Interesting tidbits: 1741 – Aleksei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska. In May 1741 Chirikov in the St Paul and Vitus Bering in the St Peter left Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and headed east. Some time after 20 June they were separated by a storm and never saw each other again. On 15 July 1741 Chirikov saw land at Baker Island off Prince of Wales Island at the south end of the Alaska Panhandle, about 450 miles southeast of Berings landfall near Mount St. Elias at the north end of the panhandle. Unable to find a harbor he sailed north along Baranov Island past the later Russian base at Sitka. He sent out a longboat to find an anchorage. When it did not return after a week he sent out his second longboat which also failed to return. Now without any small boats Chirikov had no way of searching for the two longboats or landing on the coast to explore or replenish his supply of fresh water. After waiting as long as possible, he abandoned the longboats to their fate and on 27 July sailed west. He sighted the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island and Adak Island near the western end of the Aleutians. With water critically low he reached Petropavlovsk on 12 October 1741. In 1742, Chirikov was in charge of a search party for Berings ship St. Peter. During this trip, he located Attu Island. Chirikov took part in creating the final map of the Russian discoveries in the Pacific Ocean (1746). By the time Russia realized that it could not colonize or even hold Alaska and sold it to the US over a century later, the European population in all of Alaska had newer exceeded a few hundred individuals. 1799 – The Rosetta Stone was found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleons Egyptian Campaign. The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script (Egyptian cursive), and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts, it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Originally displayed within a temple, the stone was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rosetta in the Nile Delta. As the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, the Rosetta Stone aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this hitherto untranslated ancient language. Lithographic copies and plaster casts began circulating among European museums and scholars. Meanwhile, British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, and the original stone came into British possession under the Capitulation of Alexandria. Transported to London, it has been on public display at the British Museum since 1802. It is the most-visited object in the British Museum. 1806 – Pike expedition: United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike began an expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri, to explore the south and west of the recent Louisiana Purchase. Roughly contemporaneous with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, it was led by United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Jr. It was the first official American effort to explore the western Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains in present-day Colorado. Pike contacted several Native American tribes during his travels and informed them of the new US rule over the territory. The expedition documented the United States discovery of Pikes Peak. After splitting up his men, Pike led the larger contingent to find the headwaters of the Red River. The smaller group returned safely to the US Army fort in St. Louis, Missouri before winter set in. Pikes company made several errors and ended up in Spanish territory in southern present-day Colorado, where the Americans built a fort to survive the winter. Captured by the Spanish and taken into Mexico in February, their travels through present-day New Mexico, Mexico, and Texas provided Pike with important data about Spanish military strength and civilian populations. Although he and most of his men were released because the nations were not at war, some of his soldiers were held in Mexican prisons for years, despite US objections. In 1810, Pike published an account of his expeditions, which was so popular that it was translated into French, German, and Dutch for publication in Europe. Todays birthday crew: 1817 – Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet, British railway engineer. In the 1850s and 1860s, he was engineer for the worlds first underground railway, Londons Metropolitan Railway, built by the cut-and-cover method under city streets. The line opened between Paddington and Farringdon in 1863. Fowler was also engineer for the associated Metropolitan District Railway and the Hammersmith and City Railway. Today these railways form the majority of the London Undergrounds Circle line. For his work on the Metropolitan Railway Fowler was paid the great sum of £152,000 (£10.1 million today), with £157,000 (£10.4 million today), from the Metropolitan District Railway. Although some of this would have been passed on to staff and contractors, Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Metropolitan Railway from 1872, complained that No engineer in the world was so highly paid. To avoid problems with smoke and steam overwhelming staff and passengers on the covered sections of the Metropolitan Railway, Fowler proposed a fireless locomotive. The locomotive was built by Robert Stephenson and Company and was a broad gauge 2-4-0 tender engine. The boiler had a normal firebox connected to a large combustion chamber containing fire bricks which were to act as a heat reservoir. The combustion chamber was linked to the smokebox through a set of very short firetubes. Exhaust steam was re-condensed instead of escaping and feed back to the boiler. The locomotive was intended to operate conventionally in the open, but in tunnels dampers would be closed and steam would be generated using the stored heat from the fire bricks. The first trial on the Great Western Railway in October 1861 was a failure. The condensing system leaked, causing the boiler to run dry and pressure to drop, risking a boiler explosion. A second trial on the Metropolitan Railway in 1862 was also a failure, and the fireless engine was abandoned, becoming known as Fowlers Ghost. The locomotive was eventually scrapped. 1858 – Emmeline Pankhurst, British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote. In 1999 Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating: she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back. She was widely criticized for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving womens suffrage in Britain. After her husband died in 1898, Pankhurst founded the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to deeds, not words. The group placed itself separately from – and often in opposition to – political parties. The group quickly became infamous when its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists were sentenced to repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions. As Pankhursts oldest daughter Christabel took the helm of the WSPU, antagonism between the group and the government grew. Eventually arson became a common tactic among WSPU members, and more moderate organizations spoke out against the Pankhurst family. In 1913 several prominent individuals left the WSPU, among them Pankhursts daughters Adela and Sylvia. The family rift was never healed. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act granted votes to women over the age of 30. Pankhurst transformed the WSPU machinery into the Womens Party, which was dedicated to promoting womens equality in public life. She died in 1928 and was commemorated two years later with a statue in Londons Victoria Tower Gardens. 1967 – Adam Savage, American industrial design and special effects designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters and Unchained Reaction. His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and The Matrix Reloaded. He is a prominent member of the skeptic community. Happy birthday guys!
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:00:08 +0000
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