Motto for Today: Strength doesn’t come from winning. It comes from struggling.

This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History! 

On this day, Nov. 17……….

1797 – The first patent in the U.S. for a clock was issued to Eli Terry of East Windsor, for an equation clock. The clock had two minute hands, one of which showed the mean or true time, while the other “together with the striking part and hour hand showed the apparent time, as divided by the sun according to the table of variation of the sun and clock for each day of the year.”

1820 – Antarctica discovered by Nathaniel B. Palmer on the ‘Hero’, a 47 foot sloop.

1849 – The first bowler hat was sold by Lock & Co. of St. James’s, London, to William Coke for twelve shillings. He had placed an order intending for the hat to protect him from low-hanging branches when he was out shooting. On this day, he travelled to London to take delivery, and tested it by putting it on the floor and stamping on it. It had been made for Lock & Co. by Thomas and William Bowler, felt hat makers on Southwark Bridge Road, London. This accounts for the name ‘Bowler’ by which the hat is now known, although Lock’s still refer to the style as a Coke after their first customer who bought it.

1853 – Street signs authorised at San Francisco intersections.

1869 – The Suez Canal in Egypt was opened with a ceremony attended by the French Empress Eugénie. The 100-mile long canal cuts across the Isthmus of Suez, thus linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas, and providing a direct transportation route for trade between Europe and Asia. Its construction was accomplished by the French engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps.

1925 – Dr. W. Blair Bell gave a lecture in London, advocating treatment of cancer with colloidal lead injections. The May 1926 issue of Popular Science Monthly said he the metal was injected into veins near the cancerous growth and claimed that in seventeen years of testing, out of about 200 cases treated, most of them thought hopeless, almost fifty were believed entirely and permanently cured. Bell was a surgeon, and Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Liverpool University.

1970 – A U.S. patent was issued for the computer mouse – an “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System”. The inventor was Doug Engelbart. In the lab, he and his colleagues had called it a “mouse,” after its tail-like cable. {The first mouse was a simple hollowed-out wooden block, with a single push button on top. Engelbart had designed this as a tool to select text, move it around, and otherwise manipulate it. It was a key element of his larger project – the NLS (oN Line System), a computer he and some colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute had built. The NLS also allowed two or more users to work on the same document from different workstations}.

1994 – India’s North Eastern Council decides to include Sikkim in the Council.

2008 – The world’s oldest polar bear Debby died at age 41 going on 42, euthanised after suffering from several strokes and organ failure. She was recognised in 2007 by Guinness World Records as the oldest living polar bear. Whereas the typical lifespan of a polar bear in the wild is 20 years, Debby received good care by the conservation efforts of the zoo, and the benefit of living away from the really harsh climate in the wild. Medical treatment had included dental work, and like humans beyond middle age, a daily aspirin dose to help reduce strokes. (In her lifetime, with late mate Skipper, she produced six surviving offsprings).

2014 – The Church of England adopts legislation enabling the appointment of female bishops.

2021 – Record number of Americans, over 100,000, died of drug overdoses April 2020 – April 2021 according to the CDC.

Born….

1887 – Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Alamein, British WWII Field Marshal (African campaign, D-Day) and WWI officer.

1906 – Soichiro Honda, the Japanese engineer, race car driver and industrialist who founded the Honda Motor Company, motor cycle and car manufacturer.

1920 – Gemini Ganesan, actor.

1982 – Yusuf Pathan, cricketer.

RIP….

1928 – Lala Lajpat Rai, a freedom fighter. He played a pivotal role in the Indian Independence movement. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari. He was one third of the Lal Bal Pal triumvirate. He sustained serious injuries by the police when leading a non-violent protest against the Simon Commission and died less than three weeks later.

2012 – Bal Thackeray, politician. Bal Keshav Thackeray founded the Shiv Sena, a Hindu right-wing Marathi ethnocentric party active mainly in Maharashtra.

You may have known….

The average hen lays 257 eggs a year.

{Compiled by Lt. Gen. (R) Raj Kadyan}