Motto for Today: ‘Fall nine times, stand up tenth time.’

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

On this day, May.24……….

1844 – Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the message, “What hath God wrought!” from the U.S. Supreme Court room Washington D.C. to his partner, Alfred Vail, in the Mount Clare station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co. Vail responded by retransmitting the same message back to Morse. Thus, Morse formally opened America’s first telegraph line, an event that inaugurated America’s telegraph industry.

                                                                                                         (images credit-Womans’ World and All That’s Interesting)*

1862 – A field telegraph was used for the first time in U.S. warfare. This was the time of the American Civil War. An army General’s headquarters was connected by wire to an advance guard several miles away.

1862 – The first trial run of a train was made in London through the Metropolitan underground line, the world’s first underground passenger railway.

1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

1991 – The body of Rajiv Gandhi was cremated in New Delhi. (Gandhi’s death signaled the end of the Nehru dynasty’s rule over India. His two children were too young to assume the leadership of the nation. There was pressure for Sonia Gandhi to succeed her husband, but she refused).

1993 – Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia after 30-year civil war.

2018 – At least 14 children reported mauled to death by wild dogs near Khairabad,( India) after closure of slaughterhouses.

2021 – India’s official COVID-19 death toll passes 300,000 (303,720), the third country to do so, with experts saying it is a vast undercount.

2022 – Leaders of the QUAD nations, America, Australia, India and Japan meet in Tokyo, focusing on Chinese aggressions in the Indo-Pacific.

Born….

1686 – Gabriel Fahrenheit, inventor of the alcohol thermometer (1709) and mercury thermometer (1714). He also developed the Fahrenheit temperature scale.

1955 – Rajesh Roshan, music director.

1965 – Rajdeep Sardesai, journalist.

RIP….

1999 – Noted wrestling coach Dronacharya awardee Guru Hanuman; passed away in a road accident near Meerut.

2000 – Majrooh Sultanpuri, poet and songwriter. Real name Asrar Ul Hassan Khan. He changed it to ‘Majrooh’, which means ‘wounded’ and suffixed it with the place he was from in UP. Starting with ‘Shajahan’ he wrote lyrics for over 300 films. The song ‘Chahunga main tujhe saanjh savere’ from ‘Dosti’, won him the first and only Filmfare Award. (One of his most famous verses was ‘Main akela hee chala tha janib-e manzil magar, log saath aate gaye aur caravan banta gaya’).

Titbits….

1830 – “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by Sarah Josepha Hale is published. (It is an original poem by Sarah Josepha Hale and was inspired by an actual incident. As a young girl, Mary Sawyer {later Mary Tyler} kept a pet lamb that she took to school one day at the suggestion of her brother. This expectedly led to a commotion. Mary recalled: “Visiting school that morning was a young man by the name of John Roulstone. The young man was very much pleased with the presence of the lamb in school; and the next day he rode across the fields on horseback to the little old schoolhouse and handed me a slip of paper which had written upon it the three original stanzas of the poem…”

There are two competing theories on the origin of this poem. One holds that Roulstone wrote the first four lines and that the final twelve lines, less childlike than the first, were composed by Sarah Josepha Hale; the other is that Hale was responsible for the entire poem).

You may have known….

The low pressure and humidity in airplanes change the sensitivity of people’s taste buds, so airlines food is made sweeter and saltier than normal.

 

 

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