Today’s Motto: ‘I got kicked out of library for moving all the law books into the fiction section’.

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

On this day, July 29……….

1588 – Attacking Spanish Armada defeated and scattered by English defenders.
(The Spanish Armada of 130 ships sailed from A Coruña with the purpose of escorting an army from Flanders to invade England. It was a failure and of the initial 130 ships over a third failed to return. As Martin and Parker explain, “Philip II attempted to invade England, but his plans miscarried, partly because of his own mismanagement, and partly because the defensive efforts of the English and their Dutch allies prevailed. The expedition was the largest engagement of the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War of1585–1604. The following year, England organised a similar large-scale campaign against Spain, the “counter-Armada of 1589”, which was also unsuccessful, had serious economic consequences and saw the loss of many English lives and ships).
1870 – America’s first asphalt pavement was laid in Newark. Previously, coal tar was used for many pavements laid in the 1860s. The first recorded asphalt pavement in the U.S. was a sand mix placed in front of the City Hall in Newark in 1870.
1874 – Major Walter Copton Wingfield patents a portable tennis court. (Major Walter Clopton Wingfield was a Welsh inventor and a British Army officer who was one of the pioneers of lawn tennis. In the late 1860s Wingfield was one of the persons experimenting with a lawn version of tennis. Vulcanised bouncing rubber balls offered an opportunity to develop from the indoor game of real tennis and there were many who had the leisure time to pursue the sport and who owned croquet lawns that could be adapted for it. Wingfield patented a New and Improved Court for Playing the Ancient Game of Tennis and began marketing his game in the spring of 1874 selling boxed sets that included rubber balls imported from Germany as well as a net, poles, court markers, rackets and an instruction manual. Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1997, as the founder of Modern Lawn Tennis, an example of the original equipment for the sport and a bust of Wingfield himself can be seen at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum (pic credit-On This Day).

1899 – 1st motorcycle race, Manhattan Beach, New York.
1914 – Transcontinental telephone service began. It was celebrated with a telephone conversation between Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco and Alexander Graham Bell in New York City repeating their historic conversation from 1876.
1927 – The first iron lung (electric respirator) was installed at Bellevue hospital in New York for the post war polio epidemic. The first iron lung was developed at Harvard University by Phillip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw built with two vacuum cleaners.
1949 – BBC radio begins broadcasting.
1979 – Choudhary Charan Singh was sworn in as the fifth Prime Minister of India heading the Janata (S)-Congress coalition. He held this office till January 14, 1980.
1980 – India won Gold Medal in Hockey at Moscow Olympics.

1983 – First Pilot-less Aeroplane of India was tested successfully by the Aeronautical Development Establishment near Kolar. (initial Drone tech trials)

1987 – India and Sri Lanka sign peace accord at Colombo in a bid to end the 5-year old ethnic trouble. This stance taken thereafter by the LTTE added several dimensions to the scenario. It was a multi-purpose role that the Navy has been required to play.
1993 – Two bills seeking to delink religion from politics and to empower the EC to debar parties with religious names introduced in Lok Sabha.
1999 – Bandh in Mumbai to protest against the verdict barring Bal Thackeray from voting and contesting any election till December 10, 2001.
2005 – Astronomers announce their discovery of dwarf planet Eris.

2015- Microsoft launches Windows 10.
Born….

1904 – J. R. D. Tata, industrialist, pilot.

1953 – Anup Jalota, famous Bhajan and Ghazal Samrat, classical singer.

1959 – Sanjay Dutt, Bollywood actor.
RIP….

2003 – Johnny Walker, Bollywood actor, comedian (video credit -Ultra Bollywood)

2009 – Gayatri Devi, Ex-Maharani of Jaipur and political leader.
You may have known.
It might sound bizarre, but our warm and cozy beds are actually responsible for killing an average of 737 Americans a year, usually because they have fallen out. In fact, your bed is more likely to kill you than a terrorist is!

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