Today in History July 2

1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam pump

1843 – An alligator falls from sky during a thunderstorm in Charleston, South Carolina

1890 – Congress passes Sherman Antitrust Act

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 is an antitrust law that regulates competition among enterprises, passed by Congress under Benjamin Harrison’s presidency.

1900 – First zeppelin flight takes place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.

1937 – Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappear over Pacific Ocean aboard the Electra, en route to Howland Island.

Official search operations lasted until July 19th. The Navy and Coast Guard spent four million dollars, making this the most expensive air and sea search up to that time. The most widely accepted explanation for their disappearance is the crash and sink theory. It is believed  the Electra ran out of fuel and disappeared into the ocean. Estimates have the plane at a depth of 18,000 feet about 5.5 kilometers or 3.4 miles under the sea.

1957 – USS Grayback, the first submarine designed to fire guided missiles, is launched

1990 – Panic in tunnel of Mecca: 1,426 pilgrims are trampled to death

2001 – AbioCor, a self contained artificial heart, is implanted for the first time.

2002 – Steve Fossett becomes the first person to circumnavigate the Earth solo and in a balloon, without stopping, completed in just under 15 days.

1862 – William Henry Bragg, English physicist, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics with his son William Lawrence Bragg

1884 – Alfons Maria Jakob, German neurologist who contributed greatly to the understanding of multiple diseases. He was the first to identify Alper’s disease, and along with Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

1923 – Wislawa Szymborska, the poet referred to as the ‘Mozart of Poetry’, is born in Prowent, Poland. A poem by Wislawa Szymborska: