1834 – Cyrus McCormick patented the first practical
mechanical reaper for farming. His invention allowed farmers to more than double their crop size. The invention freed up the Grim Reaper to develop his movie and television career.
1844 – Charles Goodyear was granted a U.S. patent for the invention of
vulcanized rubber. This remarkable discovery was later used extensively for making pointy alien ears…
1912 – Alan Turing was born. Turing was a
pioneer in computer science and a mathematician who played a pivotal role in breaking the German enigma codes. He is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Unfortunately the British establishment of the time displayed no intelligence, natural or artificial, convicted him for homosexual acts, chemically castrated him and persecuted him until he committed suicide.
1929 – Scientists at
Bell Laboratories in New York revealed a system for
transmitting television pictures. Now you know who to blame for reality TV, two year pre-election broadcasts and endless streams of advertising. Exactly twenty years later it brought the world “
Captain Video and His Video Rangers” – the first science-fiction series to be shown on American television.
1954 – The world’s
first atomic power station opened at
Obninsk, near Moscow. Ten years later Russia’s first super-hero, the Crimson Dynamo (Anton Vanko), first appeared… just sayin’
1997 – The
Russian space station Mir was hit by an unmanned cargo vessel. Much of the power supply was knocked out and the station’s
Spektr module was severely damaged. The British Government strongly denied that Agent 007 had any involvement in the incident.
2000 – U.S. and British
researchers announced that they had completed a rough draft of the
Human Genome. This map defines the genetic makeup of human beings and took ten years to complete. Many have compared this to a map of London’s Underground rail network, though observers have stated that the Human Genome is far easier to understand.