Trivia Of The Day August 6

On August 6, 1964 American researcher Donald Currey had a bristlecone pine tree known as Prometheus cut down in the Wheeler Bristlecone Pine Grove at Great Basin National Park near Baker, Nevada, only to find that it was the oldest known non-clonal organism ever discovered at the time, with the age of 4,862 years.

The world's first swimming pool was The Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan. Built in 2500BC, it was lined with bricks covered in a tar-like sealant.

The Great Bath By Saqib Qayyum - Own work

Emily Bronte had a cat called Tiger who played at her feet while she wrote Wuthering Heights.

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Happy Birthday August 6

The poet Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. Alfred's father, the Reverend George Tennyson, had fallen out with his family and been disinherited; he drank heavily, was an opium addict and had become mentally unstable. Alfred and two of his elder brothers, Charles and Frederick were writing poetry in their teens. A collection of poems by Alfred and Charles entitled Poems by Two Brothers, was published locally when Alfred was seventeen.

Somersby Rectory, where Tennyson was raised and began writing

Scottish physician and microbiologist Sir Alexander Fleming was born on August 6, 1881 at Lochfield, a remote small sheep farm outside Darvel, a small town in Ayrshire, Scotland east of Kilmarnock. Alexander's parents ran an 800-acre farm a mile from the nearest house. The four Fleming children spent much of their time ranging through the streams, valleys, and moors of the countryside. "We unconsciously learned a great deal from nature," Fleming said later in his life

Actress and comedienne Lucille Ball was born to Henry and Desiree Ball in Jamestown, New York on August 6, 1911. Her father contracted typhoid fever and died when she was three. Ball recalls little from the day she lost her father, only fleeting memories of a picture falling and a bird getting trapped in the house. Ever since that day she had an intense bird phobia. She banned all pictures of birds from her house and any hotel room she was staying in.

For more August 6 anniversaries, including the founding of the Colombian city of Bogotá, the first woman to swim the English Channel and the largest ever bank robbery, check out OnThatDay. 

Today Is August 6

Today is the anniversary of the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima.

The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima

Hiroshima is the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It gained city status on April 1, 1889.

At 8:16 a.m. on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the first city in history to be targeted by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it near the end of the Second World War.

There were 343,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima on the day the first atom bomb was dropped in 1945, killing 80,000.

The Japanese command didn't realize Hiroshima had been totally destroyed until almost a whole day after it happened. Vague reports of some sort of large explosion had begun to filter in, but the Japanese high command knew that no large-scale air raid had taken place over the city.

On This Day August 6

1991 Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web, a publicly available service on the Internet on August 6, 1991. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet, although new users could only access it after August 23rd. In December 1993 there were just 623 websites on the internet.

1991 The first ever website to be built was http://info.cern.ch. While inventing and working on setting up the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee spent many of his working hours in Building 31 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN. The first web page went live on August 6, 1991. Built by Berners-Lee, it was dedicated to information on the World Wide Web project and ran on a NeXT computer at CERN.

Below is the NeXT Computer used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, which. became the world's first web server

By Coolcaesar at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

WANT MORE THINGS THAT HAPPENED ON AUGUST 6? CHECK OUT MY ONTHATDAY BLOG. HERE'S A LINK.

Trivia Of The Day August 5

Heavyweight boxer Tony 'Two Ton' Galento accepted a bet and fought an octopus with boxing gloves on its tentacles on August 5, 1946. The fight was declared a draw.

Russia's Big Diomede island and the U.S.'s Little Diomede island in the Bering Strait are only 2 miles apart.

King George V of the UK was an avid stamp collector. At the time of his death in 1936, King George's stamp collection was so large that it had its own room in Buckingham Palace.

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Happy Birthday August 5

Joseph Merrick, whose very severe face and body deformities were exhibited at a freak show as the "Elephant Man," was born on August 5, 1862. Merrick had to sleep sitting up because of the extra weight his deformities put on his head. According to his autopsy, he died of a dislocated neck by trying to sleep lying down, in order to "be like other people."

Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, to Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel in Auglaize County, near Wapakoneta, Ohio. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was in the United States Navy and served in the Korean War. He flew 78 missions over Korea for a total of 121 hours in the air, most of which was in January 1952. After the war, he served as a test pilot before joining the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962.

The engineer William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi on August 5, 1987. At the age of 15 he taught himself how to build windmills out of junk from the scrap yard to provide electricity for his family. Later on he built another windmill to power water pumps to irrigate fields. He did all of this through library books, as his family couldn't afford schooling.

For more August 5 birthdays, including Leonardo Da Vinci's earliest known dated work, the first recorded user of a fountain pen and the first ever recreational rock climb, check out OnThatDay.

Today Is August 5

Today is the anniversary of the first electric traffic signal system.

The first Electric Traffic Light in Bucharest c1924.

The world's first traffic light system was invented by the British railroad signal engineer JP Knight. These first traffic lights consisted of revolving red and green lanterns, illuminated by gas. They were installed in December 1868 at the intersection of George and Bridge Streets in front of the House of Commons in London to control the flow of horse buggies and pedestrians.

After less than a month's use, the gas lantern that illuminated them exploded, seriously injuring the police officer who was operating them. Traffic lights did not return to the UK until the mid 1920s.

In the first two decades of the 20th century, semaphore traffic were in use all over the United States with each state having its own design of the device. They were controlled by a traffic officer who would blow a whistle before changing the commands on this signal to help alert travelers of the change. 

The first electric traffic lights were officially unveiled in Cleveland, Ohio at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street on August 5, 1914. There was no amber light, only red and green.

After witnessing a serious accident between a motor vehicle and a horse-drawn carriage at an intersection, African American inventor, Garrett Morgan set out to come up with a three-position traffic signal. What he came up with was a T-shaped pole unit that featured Stop, Go and an all-directional stop position. This "third position" halted traffic in all directions to allow pedestrians to cross streets more safely. The patent was granted in November 1923. 

Garrett Morgan's hand-cranked semaphore traffic management device was in use throughout North America until all manual traffic signals were replaced by the automatic red, yellow, and green-light traffic signals currently used around the world.