On This Day:
Saturday August 27, 2011
This is the 239th day of the year, with 126 days
remaining in 2011.
Fact of the Day: balloon/airship
"A balloon or airship is a type of aircraft that flys using
lighter-than-air gases. The first balloon flight was made in
France in 1783 by the Montgolfier Brothers. An unmanned
balloon made of linen and paper was lifted by heated air,
rose to 5,906 ft. (1,800 m), and flew 1 mile. The first
manned flight was made later that year with a Montgolfier
balloon. Hydrogen replaced hot air for filling balloons in
the same year; gas was let out by a valve for descending.
Balloons are now used for weather observations and for
recreational rides. Airships or dirigibles are
sausage-shaped balloons powered by propellers and engines.
The first successful airship was flown in 1852 with a steam
engine. In World War I, airships were use to bomb cities in
Europe. By 1929 the famous Graf Zeppelin flew around the
world but many disasters, including the fiery explosion of
the Hindenburg in 1937, brought an end to their use as
passenger vehicles. Now airships are lifted by helium and
are used for a dvertising and filming."
Holidays
Feast Day of St. Caesarius of Arles, St. David Lewis, Little
St. Hugh, St. Monica, St. Margaret the Barefooted, St.
Marcellus of Tomi, and St. Poemen.
Moldova:
Independence Day.
Events
1859
- Edwin
Drake was the first in the U.S. to strike oil -- at Titusville,
Pennsylvania.
1892
- Fire seriously damaged New
York's original Metropolitan
Opera House.
1910
- Thomas
Edison demonstrated the first "talking" pictures in
his New
Jersey laboratory.
1928
- Fifteen nations signed the Kellogg-Briand
Peace Pact, outlawing war and calling for the
settlement of disputes through arbitration. Forty-seven
other countries eventually signed the pact.
1939
- Captain Erich
Warshitz flew the first jet plane.
1954
- The first white men crossed the Arctic
Circle's Northwest
Passage in a pair of icebreakers.
1962
- The United
States launched the Mariner
2 space probe, which flew past Venus
the following December.
1990
- The British
Broadcasting Corporation launches BBC
Radio Five Live with a mixture of sports, news, and
children's programming.
1993
- The Rainbow
Bridge, connecting Tokyo's
Shibaura
Wharf and the island of Odaiba,
is completed.
2003
- Mars
makes its closest approach to Earth
in nearly 60,000 years, passing approximately 34,646,416
miles (55,758,002 kilometers) from Earth.
2006
- Comair
Flight 5191 crashed while taking off from Blue
Grass Airport in Lexington,
Kentucky.
Forty-nine of the 50 people on board the flight perished.
Births
551
B.C.E. - Confucius
(K'ung
Fu-tzu), Chinese philosopher.
1770
- Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher.
1890
- Man
Ray, American photographer, painter, filmmaker.
1908
- Lyndon
B. Johnson, the 36th President of the United
States of America (1963-1969).
1910
- Mother
Teresa (Agnes
Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Macedonian-born Nobel
Peace Prize-winner, missionary, humanitarian.
1953
- Alex
Lifeson (born Alexander Zivojinovich), Canadian
guitarist.
1959
- Juan
Fernando Cobo, Colombian painter,
illustrator,
sculptor,
and cultural promoter.
Deaths
1931
- Francis
Marion Smith, American borax
magnate.
1963
- W.E.B.
DuBois, American civil rights activist and scholar.
1964
- Gracie
Allen, American actress and comedienne.
1967
- Brian
Epstein, manager of the Beatles,
from an overdose of sleeping pills.
1971
- Bennett
Cerf, American publisher and co-founder of Random
House, and television personality.
1979
- Lord Louis
Mountbatten, killed by Irish
Republican Army (IRA)
terrorists who hid a bomb on his fishing vessel.
1990
- Stevie
Ray Vaughan, American blues
guitarist.
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