July 2, 1898: Hugh Dryden, American physicist & NASA deputy administrator, was born. He made pioneering aerodynamic studies of air flow around wing surfaces at speed of sound. Dryden led development of radar-homing missile & first successful U.S. guided missile. He led negotiations for joint U.S.-Soviet space projects. Dryden was instrumental in achieving exchange of weather-satellite data & operation of cooperative communications satellite tests. July 2, 2010: Oil tanker truck explosion occurred in South Kivu, within the Democratic Republic of the Congo; where 230+ people died. July 2, 1990: During tragic safety incident, 1,426 people were crushed or suffocated to death during stampede of religious pilgrims in a long pedestrian tunnel in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. July 2, 1957: Earthquake (7.1-magnitude) struck Iran, where 1,200+ people died. July 2, 1937: Amelia Earhart, American aviation pioneer, & her navigator mysteriously disappeared while flying over Pacific Ocean. Good news is that sonar anomalies were recently discovered at 600 feet depth in waters off Nikumaroro Island, an uninhabited tropical atoll in the southwestern Pacific Republic of Kiribati. Is this a clue regarding what happened to Amelia Earhart? July 2, 1910: President Taft established Naval Petroleum Reserve. As U.S. Navy rapidly converted from coal to oil-burning ships, petroleum reserve was created to assure strategic oil supply in event of war or a national emergency. July 2, 1900: Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, retired Prussian army officer, successfully demonstrated worlds first rigid airship. His 420-foot, cigar-shaped airship was lifted by highly flammable hydrogen gas & thus later vulnerable to an explosion. July 2, 1881: President Garfield was shot. He died 11 weeks later due to his doctors’ unsanitary efforts to remove the bullet. Good news: Garfield initially survived the shooting & showed signs of recovery. Assassin’s bullet had missed his organs, arteries & veins. Sterilization practices had been in use for two decades in Europe. Bad news: Garfield’s surgeons, poked through his body with unsanitary instruments & their bare hands. Alexander Graham Bell was even called in to locate the bullet with a metal detector, but was unsuccessful. July 2, 1850: Benjamin Lane, American inventor in Massachusetts, received first known patent for a respirator with a compressed air supply. Its purpose was to allow one to enter buildings and vessels filled with smoke or impure air and into sewers, mines, wells, and other places filled with noxious gases or impure air, the person being protected from suffocation arising from such causes. history.nasa.gov/Biographies/dryden.html
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 17:58:14 +0000
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