| OCTOBER 5 - BIRTHS | |
| Pavel Romanovich Popovich | |
(source) |
 Born 5
Oct 1930
Soviet cosmonaut who piloted the Vostok 4 spacecraft, launched 12 Aug 1962. He and Andriyan G. Nikolayev, who was launched a day earlier in Vostok 3, became the first two men to be in space simultaneously. He collected experimental data on the possibility of establishing a direct link between two space ships; coordination of astronauts' operations; and the effects of identical spaceflight conditions on the human organism. Problems with his life support system dropped the cabin temperature to 10 degrees Centigrade. He still managed to conduct experiments,and take colour motion pictures of the terminator between night and day. He subsequently commanded the flight of Soyouz 14 launched 3 Jul 1974 which docked with the Salyut 3 space station. |
| Reinhard Selten | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1930
German mathematician who shared the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics with John F. Nash and John C. Harsanyi for their development of game theory, a branch of mathematics that examines rivalries among competitors with mixed interests. Selten achieved a decisive breakthrough in game theory: The introduction of the concepts of sub-game perfect and perfect equillibria reduced the set of Nash equillibria drastically by excluding threats that are not credible. Thus, more precise and sensible predictions can be made for many games, e.g. markets. Additionally, game theory has found applications in all of social sciences and even in biology. |
| Pierre Dansereau | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1911
French-Canadian plant ecologist who was a pioneer in the study of the dynamics of forests and who attempted to extend ecological concepts to the modern human environment. Dansereau worked in the Montreal and the New York Botanical Gardens, and has directed ecological research centres. He has written many books on ecology and the urban environment. |
| Robert Hutchings Goddard | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1882; died 10 Aug 1945
American professor, physicist and inventor, "father of modern rocketry". From age 17 Goddard was interested in rockets (1899) and by 1908 he conducted static tests with small solid-fuel rockets. He developed mathematical theory of rocket propulsion (1912) and proved that rockets would functioned in a vacuum for space flight (1915). During WW I, Goddard developed rocket weapons. He wrote A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in 1919. Over the following two decades he produced a number of large liquid-fuel rockets at his shop and rocket range at Roswell, N.M. During WW II he developed rocket-assisted takeoff of Navy carrier planes and variable-thrust liquid-fuel rocket motors. At the time of his death Goddard held 214 patents in rocketry. |
| Giorgio Abetti | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1882; died 24 Aug 1982.
Italian astronomer known for his studies of the sun at the University of Padua where was director at the Arcetri Observatory (1921-52), taking over from his father who also held the post (1894-1921). In 1913, Giorgio Abetti took part, as a geodetic and geophysical astronomer, in the De Filippi expedition in Karakorum, Himalaya and Turkestan. He went on expeditions to observe eclipses of the sun, including one to Siberia to observe the total eclipse on 19 Jun 1936 and in 1952 to Sudan. With the advice of George Hale, he built a solar tower at the observatory (opened 1925). He wrote a popular text on the sun, a handbook of astrophysics (1936) and a popular history of astronomy (1963). |
| Peyton Rous | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1879; died 16 Feb 1970.
American pathologist whose discovery of cancer-inducing viruses earned him a share of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1966. Rous joined the Rockefeller Institute in New York as a pathologist in 1909. The same year, a local farmer brought a chicken with a tumour for testing. Having determined it to be a sarcoma, Rous discovered that it could be "transferred" into a healthy chicken by grafting tumour cells. Surprisingly, injecting cell-free filtrates from the tumour also led to sarcomas in healthy chickens. By 1914, Rous's laboratory had discovered three distinct types of avian sarcomas. Although he did not isolate specific agents, Rous postulated that chicken tumours were due to "filterable agents"-eventually identified as Rous sarcoma virus. |
| Louis Lumiere | |
(source) |
Born 5 Oct 1864; died 6 Jun 1948.
Louis Jean Lumiere was a French inventor, who worked with his brother Auguste, to make pioneering motion-picture equipment. Louis invented the 25-lb "Cinématographe" twin-function projector and camera, which improved on Edison's Kinetoscope by adding a intermittent film motion mechanism (based on the sewing machine). On 13 Feb 1895, they jointly patented the device (as was their custom). It was first demonstrated to an invited audience on 22 Mar 1895, showing their first film to an invited audience who viewed La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumière showing workers leaving the Lumière factory. The hugely successful first public screening on 28 Dec 1895 of their films in Paris was the "birth" of the cinema.« [Image right: Frame from La Sortie des ouviers film.] |
| William Hamilton Gibson | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1850; died 16 Jul 1896.
American illustrator, author, and naturalist. Gibson had sketched flowers and insects when he was only eight years old, had long been interested in botany and entomology, and had acquired great skill in making wax flowers. His first drawings of a technical character were published in 1870. He drew for many periodicals, his most popular works being a long series of nature articles published in Harper's Weekly, Scribner's Monthly, and Century. Gibson was an expert photographer, and his drawings had a nearly photographic and almost microscopic accuracy of detail. [Image: Pink Lady's Slipper illustration by Gibson.] |
| Robert Parker Parrott | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1804; died 24 Dec 1877.
