FC

few months after the euro entered circulation, Freek Sujver and Andres Mejerink of Utrecht University in the Netherlands irradiated some banknotes with ultraviolet light and recorded the color bands they emitted. The red light they saw was due to europium ions, a rare earth, bonded

Second Life is born on the Internet

“Enemy at the Gates” about the Battle of Stalingrad is released in theaters.

Deborah Kelley’s team discovered a hydrothermal field called Lost City near the North Atlantic Ridge at 30 degrees North, literally invaded by micro- and macro-organisms of all kinds that live in these sources of methane and hydrogen; the structure is characterized by 60m-high towers based

Tetra Pak launches a new filling machine: the TBA19

Erich Bloch, a respected semiconductor expert at IBM and later head of the National Science Foundation, stated that Moore’s Law would cease to apply when transistors reached a channel width of 250 microns (250,000 nm). Ten years later, this limit would be significantly exceeded. 35

Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi founded Qualcomm (Quality Communications), focusing on microprocessor-based technology to fit much more information digitally into the limited frequency bands available. Initial clients included DARPA and NASA, but the business remained a niche market even into the early 1990s. However, it

Surgut, on the Ob River, Siberia. Amphibious military vehicles and half a dozen MIL helicopters are on the scene. Suddenly, a sonic boom is heard. The probe carrying lunar soil samples is returning. They pick up the radio signal, track it, and recover it. It

In the Baltic Sea, Soviet Communist Party Commissar Valery Sablin takes command of the naval vessel to which he has been assigned and plans to dock in Leningrad and spark a popular uprising; this action will provoke the intervention of the Soviet Air Force; the

Indonesian troops invade East Timor (a former Portuguese colony). The ensuing repression will result in 200,000 deaths over 25 years.

Charles H. Bennett of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Labs discovered that given an irreversible Turing Machine, there always exists another Turing Machine, but a reversible one, that performs the same computation; and this machine will not require many more steps than the irreversible machine;

10:17:39 PM Italian time, Sunday (4:17:39 PM EDT, 8:17:39 PM GMT, mission time 4d:06h:45:58 PM): Apollo 11 on the Moon (Sea of Tranquility): “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed” and from Houston, where the wording “Tranquillity Base” had not been agreed upon: “Roger

George Mueller, after reviewing the problems and solutions of flight AS-502 (Apollo 6), decides that AS-503 will be manned and will circumnavigate the Moon.

Alaska (Anchorange) earthquake: >9 Richter scale, 178 dead Together with the 1960 Chile earthquake it released 60% of the total energy released by all earthquakes this century

China. Khrushchev’s official visit to China. On the second day of meetings, Mao receives his Soviet guest not in an official room, but in his swimming pool. Khrushchev cannot swim and is forced to wear armbands. The two statesmen hold the meeting while swimming, with

Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments developed the “monolithic idea” of developing not only transistors but also resistors and capacitors on the same silicon layer. Six months later, Noyce of Fairchild independently arrived at a similar concept. Kilby demonstrated it in September 1958.

In response to the Soviet Sputnik, US President Eisenhower decided to create ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) to manage all matters related to space. He was then persuaded by Vice President Richard Nixon that it would be better to also create a civilian agency to

Irene Curie dies in Paris of leukemia, just like her mother, Marie Curie. Irene used polonium as an atomic bomber.

Killian Report. James Killian, president of MIT, delivers the report requested by the Pentagon on possible photoreconnaissance solutions for the USSR. The report contains input “for the eyes only of the president” that will lead Eisenhower to approve the CL-282 (later U-2) project, nuclear missiles

U.S. State Department document argues that the possibility of launching an artificial satellite would create a useful precedent for testing the possibility of differentiating between “national air space” and “international space.” This concept would be useful to the Americans for photoreconnaissance of the vast and

American counterattack and reconquest of Seoul

Gianluigi Bonelli created the comic book character Tex Willer (initially Tex Killer)

The English Manchester Mark I is the first computer to store a program electronically instead of requiring the operator to set switches by hand.

The United States has run out of available atomic bombs, but Japan has not yet surrendered. The order is thus given to all available B-29s on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian Island to bomb various targets with Pumpkins, or bombs the same size as Fat Boys

Prague. The U.S. Army stationed in Plzen, near Prague, refuses to accept the surrender of the ROA (Russian Liberation Army), Russians who fought alongside the Nazis against the Red Army, and who in the final days of the war switched sides to defend the Prague

The diseases ravaging armies around the world led to the development of various vaccines for military use, especially for diseases typical of the Far East, which affected American troops. These same vaccines would later form the basis for civilian use in the post-war period, through

Enrico Fermi obtains American citizenship in the shortest time allowed by law.

