficulty" and "Three Bitter Years" are also used by Chinese officials to describe this period.
First Computer Chip Patented
Feburary 6, 1959
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed a patent for a "Solid Circuit" made of germanium on February 6, 1959.
From Science Clarified: "The integrated circuit completely revolutionized the electronics industry. The individual transistor, like the vacuum tube before it, became obsolete. The integrated circuit was much smaller, more reliable, cheaper, and far more powerful. It made possible the development of the micro-processor and the personal computer, pocket calculators, microwave ovens, digital watches, and missile guidance systems."
JFK Assassination
November 22, 1963
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, USA at 12:30 p.m. CST (18:30 UTC). John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded by gunshots while riding with his wife Jacqueline in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, according to the conclusions of multiple government investigations, including the ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963-4 and the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1976-9. This conclusion initially met with widespread support among the American public, but polls, since the original 1966 Gallup poll, show a majority of the public hold beliefs contrary to these findings. The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories (even the HSCA, based on disputed acoustical evidence, concluded that Oswald may have had unspecified co-conspirators), though these theories have not generally been accepted by mainstream historians and no single compelling alternative theory has emerged.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
August 7, 1964
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress passed on August 7, 1964 in direct response to a minor naval engagement known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. It is of historical significance because it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of military force in Southeast Asia. The Johnson administration subsequently cited the resolution as legal authority for its rapid escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam conflict.
First Moon Walk
July 21, 1969
American astronaut Neil Armstorng becomes the first human to walk on the moon and spoke the words: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
Radio Signal Spans Atlantic
December 31, 1969
Around the turn of the century, Marconi began investigating the means to signal completely across the Atlantic, in order to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables. Marconi soon made the announcement that on 12 December 1901, using a 122-metre (400-foot) kite-supported antenna for reception, the message was received at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland (now part of Canada) signals transmitted by the company's new high-power station at Poldhu, Cornwall. The distance between the two points was about 3,500 kilometres (2,100 miles). Heralded as a great scientific advance, there was -- and continues to be -- some skepticism about this claim, partly because the signals had been heard faintly and sporadically.
1968 Democratic National Convention Riots
April 30, 1975
The 1968 Democratic National Convention was the capstone of 1968. Over
the last year, protests groups had been promising to come to Chicago
and disrupt the convention, and the City promised to maintain law and
order. For eight days, protesters and police battled for control of the
streets
North Vietnam takes Saigon
April 30, 1975
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), on 30 April 1975. The event marked the end of the Second Indochinese War and the start of a transition period leading to the formal reunification of Vietnam under Communist rule.
AIDS Identified
June 15, 1981
AIDS was first reported June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now still classified as PCP but known to be caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in humans, and similar viruses in other species (SIV, FIV, etc.). The late stage of the condition leaves individuals susceptible to opportunistic infections and tumors. Although treatments for AIDS and HIV exist to decelerate the virus's progression, there is currently no known cure. HIV, et al., are transmitted through direct contact of a mucous membrane or the bloodstream with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, preseminal fluid, and breast milk. This transmission can come in the form of anal, vaginal or oral sex, blood transfusion, contaminated hypodermic needles, exchange between mother and baby during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding, or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids.
Fall of Berlin Wall
November 9, 1989
The Berlin Wall has been breached after nearly three decades keeping East and West Berliners apart.
At midnight East Germany's Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.
They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side.
Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier.
It had been erected in 1961 on the orders of East Germany's former leader Walter Ulbricht stop people leaving for West Germany.
Since 1949 about 2.5 million people had fled East Germany.
After 1961, the Wall and other fortifications along the 860-mile (1,380-kilometre) border shared by East and West Germany have kept most East Germans in.
Many of those attempting to escape have been shot dead by border guards.
Exodus
The first indication that change was imminent came earlier today when East Berlin's Communist party spokesman, Gunther Schabowski, announced East Germans would be allowed to travel directly to West Germany.
The move was intended to stem an exodus into West Germany through the "back door" which began last summer when the new and more liberal regime in Hungary opened its border.
The flow of migrants was intensified last week when Czechoslovakia also granted free access to West Germany through its border.
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has hailed the decision to open the Wall as "historic" and called for a meeting with East German leader, Egon Krenz.
Soviet Union Dissolves
December 8, 1991
WWW Invented
December 8, 1991
The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