U.S. inventor who developed the rifled cannon known as the Parrott gun, the most formidable cannon of its time. He graduated from West Point Military Academy (1824), and spent 12 years with the Army, gaining ordinance experience. He was the army's inspector of ordinance at the private firm, West Point Foundry at Cold Spring when he retired from the army to become its civilian superintendent (31 Oct 1836) for 41 years. He perfected and manufactured a 10 pounder rifled cannon. It used a projectile with an encircling brass ring that expanded upon firing to fit the rifling grooves of the barrel. He patented both in 1861. Production of 20- and 30-pounder designs followed. During the Civil War years, he developed the Parrott sight and fuze. |
| William Scoresby | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1789; died 21 Mar 1857.
English explorer, scientist, clergyman, born in Whitby, who pioneered in the scientific study of the Arctic and contributed to the knowledge of terrestrial magnetism. Following the advice of Sir Joseph Banks, Scoresby recorded the natural phenomena that he saw on his Arctic voyages because such observations were rare. His drawings and paintings showed whaling incidents, animals and plants never seen by Europeans. He drew snowflakes from microscope observation, showing the hexagonal shapes that we know so well as a result of his work. He realized that the colours of the Arctic Sea were due plankton. He improved upon Admiralty compasses and eventually all navy ships were supplied with Scoresby compasses. |
| Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac | |
(source) |
Born 5
Oct 1778; died 9 May 1867.
French librarian and paleographer remembered for his own writings and for editing several works of his younger brother, Jean-François Champollion, the brilliant Egyptologist who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics. |
| Baron Guillaume Dupuytren | |
(source) |
Born 5 Oct 1777; died 8 Feb 1835.
French surgeon and pathologist, noted as diagnostician, lecturer, and surgeon; best known for his development of surgical procedures for alleviating "Dupuytren's contracture" (1832), in which fibrosis of deep tissues of the palm causes permanent retraction of one or more fingers. He wrote about congenital dislocation of the hip, the nature of callus formation, subungal exostosis, the Trendelenburg sign, tenotomy in torticollis, differentiated osteosarcoma from "spina ventosa", and a treatise on gunshot wounds. Dupuytren was not an original investigator in surgical subjects, but he was an excellent observer and a great worker, who knew how to adopt and adapt others' ideas very practically. He founded the chair of pathological anatomy at the Univ. of Paris. |
| OCTOBER 5 - DEATHS | |
| Maurice Wilkins | |
(source) |
 Died
5 Oct 2004 (born 15 Dec 1916)
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist, whose X-ray diffraction studies of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) were significant in the determination of the molecular structure of DNA accomplished by James Watson and Sir Francis Crick. For this work the three scientists shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.«  The
Third Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography of Maurice Wilkins,
by Maurice Wilkins. |
| Seymour Cray | |
 |
Died
5 Oct 1996 (born 28 Sep 1925)
Computer engineer who pioneered the use of transistors in computers and later developed massive supercomputers to run business and government information networks. Charles J. Murray (1997). The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-04885-2. |
| Earl S(ilas) Tupper | |
(source) |
Died
5 Oct 1983 (born 28 Jul 1907)
Earl Silas Tupper invented Tupperware. From working at DuPont (1937-38), he gained experience in plastics design and struck out on his own. In the '40s, plastic products had a reputation for being brittle, greasy, smelly and generally unreliable. Tupper's contributions were twofold. First, he developed a method for purifying black polyethylene slag, a waste product produced in oil refinement, into a substance that was flexible, tough, non-porous, non-greasy and translucent. Second, he developed the Tupper seal, an airtight, watertight lid modeled on the lid for paint containers. Together, these innovations laid the foundations for the future success of Tupperware. His company had great success by marketing through Brownie Wise's idea of Tupperware parties. |
| Claude-Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer | |
(source) |
Death reported 5 Oct 1982 (born 6 Mar 1898)
French archaeologist who was the first excavator at Ras Shamra in Syria. The site, Ugarit, dates back to the sixth or seventh millennium B.C. nestled in the shadow of the Jebel al-Aqra (Mount Sanpanu) by the Mediterranean Sea, 10-km north of present-day Syrian port, Latakia. It was discovered accidentally (1928) when a peasant's plow hit the stones of a vaulted tomb. In 1929, Schaeffer began a lifetime excavating there. His stratographic soundings revealed five separate archaeological levels. The uppermost dates from the Late Bronze Age, 1600-1200 B.C., and the time of Ugarit's demise. The deeper levels date from the Middle Bronze Age, Early Bronze Age, Chalcolithic age of stone and copper, and the Neolithic.« [Image: view of a small section of the ruins at Ugarit.] Vounous:
C.F.A. Schaeffer's Excavations..., by Anne-Elizabeth
Dunn-Vaturi, Claude F.-A. Schaeffer, et al. |
