Happy Birthday May 12

German chemist Justus von Liebig was born on May 12, 1803. The invention of the silvered-glass mirror is credited to Liebig in 1835. His process involved the deposition of a thin layer of metallic silver onto glass through the chemical reduction of silver nitrate.  Liebig improved the technique twenty years later by adding copper to ammoniated silver nitrate and sugar.

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana, in Florence, Italy. She was named after the city of her birth. Florence had a strong desire to devote her life to the service of others from her late teens but at first she was respectful of her family's opposition to her working as a nurse, only announcing her decision to enter the field in 1844. 

The composer Gabriel Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, Midi-Pyrénées, in the south of France on May 12, 1845. The young Fauré often played the harmonium at the small chapel attached to the school where his father was director. An old blind lady heard him and told his father that he ought to send his boy to a good music school. The 9-year-old Fauré was sent to a music college in Paris, where among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. 

Fauré as a student, 1864

For more May 12 anniversaries, including the marriage of Richard I of England and Berengaria of Navarre, George VI of the UK's coronation and the presentation of the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer check out OnThatDay.