On 29 April 1770, Botany Bay was the site of James Cook’s first landing of HMS Endeavour on the land mass of Australia, after his extensive navigation of New Zealand. Lieutenant James Cook first landed at Kurnell, on the southern banks of Botany Bay, in what is now Silver Beach, on Sunday 29 April…
USS Tullibee (SSN-597), a unique submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the tullibee, any of several whitefishes of central and northern North America. At 273 feet long and 2,640 tons displacement, USS Tullibee was the smallest nuclear-powered attack submarine in the US submarine fleet, although she…
The Blue Angels, formally named the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, are a flight demonstration squadron of the United States Navy. Formed in 1946, the unit is the second oldest formal aerobatic team in the world, following the Patrouille de France which formed in 1931. The team has six Navy and one Marine Corps…
New Coke was the unofficial name of a reformulation of the soft drink Coca-Cola, introduced by the Coca-Cola Company in April 1985. It was renamed Coke II in 1990 and discontinued in July 2002. By 1985, Coca-Cola had been losing market share to diet soft drinks and non-cola beverages for several years. Blind taste…
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John…
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She had been the regnant queen of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime and was the monarch of 15 realms at her death.…
Felix Baumgartner (born 20 April 1969) is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper. He is widely known for jumping to Earth from a helium balloon from the stratosphere on 14 October 2012 and landing in New Mexico, United States, as part of the Red Bull Stratos project. Doing so, he set world records…
The Reichstag, a historic legislative government building on Platz der Republik in Berlin, is the seat of the German Bundestag. It is also the meeting place of the Federal Convention, which elects the President of Germany. The Neo-Renaissance building was constructed between 1884 and 1894 in the Tiergarten district on the left bank of…
The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) are two extensively modified Boeing 747 airliners that NASA used to transport Space Shuttle orbiters. One (N905NA) is a 747-100 model, while the other (N911NA) is a short-range 747-100SR. Both are now retired. The SCAs were used to ferry Space Shuttles from landing sites back to the Shuttle Landing…
Ferdinand Piëch (17 April 1937 – 25 August 2019) was an Austrian business magnate, engineer, and executive who held the positions of chairman of the executive board of the Volkswagen Group from 1993 to 2002, and chairman of the supervisory board from 2002 to 2015. Piëch was pivotal in the advancement of technologies such…
McDonald’s Corporation, doing business as McDonald’s, is an American multinational fast-food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hamburger stand and later turned the company into a franchise, with the Golden Arches logo being introduced in…
Space Shuttle Columbia (OV-102) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe, and the female personification of the United States, Columbia was the first of five Space Shuttle orbiters to fly in space, debuting the Space Shuttle launch vehicle…
Garry Kasparov (born on 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion (1985–2000), political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. From 1984 until his retirement from regular competitive chess in 2005,…
Carlos Sainz Sr. (born 12 April 1962) is a Spanish rally driver. He won the World Rally Championship drivers’ title with Toyota in 1990 and 1992 and finished runner-up four times. Constructors’ world champions to have benefited from Sainz are Subaru (1995), Toyota (1999) and Citroën (2003, 2004 and 2005). In the 2018 season,…
Steven Seagal (born April 10, 1952) is an US actor, producer, screenwriter, martial artist, and musician. A 7th-dan black belt in aikido, he began his adult life as a martial arts instructor in Japan where he became the first American to teach in an aikido dojo. He later moved to Los Angeles where he…
Mark Blundell (born 8 April 1966) is a British racing driver who competed in Formula One for four seasons, sports cars, and CART. He won the 1992 24 Hours of Le Mans. He was a Formula One presenter for the British broadcaster ITV until the end of the 2008 season when the TV broadcasting…
In 1896 when Washington reviewed the study conducted by George Washington Carver about the infection plaguing the soybean crop, he invited Carver to head the Agriculture Department at Tuskegee, where they became close friends. Carver later autographed commemorative stamps issued in 1940 in Washington’s honour. This was the first time an African American was…
The 1896 Summer Olympics officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad and commonly known as Athens 1896, were the first international Olympic Games held in modern history. Organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had been created by French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, the event was held in Athens, Greece, from…
Lawrence Dale “Larry” Bell (April 5, 1894 – October 20, 1956) was an American industrialist and founder of Bell Aircraft Corporation. Bell was born in Mentone, Indiana. Bell moved in Buffalo and founded his own company with 56 employees, Bell Aircraft Corporation, on July 10, 1935. On a government-sponsored “spy tour” to Germany with…
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 the company became highly influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the largest software maker, one of…
Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach were two inventors whose goal was to create small, high-speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. In 1883 they designed a horizontal cylinder layout compressed charge liquid petroleum engine that fulfilled Daimler’s desire for a high-speed engine which could be throttled, making…
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His early period, during…
Hamburg, officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is the second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and 6th-largest in the European Union with a population of over 1.9 million. The Hamburg Metropolitan Region has a population of over 5.1 million and is the eighth-largest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union. At…
The Eiffel Tower is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889. Locally nicknamed “La dame de fer” (French for “Iron Lady”), it was constructed as the centrepiece of the 1889…
Vincent van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of…
The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting him in his afterlife. The figures were discovered on the 29th of March 1974…
Henri Fabre (29 November 1882 – 30 June 1984) was a French aviator and the inventor of the first successful seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion. He intensively studied aeroplane and propeller designs. He patented a system of flotation devices which he used when he succeeded in taking off from the surface of the Etang de…
Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet, OBE (27 March 1863 – 22 April 1933) was an English engineer famous for his designs of car and aeroplane engines with a reputation for reliability and longevity. With Charles Rolls (1877–1910) and Claude Johnson (1864–1926), he founded Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce initially focused on large 40–50 horsepower motor cars,…