| Alfred Kroeber | |
(source) |
Died
5 Oct 1960 (born 11 June 1876)
Alfred Louis Kroeber was an influential American anthropologist of the first half of the 20th century, whose primary concern was to understand the nature of culture and its processes. He graduated from Columbia University in 1896, and received a Ph.D. under Franz Boas there in 1901, then moved west to found the anthropology department at the University of California at Berkeley where he remained until 1946. His chief scholarly interest was California Indians. He developed the concept of cultures as patterned wholes, each with its own style, and each undergoing a growth process analogous to that of a biological organism. Kroeber also made valuable contributions to the archaeology of New Mexico, Mexico, and Peru. |
| Alfred M Tozzer | |
(source) |
Died
5 Oct 1954 (born 4 Jul 1877)
Alfred M(arston) Tozzer was a U.S. anthropologist and archaeologist who was an authority on the culture and language of the Maya Indians of Mexico and Central America. He conducted his initial anthropological fieldwork in California and New Mexico among the Wintun and Navajo nations during his undergraduate summers in 1900 and 1901, focusing on linguistics. He led (1909-10) an expedition to Guatemala, finding ruins at Holmul. His most important works on the Maya include Maya Grammar (1921) and Chichen Itza and its Center of Sacrifice (1957), a major synthesis of American prehistory. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard, where he taught for over 40 years (1905-47). |
| Joachim Barrande | |
(source) |
Died
5 Oct 1883 (born 11 Aug 1799)
French geologist and paleontologist. He settled in Prague (1832), at first as an engineer. While surveying the proposed route for a horse-drawn railway, he became interested in the local fossil-bearing rocks there. From 1840, he turned to the study of these fossils in the strata of the central Bohemian basin. In his lifetime, he gathered some 3500 species of graptolites, brachiopoda, mollusca, trilobites and fishes, showing a wide variety of life forms in the Early Paleozoic era. (The Paleozoic era spanned 540-245 million years ago.) He meticulously recorded his findings in Système silurien du centre de la Bohême, which remains a fine reference work. The first volume was published in 1852, and was followed by 20 more in his lifetime. He opposed Darwin's theory of evolution, instead advocating the theory of catastrophes.« |
| William Lassell | |
(credit) |
Died
5 Oct 1880 (born 18 Jun 1799)
William Lassell was a wealthy amateur English astronomer. He set up an observatory at Starfield, near Liverpool. England, He built his own 24" diameter telescope, and devised steam-driven equipment for grinding an polishing the speculum metal mirror. This telescope was the first of its size to be mounted "equitorially" to allow easy tracking of the stars. He discovered Triton, a moon of Neptune, and Ariel and Umbriel, satellites of Uranus. Later, Lassell built a 48" diameter telescope with th same design and took it to Malta for observations with clearer skies.  |
| OCTOBER 5 - EVENTS | |
| Rocket sled speed record | |
In 1982, an unmanned rocket sled reached a record 9,851 kph or 6,121 mph
(Mach 8) over the 9.5 mile-long rail track at White Sands Missile Test
Base, New Mexico. |
|
| Coaxial cable intercity telecast | |
|
In 1936, the first intercity telecast in the U.S. using coaxial cable was
transmitted from New York City to Philadelphia. On 10 Jun of the same year,
the first coaxial cable telecast was transmitted from Radio City, New York
City to a transmitter on the top of the Empire State Building, a distance
of about 1.5 miles. It was not until 4 Sep 1951 that the first U.S. coast-to-coast
telecast was made between New York City and San Francisco, Cal. |
|
| Pacific flight | |
|
In 1931, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon completed the first nonstop flight
across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in Washington state about 41 hours after
leaving Japan. |
|
| First female US transcontinental pilot | |
(source) |
In 1930, Laura Ingalls
(1901-1967) was the first woman to make a transcontinental airplane flight
departed from Roosevelt Field, New York. She flew her D.H. Gipsy Moth
bi-plane to Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, Cal., making nine stops
and arriving four days later. She logged 30 hrs 27 mins of flying time.
On 18 Oct 1930 she made the return flight in the shorter time of 25 hrs
35 mins. Earlier in 1930, she established the Women's Loop record over
Lambert-St. Louis Field on 4 May with 344 loops which she bettered 26 May
at Muskogee, Okla. by making 980 consecutive continuous loops in 3:40.
By 13 Aug, she had also established the world barrel-roll record for men
and women of 714 rolls over Lambert-St. Louis Field. |
| Cepheid variable star | |
|
In 1923, Edwin Hubble identified the first Cepheid variable star. |
|
| Water bicycle | |
|
In 1869, the first U.S. patent for a "water velocipede" was granted to
F.A. Spofford and Matthew G. Raffington of Columbus, Ohio (No. 95,531).
A number of similar
devices were patented by the end of the nineteenth century. |
|
| Gregorian calendar | |
|
In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was introduced in Italy, other Catholic
countries (Oct. 5 became Oct. 15); Britain and its colonies did not adopt
until years later. |
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