Motto for Today: ‘Leadership is influence.’
As each day is a new beginning in one's life, it brings new opportunities, opens new avenues, to perform and make a mark, to write a Page in history Book!
This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History!
On this day, Sept.16 ……
1774 – Antoine Lavoisier observed that heating mercuric oxide produces metallic mercury. He thought the reaction might have been caused by contact with iron; he made no note of gas evolution (oxygen) in his notebook.
1812 – Fire broke out in Moscow on the day when Russian troops and most residents abandoned the city and Napoleon’s vanguard troops entered the city following the Battle of Borodino. The fire raged until September 18, destroying an estimated three-quarters of Moscow. (Before leaving Moscow Count Rostopchin gave orders to have the Kremlin and major public buildings, including churches and monasteries, either blown up or set on fire. But this was not the foremost cause of the conflagration that destroyed the city. As the bulk of the French army moved into the city, there were some fires. Their cause has never been determined and both neglect as well as Rostopchin’s orders may be among possible reasons. Today, the majority of historians blames the initial fires on Russian sabotage.
1884 – Cocaine was first used as a local anaesthetic to immobilise a patient’s eye for eye surgery by Carl Koller. His success initiated the modern era of local anaesthesia, with cocaine also quickly adopted for nose and throat surgery and for dentistry. (For Koller, a Czech-born American ophthalmologist, the clue for this use was when he noticed that cocaine had a numbing effect on the tongue. He did many experiments on animals before introducing its use on humans. Cocaine was isolated in 1859 and was synthesised in 1885).
1908 – Former carriage-maker William Crapo “Billy” Durant founded General Motors (GM) by incorporating with a capital of $2,000 and was the man responsible for the beginning of the huge auto manufacturing company. Within 12 days the company generated stocks that generated $12,000,000 cash. On 29 Sep 1908, GM bought Buick. Later, GM bought Oldsmobile in Lansing, Cadillac in Detroit, and Oakland in Pontiac. Durant lost control of the company in 1910.
1941 – Adolf Hitler orders that for every dead German, 100 Yugoslavians should be killed.
1954 – The Lok Sabha adopted a clause in the Special Marriage Bill providing for divorce by consent.
1959 – French President Charles de Gaulle recognizes Algerian right of self-determination.
1963 – Federation of Malaysia formed by Malaya, Singapore, British North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak.
1967 – Indian and Chinese troops engage in fighting at Nathu La on the Tibet-Sikkim border.
1974 – US President Gerald Ford announces conditional amnesty for US Vietnam War deserters.
1997 – Apple Computer Inc names co-founder Steve Jobs temporary CEO.
2019 Guantánamo Bay is the world’s most expensive prison at US$13 million per prisoner according to investigation by “The New York Times”. (The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a US military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.
2020 – Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley announces the country’s intention to remove Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and become a republic.
2021 – Earliest evidence announced for humans making clothes discovered from bone tools 100,000 years old found at Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco.
Born….
1877 -Jacob Schick, American inventor and manufacturer of the first successful electric dry razor.
1914 – Chaudhari Devi Lal, politician.
1916 – M.S. Subbulakshmi, Indian singer.
1923 – Lee Kuan Yew, Founding father of modern Singapore and 1st Prime Minister of Singapore (1959-90).
1971 – Prasoon Joshi, poet.
RIP….
1736 – Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, a German-Dutch physicist and instrument maker (meteorological). He invented the alcohol thermometer (1709) and mercury thermometer (1714) and developed the Fahrenheit temperature scale. He also invented a hygrometer to measure relative humidity and experimented with other liquids discovering that each liquid had a different boiling point that would change with atmospheric pressure.
You may have known….
It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite number of times!
Good morning. Have a nice day.
{Composed by Lt. Col. (R) Raj Kadyan}