1328 – Antipope Nicholas V, a claimant to the papacy, is consecrated in Rome by the Bishop of Venice.
1733 – Maria Theresa crowned Queen of Bohemia in Prague
1835 – Charles Darwin visits copper mines in North Chile
1908 – Wireless Radio Broadcasting is patented by Nathan B Stubblefield
He was born in Kentucky just before the Civil War. The second of seven sons of a lawyer prosperous enough to educate his sons by tutors, Nathan took an interest in science by reading monthly editions of Scientific American and Electrical World. He married, had nine children and became a melon farmer on his 85 acres.
In the town square of Murray, Kentucky, Mr. Stubblefield gave demonstrations of voice and music transmission in a wireless way. Today, we use a different method for radio transmission, but Stubblefield is credited with pushing the quest for wireless communication over great distances.
Successful demonstrations occurred in Philadelphia and Washington DC where he was the first to transmit wirelessly from a boat to shore.
Interestingly enough his demonstration in New York City was less successful because lower Manhattan had widespread use of alternating current which cause electrical interference.
At one point he joined the company of another wireless inventor but resigned as a director in 1911 wary of what he desrcibed in a letter as, “sometimes-fraudelent stock promotion practices”.
He went back to raising melons and the other principals of the company were later convicted of fraud.
Stubblefield said of his ideas and inventions to a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter in 1902, “… it is capable of sending simultaneous messages from a central distributing station over a very wide territory. For instance, anyone having a receiving instrument, which would consist merely of a telephone receiver and a signalling gong, could, upon being signalled by a transmitting station in Washington, or nearer, if advisable, be informed of weather news. My apparatus is capable of sending out a gong signal, as well as voice messages. Eventually, it will be used for the general transmission of news of every description.”
1926 – Airship Norge is first vessel to fly over North Pole
1928 – Benito Mussolini ends woman’s rights in Italy
1932 – Body of kidnapped son of Charles Lindbergh is found in Hopewell NJ
1941 – Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world’s first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin.
1942 – Nazi U-boat sinks American cargo ship at mouth of Mississippi River
1951 – First Hydrogen Bomb test, on Enewetak Atoll
1963 – Bob Dylan walks out of the “Ed Sullivan Show”
1965 – Israel and West Germany exchange letters beginning diplomatic relations
1989 – Last graffiti covered NYC subway car retired
1997 – Russia and Chechnya sign peace deal after 400 years of conflict
2008 – 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (measuring around 8.0 magnitude) occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people
Birthdays
1670 – Frederick Augustus I/ August II, the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (reputed to have sired 355 children) (d. 1733)
1820 – Florence Nightingale, Florence Italy, nurse (Crimean War)
1907 – Katharine Hepburn, actress (Adam’s Rib, On Golden Pond)
1912 – Archibald Cox, U.S. Solicitor General (d. 2004)
1925 – Lawrence “Yogi” Berra, catcher/coach/manager
1936 – Frank Stella, American painter
1937 – George Carlin, comedian (7 dirty words, AM & FM, Carwash)
Deaths
1856 – Jacques Philippe Marie Binet, French mathematician (b. 1786)
1985 – Jean Debuffet, French painter/sculptor, dies
2008 – Robert Rauschenberg, American artist (b. 1925)
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches