Today’s Motto: ‘Peace begins with a smile’.

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

On this day, Aug. 01…….

1619 – 1st black Americans (20) land at Jamestown, Virginia, US.
1774 – Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called “dephlogisticated air” — later known as oxygen.
1793 – The first definition was made for the metre: one ten-millionth of the northern quadrant of the Paris meridian.
1794 – Whiskey Rebellion begins. (It was a protest against the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed US federal government aimed at generating revenue to help reduce the national debt. Although the tax applied to all distilled spirits, whiskey was by far the most popular distilled beverage in the 18th-century U.S. Because of this, the excise became widely known as a “whiskey tax”).
1873 – English inventor Andrew Smith Hallidie, in the U.S. since 1852, revolutionised transportation methods in San Francisco when he successfully tested a cable car he had designed to solve the problem of providing mass transit up San Francisco’s steep hills.
1905 – Horse drawn tram cars were closed down in Bombay. This service was started on May 9, 1874 with 20 tram cars and 200 horses. The very first day of its run, the number of passengers carried was 451 and the amount earned was Rs. 85/- on the last day it had 1360 horses and carried 71,947 passengers and earned Rs.4,260/.
1941 – Parade magazine called it “…the Army’s most intriguing new gadget” The gadget was “a tiny truck which can do practically everything.” General Dwight D. Eisenhower said that America couldn’t have won World War II without it. The tiny truck was the Jeep, built at the time by the Willys Truck Company. Parade was so enthusiastic about the Jeep, that, on this day, it devoted three full pages to the vehicle.

1944 – Anne Frank’s last diary entry; 3 days later she was arrested.

1947 – Partition of India into India and Pakistan announced by British Govt. Power be transferred. Lord Mountbatten becomes Governor General of India and Muhammed Ali Jinnah, Governor General of Pakistan.
1957 – The Solar Building (Bridgers and Paxton Office Building), Albuquerque, US, was the first commercial building to be heated by the sun’s energy.
1974 – The People’s Liberation Army Navy put into service Chang Zheng 1, their first nuclear-powered submarine, designed and built in China.
1986 – Amnesty scheme for evaders of taxes in India announced.
2000 – 27 ‘yatris’ die after militants attack a ‘langar’ in a Pahalgam health resort en route to the Amarnath cave shrine.
2000 – A man in Israel become the first recipient of the Jarvik 2000, the first total artificial heart that can maintain blood flow in addition to generating a pulse.
2000 – The Lok Sabha adopts Uttar Pradesh State Reorganisation Bill paving the way for the creation of Uttaranchal the 27th State.
2003 – The last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line in Mexico.
2012- Indian power grid failure leaves over 300 million without electricity.
Born….
1882 – Purushottam Das Tandon, great leader and editor, named Rajrishi by Rabindra Nath Tagore

1932 – Meena Kumari, most famous romantic actress, also called Tragedy Queen.

1955 – Arun Lal, prolific opening batsman, cricketer (period mid-80’s).

1987 – Tapsee Pannu, Bollywood actress from Chandigarh.
RIP….

1920 – Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a prominent national leader.
1962 – Purushottamdas Tandon great leader and editor.
1999 – Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Indian-born writer. (He authored numerous works in English and Bengali. His oeuvre provides a magisterial appraisal of the histories and cultures of India, especially in the context of British colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Chaudhuri is best known for The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, published in 1951).
2008 – Harkishan Singh Surjeet, politician.
Titbits….

1976 – Liz (Elizabeth) Taylor’s 6th divorce (re-divorces Richard Burton).

You may have known….
The largest snail in the world is about 91 cm. in length.

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