Stalingrad. Three days of the most savage fighting in six months of battle. The Soviet Katyushas fire, their wheels almost submerged in the Volga, so far have the Russians retreated.

Keynes, at a lecture at the Royal Society Club, paints for the first time a different and controversial picture of Isaac Newton, as a devotee of alchemy and in search of the philosopher’s stone.

Libya. More than a thousand tanks face each other in what will be the largest tank battle ever fought in Africa. Also known as the Battle of Totensonntag (meaning “Totensonntag,” meaning “Day of the Fallen,” as it is the day commemorated in German tradition). The

At Bletchley Park, diplomatic messages from Tokyo to the embassy in London are intercepted, warning them to expect a message, disguised as a weather forecast, indicating the outbreak of hostilities with the UK, the US, or the USSR. If it’s with the US, it will

Dunkirk (Dunquerque). German tanks stop for maintenance. The rescue of British and French troops from the beaches begins. Almost all will be evacuated by June 3rd.

Wernher von Braun joins the SS.

At the New York World’s Fair, you see dishwashers, talking robots, and, at General Motors’ Futurama pavilion, highways and shopping malls.

At Bletchley Park, young minds, including mathematicians and some women, were recruited to crack Enigma. This was a completely new approach for the time. The presence of Alan Turing among the candidates was a particularly fortunate stroke of luck, as Turing was one of the

End of Prohibition in America. The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, ending alcohol prohibition. In early 1919, the 18th Amendment had banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors in the country. To enforce the amendment, Congress passed the Volstead Act,

Paul Dirac summarized his philosophy of life in three notebook pages, not long after his brother Felix’s suicide: “My article of faith is that the human species will live forever and will evolve and progress without limits. It is an assumption I am forced to

Jazz singer Bing Crosby becomes world famous

Soviet Union: First draft of Article 58 of the Criminal Code. It authorizes the arrest of anyone who dissents, or even tolerates dissent. The monstrous consequences (the Stalinist Purges) would only become apparent several years later, with the floods to the gulags of 1929, 1930,

Japanese Emperor Hiroito

Robert Goddard flies his patented concept: the multistage liquid-fueled rocket.

Germany. Walter Hohmann invents the so-called Hohmann Transfer for interplanetary space travel. These trajectories will later be used by Soviet and American missions to the Moon and the entire Solar System.

Arab troops under the command of King Faisal and Colonel Lawrence enter Damascus

Spanish Flu Epidemic: >20 million deaths: 10 million in Europe, 1 million in the US, 2 million in Africa, 6 million in India, 1 million in the South Pacific, ? In China (where it originated)

In Taiwan, aboriginal resistance to the Japanese invasion is eliminated with the use of mustard gas and naval bombardment.

The new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica considers the atomic theory as an outdated hypothesis

Approximately 100,000 Africans (80% Herero and 50% Namaqua) die in German concentration camps in Namibia, a German colony.

Royal Institution, UK. Rutherford rises to speak. He’s relieved to see old Lord Kelvin asleep in the audience. Kelvin was the leading proponent of chemical fire, which would fuel heat from within our planet. This would contradict an Earth age of more than a few

Production of Thomas Alva Edison’s automobile battery grew sufficiently to launch it on the market. Edison named it the E-type. Shortly thereafter, Edison purchased two Lansden electric cars: a coupé and a covered express wagon. He decided not to be daunted by the growing popularity

Budapest. During the Belle Époque, Janos Lajos Neumann, known in English as John Louis Neumann, was born in Budapest. He would become Johnny von Neumann when he emigrated to Germany. He would be part of the Manhattan Project and would form a group of scientists

First powered flight, carried out by the brothers Wilbur (builder) and Orville (pilot) Wright at Kitty Hawk (North Carolina): they rightly focused on the real problem: how to control the airplane once in flight so as to keep it in stable flight; they made three

Konstatin Eduardovich Tziolkovsij (or Konstantin Tsiolkowski) describes the first liquid-fueled rocket in a pioneering article: the essay “Exploration des espaces cosmices par des engines a reaction”

Uganda. Italian physician Aldo Castellani successfully isolates the protozoan trypanosome from the tsetse fly, responsible for sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis).

