Samuel Colt received a British patent on his improved design for a revolver in 1835, and two U.S. patents in 1836, one on February 25 (later numbered U.S. Patent 9430X) and another on August 29 (U.S. patent 1,304). That same year, he founded his first corporation for its manufacture, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company…
Galanthus, or snowdrop, is a small genus of approximately 20 species of bulbous perennial herbaceous plants in the family Amaryllidaceae. The plants have two linear leaves and a single small white drooping bell-shaped flower with six petal-like (petaloid) tepals in two circles (whorls). The smaller inner petals have green markings. Snowdrops have been known…
Happy Birthday to Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, FRS (24 February 1743 – 19 June 1820). He was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James Cook’s first great voyage (1768–1771), visiting…
Hans Herrmann (born 23 February 1928) is a retired Formula One and sports car racing driver from Stuttgart, Germany. In F1, he participated in 19 World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 2 August 1953. He achieved one podium and scored a total of 10 championship points. In sports car racing, he also scored the…
Twosday is the name given to Tuesday (2nd day of the week), February 22, 2022, and an unofficial one-time secular observance held on that day, characterized as a fad. The name is a portmanteau of two and Tuesday, deriving from the fact that the digits of the date form a numeral palindrome marked by…
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is one of the top ranked motorsports organisations in the world and is one of the largest spectator sports leagues in America. The privately owned company…
Almost 150 years ago, Swan Lake, a ballet was composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time. The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and German folk tales and tells the story of Odette,…
Happy Birthday Seal, British singer, songwriter, and record producer. Born as Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel on the 19th of February 1963 in Paddington, London, UK. Seal received three Brit-Awards, four Grammy Awards and a MTV Video Music Award. His 1994 single “Kiss from a Rose” was included in the movies the „NeverEnding…
Enzo Ferrari (18 February 1898 – 14 August 1988) was an Italian motor racing driver and entrepreneur, the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team, and subsequently of the Ferrari automobile marque. Under his leadership, Scuderia Ferrari won nine drivers’ world championships and eight constructors’ world championships in Formula 1 during…
The Canadian Pacific Railway is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated on the 16th of February 1881, 144 years ago. The railway is owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited, known until 2023 as Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001. The railway headquarters is…
Today we celebrate the publication of the human genome with an image of the super helix. On 15th February 2001 researchers published the first sequence-based map of large-scale structural variation across the human genome in the journal Nature. Large-scale structural variations are differences in the genome among people that range from a few thousand…
Today we celebrate Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honouring a martyr named Valentine, and through later folk traditions it has also become a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love…
Vega was an expendable small lift launch vehicle operated by Arianespace, produced by Avio, and jointly developed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Development began in 1998 and the first launch took place from the Guiana Space Centre on 13 February 2012. It was the 8th most launched…
Today we want to remember a great French pioneer of the automotive industry, Louis Renault. Renault was born on 12th of February 1877 in Fresnes Prison, Fresnes, France. He built one of France’s largest automobile manufacturing concerns, which still bears his name. During World War I his factories contributed massively to the war effort,…
Today 28 years ago an AI beat a world champion chess master for the first time. Deep Blue was a chess-playing expert system run on a unique purpose-built IBM supercomputer (IBM RS/6000 SP Supercomputer with 30 PowerPC 604e “High 2” 200 MHz CPUs and 480 custom VLSI second-generation “chess chips”). It was the first…
Budd unveiled the first SPV-2000, a self-propelled diesel multiple unit railcar, in Philadelphia on February 9th, 1978, and then sent it on a demonstration tour around the United States. The design was a successor to Budd’s popular Rail Diesel Car (RDC) but based on the body of the Amfleet passenger car. Budd eventually sold…
Today we remember the safe return of the Skylab 4 crew to earth, 51 years ago. On the 8th of February 1974 the crew splashed down in the Pacific. Skylab 4 was the third crewed Skylab mission and placed the third and final crew aboard the first American space station. The mission began on…
Today we celebrate the 113th Birthday of one of Britain’s great classics – the short story writer, novelist, journalist, and social critic Charles Dickens. Born as Charles John Huffam Dickens on the 7th of February 1812 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England he created some of literature’s best-known fictional characters like Ebenezer Scrooge. Today Dickens is…
Today we celebrate Bob Marley’s posthumous 80th Birthday. Born as Robert Nesta Marley on the 6th of February 1945 in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica the singer, songwriter and guitarist is considered one of the pioneers of reggae. He fused elements of reggae, ska and rocksteady and was renowned for his distinctive vocal…
For the past 101 years BBC radio stations have been broadcasting a series of six short tones or pips at one-second intervals to mark the precise start of each hour called the Greenwich Time Signal (GTS). On the 5th of February 1924 the pips were introduced and generated by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich and…
Today we celebrate Facebook’s 21st Birthday. Yes, Facebook has come of age. On the 4th of February 2004 Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Facebook derived its name from the face book directories often given to American…
On this day 388 years ago the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history collapsed. The Dutch tulip mania (in Dutch: „Tulpenmanie“) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The major acceleration started in…
100 years ago, to the day the serum run to Nome, Alaska set off with 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs. On the 2nd of February 1925 the Great Race of Mercy and The Serum Run, was a transport of diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled relay across the US territory 674 miles (1,085 km)…
On this day in the year 1920 the Mazda company was initially founded as a cork producing company. Today this proud and innovative automotive company produces over 1 Mio. cars worldwide. To celebrate their 105th Birthday I have posted this photo of my very own Mazda… If you like this photo, it is available…
143 years ago, this patent did the most to enable human mobility. On the 29th of January 1886 Karl Benz patented the first gasoline / petrol car. This started a mobility revolution with the first personal vehicles. Karl Benz went on to build one of the largest and prolific and well-known car companies that…
Happy 68th Birthday comic artist Frank Miller. Born on the 27th of January 1957 in Olney Maryland he uniquely combined film noir and manga and is famous for his Sin City comics. His comics often used selective colour to highlight objects. We celebrate Frank Miller’s Birthday with a picture of Johnny’s Corvette C1 in…
MacGyver and Stargate SGC made this Actor on of science fiction’s classic stars. Today is his 75th Birthday. Richard Dean Anderson was born on the 23rd of January 1950 in Minneapolis. We celebrate this special Birthday with a Dodge van that could have been built by MacGyver … If you like this photo, it…
Today we are celebrating Tom Baker’s 91st Birthday. Tom was born on the 20th of January 1934 in Vauxhall, Liverpool. He is best known as playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the BBC science fiction TV series Doctor Who. His deep gravelly voice, curly hair and trademark scarf made him the most…
Crime never pays but today we should remember one of the most notorious criminals of all time, Al Capone. Born on 17th of January 1899 in Brooklyn New York, Capone, or Scarface as he was known by his men became the head of organised crime in Chicago. He was convicted on tax fraud and…