Today’s Motto: ‘Things are beautiful if you love them’

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

On this day, 19 Jun….

40 BC – Eratosthenes, a Greek astronomer and mathematician, estimated the circumference of the Earth. He estimated at about 40,075017 km  around the Equator and 40,,007863 km aqround the Poles. Later around  525 AD (ndia astronomer Aryabhatta estimated the diameter of the earth.     Yet in 1793 French  astronomers determined the  Earth’s  cicumference at 40,008 km.  (pic credit-stock.abode.com).

1829 – Robert Peel founed s the London Metropolitan Police (also called  Bobbies).

1841 – An underwater torpedo operated by electric current was described by its inventor, Samuel Colt in a letter to U.S. President John Tyler. The invention marked the beginning of torpedo.

1888 – Thomas A. Edison, with co-inventor Ezra T. Gilliland were granted a patent for “Railway Signaling”.

1900 – Michael Pupin was granted a U.S. patent for long distance telephony (pic credit-pixel.com).

1949 – People of Chandernagar (in West Bengal), the French  Settlement, decided to merge with the Indian Union.

1966 – Shiv Sena was established  by Balasaheb Thackrey, a Hindu-Maratha intellectual,to counter the  fundamentalist elements  in Bombay and Maharashtra. He    worked with the Times  of India  as a Cartoonist  earlier.

1981 – India’s APPLE satellite, 1st to be stabilized on 3 axes, launched.

1999 – The ”people’s bus” from Calcutta rolls into Dhaka and is formally received by the PM  Vajpayee  and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina.

2023 – Heat wave with temperatures between 42C and 47C in Indian province of Uttar Pradesh, with a controversy erupting after official suggests dozens have died because of it.

2024 – World’s oldest wine, a white, revealed inside a 1st century CE Roman funeral urn mixed with a man’s ashes in a mausoleum in Carmona, Spain.

2024 – Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un sign a pact to “provide mutual assistance in case of aggression” in Pyongyang, bringing the countries theclosest since the Cold War

Born…. 1945 – Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician, leader of the National League for Democracy and human rights activist (1991 Nobel Peace Prize).

1947 – Salman Rushdie, British Indian novelist. He wrote critical biography of Emergency period in India,  of 1975, called Mid-Night’s Children and  Satanic Verses. Both the books were banned worldwide and attempts made to kill him by  fundamentalists.

1970 – Rahul Gandhi, Congress politician, 3 time MP. Son of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi . Had been Party President for some period and led pan-India Yatras. Desperate to revive the Party, Rahul has yet to make a  mark  in Indian  political  arena.

RIP…. 1991-  Jean Arther. American actor of silent film era, was popular from 1920-1950s.  Won several cine  awards.

1993 – William Golding. British, author, playwirite, novelist. He was awarded Nobel Prize in 1983.

Titbits….1269 – King Louis IX of Frances decrees all Jews must wear a badge of Shame.

1942 – Actress Marilyn Monroe (16) marries first husband James Dougherty (21), a policeman.(She married thrice thru’ her lifetime).

1981 – Heaviest known Orange (2.5 kg) exhibited, Nelspruit, South Africa.

You may have known….

Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India .Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11 th Century.

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