Nikola Tesla, in a letter to his backer, JP Morgan, describes how he intends to achieve wireless broadcasting, or simultaneous worldwide transmission. He receives $150,000 in funding. The site where he will begin construction of the antenna is the famous Wardenclyffe on Long Island.

The Jacuzzi family, who would later become famous for the eponymous bathtub, emigrated to the United States and settled on the West Coast.

Ferdinand Von Zeppelin builds the first airship, filled with hydrogen and powered by 4 engines

Cockram (USA) produces the first dishwasher

Louis Renault builds the first car with a gearbox

Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, known as Stalin, joins the underground Marxist movement.

Canary Islands. More than 650,000 crates of bananas are exported on refrigerated steamships every year. Until a few years earlier, bananas were considered a luxury beyond the reach of most Europeans. The first ship to have refrigerated storage was the SS Elderslie, built in 1884.

Pierre and Marie Curie’s wedding in Paris, they set off on their honeymoon by bicycle.

Ludwig Boltzmann and Ernst Zermelo hypothesize that the universe is infinite and already in a state of thermal equilibrium, but with random fluctuations that push it away from equilibrium in specific regions, one of which could contain our entire galaxy and make life possible. A

British doctor Sir Patrick Manson, nicknamed Mosquito Manson, intuited that malaria might be caused by mosquitoes; he encouraged his student Ronald Ross to prove the hypothesis.

Ohio, United States. Charles Hall, spurred by competition, founds The Pittsburgh Reduction Company in Pittsburgh, which will become the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), one of the most profitable corporations in history. Aluminum production will increase from 22 kg/day in 1888 to 40 tons/day in

In a well-publicized public competition, the QWERTY keyboard wins in typing speed against a non-QWERTY keyboard with 6 rows of keys and no capital letters (therefore with a double sequence of letters); this event will make the fortune of the QWERTY keyboard which actually wins

Heinrich Hertz first observed the photoelectric effect, later explained by Albert Einstein

Statue of Liberty erected

The Great September Comet passes by, reaching magnitude -17 (that’s a lot: the logarithmic scale is inverted, and 0 is Sirius, the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere). It’s visible even in broad daylight near the Sun. It’s the oldest comet, of which a photograph

Paris Exposition. The arrival from the United States of Thomas Alva Edison’s great dynamo makes a huge impression: it is four times larger than any generator ever seen in Europe. It is dubbed the “Jumbo.” “Edison is not a myth,” admits the newspaper Le Figaro,

Between 1881 and 1920, approximately 1.1 million Jews landed and settled in New York, in addition to those who landed in New York but then settled elsewhere, mostly Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

Hermann von Helmholtz, in his book Popular Lectures of Scientific Subjects, discusses extra-Euclidean geometries. He explains, for example, that two-dimensional creatures could not have digestive systems because they would be separated into two parts. A 3D creature would appear to them like a deity, being

Tsar Alexander II is assassinated. Alexander II, Tsar of Russia since 1855, is killed in St. Petersburg by a bomb launched by a member of the revolutionary group “People’s Will.” Formed in 1879, the group carried out terrorist acts and assassinations aimed at overthrowing the

The Hatfield-McCoy feud continues to bloody Kentucky and West Virginia: more than a dozen members of the two families are murdered in successive vendettas.

Thomas Edison invents the carbon-filament incandescent lamp for home and commercial use.

In August 1879, Thomas Alva Edison hired Ludwig Böhm as a glassblower for his light bulbs. Böhm developed many of Edison’s first light bulbs. Bohm arrived from Germany, played the zither, wore a red cap from a German university, and sang Alpine yodels in his

Standard Oil Company controls 95% of America’s oil production capacity.

total solar eclipse in Wyoming was also observed by a Dutch expedition, which produced a detailed drawing of it, which was then printed in several copies (one of which I would purchase almost a century and a half later in Delft, Holland). Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison rose from celebrity to eminence, accepting an invitation to present his talking phonograph to the National Academy of Sciences at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. George Barker of the University of Pennsylvania organized a public comparison of telephones made by Bell, Phelps,

Now we communicate remotely: Marconi. The foundations are laid for an unstoppable phenomenon: globalization: Coca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, General Electric.

Belgium. 322 meters underground, in a coal mine, 38 skeletons of Iguanodon benissartensis—powerful creatures—were discovered. They will be exhibited in Brussels and will make a huge impression on the public.