Sue, The Light In Paul's Life!
She is Perfection!
Birthdays Are Special
Birthday or B'days is the name given to the date of the anniversary
of a person's birth. People in many cultures celebrate this anniversary.
It is traditionally marked by a birthday party or, in some particular
cases, a rite of transition.
It is thought the large-scale celebration of birthdays in Europe began
with the cult of Mithras, which originated in Persia but was spread by
soldiers throughout the Roman Empire.
The birthday cake is traditionally highly decorated, and typically
covered with lit candles when presented, the number of candles
signifying the age of the celebrant. The person whose birthday it is may
make a silent wish and then blow out the candles. It is also customary
for the person celebrating their birthday to cut the initial piece of
the cake as a newlywed couple might with a wedding cake.
On Sue's Day...
July
10
1866 - Edison P. Clark of Northampton, MA patented his
indelible pencil.
1890 - Wyoming, the state with the smallest population
entered the Union this day. The 44th state was named
after an Algonquin Indian word meaning ‘large prairie
place’. Appropriately, the Indian paintbrush that covers
much of the large prairie is the state flower and the
meadowlark, frequently seen circling the prairie land,
is the state bird. Another Indian term, Cheyenne, is
also the name of the state capital. Wyoming is called
the Equality State because it is the first state to have
granted women the right to vote (1869).
1900 - One of the most famous trademarks in the world,
‘His Master’s Voice’, was registered with the U.S.
Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Recording Company,
and later, RCA Victor, shows the dog, Nipper, looking
into the horn of a gramophone machine.
1913 - It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and while
you are baking at the beach or lake, keep this factoid
in mind: The highest temperature ever recorded in the
continental United States was 134 degrees which melted
thermometers this day in Death Valley, California.
1920 - One of the greatest horse races in America was
run as Man o’ War defeated John P. Grier in the Dwyer
Stakes. Man o’ War set a world-record time of 1 minute,
49-1/5 seconds in the 1-1/8 mile event.
1929 - The U.S. government began issuing paper money in
the small size we currently carry.
1934 - Carl Hubbell threw three strikeouts in the first
inning of the All-Star baseball game held at New York’s
Polo Grounds. Hubbell faced the American League’s best
power hitters: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Fox. In
the second inning, Hubbell remained strong, fanning Al
Simmons, Joe Cronin and Lefty Gomez. From then on,
however, it was all up hill for the National League
which lost by a score of 9-7. Hubbell’s nicknames,
incidentally, were Meal Ticket and King Carl.
1936 - Billie Holiday recorded Billie’s Blues for Okeh
Records in New York. Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw and Cozy
Cole supported Holiday, instrumentally, on the track.
1938 - Howard Hughes started his flight around the
world. It took him 91 hours to complete the odyssey.
1944 - The Man Called X, starring Herbert Marshall,
debuted on CBS radio.
1949 - The first practical rectangular television
picture tube was presented. The tube measured 12 by 16
inches and sold for $12.
1951 - Sugar Ray Robinson was defeated for only the
second time in 133 fights. 7-2 underdog Randy Turpin
took the middleweight crown from Robinson in a 15-round
referee’s decision in London, England. (Sugar Ray took
the title back September 12th at the Polo Grounds in New
York.)
1962 - The Telstar communications satellite was
successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. Telstar
would usher in a new age of communication via telephone
and TV, with voice and picture transmission from Europe
to America and back. Signals were picked up by a 38-ton
antenna in Andover, Maine. To commemorate the event, an
instrumental hit by the Tornadoes, an English surf-rock
group, made it to number one for three weeks in
November, 1962. It was titled, Telstar, of course.
1969 - The National League was divided into two baseball
divisions (wacky as the realignment turned out to be).
For example, the Atlanta Braves were placed in the West
Division, while the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs
were Eastern Division teams. Cincinnati was also placed
in the National League West. The Chicago Cubs sued to
stay out of the west and remain in the east in the
1990s, when three divisions were formed. They ended up
in the new Central division.
1971 - Tony Conigliaro of the Boston Red Sox announced
his retirement from major-league baseball. Conigliaro
had suffered a vision impairment in his left eye after
being hit in the head by a thrown fastball during a
game. Despite efforts to make a comeback, Tony C. never
regained the form he once brought to the game.
1975 - Cher filed for divorce from rocker Greg Allman,
just ten days after the couple had married. She said
that Allman had been moonlighting with an old flame...
1984 - Dwight ‘Doc’ Gooden of the New York Mets became
the youngest player to appear in an All-Star Game as a
pitcher. Gooden was 19 years, 7 months and 24 days old.
He led the National League to a 3-1 win at Candlestick
Park in San Francisco, CA.
1985 - The Coca-Cola Company announced that the former
(regular) Coke was coming back to share shelf space with
the New Coke, after a consumer furor. The original
formula was renamed Coca-Cola Classic.
1991 - After 1,000 years, the Russian people were
finally permitted to elect a president. Boris Yeltsin
took the oath of office this day, after he had
resoundingly defeated the Communist Party candidate.
In 1951
Communication
Transcontinental television in the United States is inaugurated.
Fred Waller [b. Brooklyn, New York, March 10, 1886, d. May 18, 1954]
introduces Cinerama, the projection of films on a wide, curved screen by
three projectors, which gives an effect of three dimensions. This is the
first of three types of motion picture systems with enhanced
dimensionality introduced about this time; all are mainly intended to
give movies a competitive advantage over television.
A video tape recorder using magnetic tape is developed by Armour
Research and demonstrated to Ampex, which starts its own research
program.
Grace Hopper develops the first compiler, called A0, which translates
the codes used by programmers into binary machine code.
Computers
Buffer memory, which temporarily stores data as it moves from or to
slow peripherals, thus freeing the central processor for other tasks, is
introduced by Remington.
In February Ferranti installs the Mark I, the first commercial computer.
It is based on the Mark I computer developed by Tom Kilburn at
Manchester University.
John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert build UNIVAC I, the first
electronic computer to be commercially available in the United States
and the first to store data on magnetic tape. It incorporates 100
mercury delay lines and 5000 vacuum tubes. In March the first UNIVAC I
is installed at the U.S. Census Bureau.
The military supercomputer Atlas, named after a character in the comic
strip Barnaby, is equipped with magnetic drums with a capacity of 16,384
words of 24 bits each. It is a descendant of several secret
special-purpose decoding machines that also used magnetic drum memories,
the first made by winding magnetic tape around the drum (in 1947).
Electronics
William Shockley, Stanley Morgan, Morgan Sparks, and Gordon Teal [b.
Dallas, Texas, January 10, 1907, d. Dallas, Texas, January 7, 2003]
develop the p-n junction transistor using crystal growth techniques.
Western Electric starts the commercial production of transistors.