This day in history

Some interesting historical events that happened today include:

 

1795 -  Reverend Samuel Henshall of Oxford, England received the first patent for a corkscrew 

 

1847 -  Charlotte Bronte finished the manuscript for Jane Eyre. I love the book and all of the film/miniseries adaptations

 

1869 -  Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, NY received the first patent for the waffle iron, revolutionizing breakfast forever. That's why today is national waffle day

 

1932 -  Amelia Earhart completed the first transcontinental non-stop flight by a woman

 

1949 -  the North Atlantic Treaty went into effect 

 

1950 -  Edith Sampson was the first African American appointed as a US representative at the UN

 

1995 -  Microsoft released to retail the Windows 95 operating system 

 

2006 -  the 9th planet Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, much to the outrage of school children everywhere 

 

2008 -  the American men's basketball team won gold at the Beijing Olympics 

 

2011 -  co-founder of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs, resigned as CEO

 

2015 -  Stephen Hawking presented his theory that black holes may provide passage to another universe

 

2019 -  Victor Vescovo reached the deepest point in the Artic becoming the first person to visit every Ocean's deepest point

 

Some interesting birthdays include:

 

Zonia Baber (1862) - geography teacher who promoted equal rights of women and encouraged a practical understanding of geography 

Ray McIntire (1918) - chemical engineer for Dow Chemical Company, he accidentally developed Styrofoam while trying to create a flexible, rubber-like insulator

Gregory Jarvis (1944) - electrical engineer who was one of the 7 Astronauts who died tragically when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after lift off

Marsha P. Johnson (1945) - leading activist for the LGBTQ community and supported shelters for LGBTQ youth

Anna Lee Fisher (1949) - the first mother in space and one of the 6 women selected to be NASA's first female Astronauts along with Shannon Lucid, Margaret Rhea Seddon, Kathryn Sullivan, Judith Resnik and Sally Ride

Orson Scott Card (1951) - known for his Ender's Game series (which is coming to film)

Oscar Hijuelos (1951) - Pulitzer Prize winning novelist of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. In 1992 it became the movie The Mambo Kings

Mike Shanahan (1952)

Steve Guttenberg (1958)

Cal Ripken (1960)

Marlee Matlin (1965)

Reggie Miller (1965)

Ava DuVernay (1972) - became the first Black woman to win the directing award at the Sundance Film Festival for her film Middle of Nowhere

Orla Fallon (1974) - Former member of Celtic Woman

Rupert Grint (1988) - best know as Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter series (as if we didn't know)