| JULY 3 - BIRTHS | |
| Samuel P. Massie | |
(source) |
 Born 3
Jul 1919
Samuel Proctor Massie is an American chemist who was the U.S. Naval Academy's first African-American professor. He graduated from high school at age 13, and received his B.S. degree at age 18. In 1943, while working on his Ph.D., Massie joined a team of scientists working for the Manhattan Project on the development of the atomic bomb. He was asked to develop liquid compounds of uranium, though this research later proved to be a dead end. His major contributions include studies in silicon chemistry, the chemistry of phenothiazine, antimalarial-antibacterial agents, and studies on environmental agents. He is recognized for encouraging disadvantaged students into science careers |
| Jesse Douglas | |
(source) |
Born 3
Jul 1897; died 7 Oct 1965.
American mathematician who was awarded one of the first two Fields Medals in 1936 for solving the Plateau problem. which had first been posed by the Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. The Plateau problem is one of finding the surface with minimal area determined by a fixed boundary. Experiments (1849) by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau demonstrated that the minimal surface can be obtained by immersing a wire frame, representing the boundaries, into soapy water. Douglas developed what is now called the Douglas functional, so that by minimizing this functional he could prove the existence of the solution to the Plateau problem. Douglas later developed an interest in group theory. |
| Alfred Korzybski | |
(source) |
Born 3
Jul 1879; died 1 Mar 1950.
Polish-born American scientist and philosopher. Korzybski was the originator of general semantics, a system of linguistic philosophy that attempts to increase humanity's capacity to transmit ideas from generation to generation (what Korzybski called man's"time-binding capacity") through the study and refinement of ways of using and reacting to language. |
| Johan Gunnar Andersson | |
| Born 3
Jul 1874; died 29 Oct 1960.
Swedish geologist and archaeologist whose work laid the foundation for the study of prehistoric China. In 1914, he accepted the offer to become adviser to the Geological survey of China, where he stayed until 1924 and became deeply involved in the excavations at Chou-k'ou-tien outside Peking. In 1921, at a cave near there, on the basis of bits of quartz that he found in a limestone region, he predicted that a fossil man would be discovered. Six years later, the first evidence of the fossil hominid Sinanthropu (Peking man) was found there. In 1923-24, he organized an expedition to Gansu province in Western china where he localised and examined some 50 sites of prehistoric China. |
|
| Charles Schuchert | |
(source) |
Born 3
Jul 1858; died 20 Nov 1942.
American invertebrate paleontologist who was a leader in the development of paleogeography, the study of the distribution of lands and seas in the geological past. During the 1880s he made a living drawing fossil illustrations for state geological surveys, while continuing to search for specimens for his own growing collection. After serving as curator of the U.S. National Museum (1894-1904) Charles Schuchert joined the Yale University faculty following their first invertebrate paleontologist, Charles E. Beecher. |
| Pierre Berthier | |
(source) |
Born 3
Jul 1782; died 24 Aug 1861.
French mineralogist and mining engineer who discovered bauxite (aluminium ore) on 23 Mar 1821 near the village Les Baux de Provence in southern France. On 24 May 1806, he joined the central laboratory at the Board of Mines. From 1816, he was chief of the laboratory at the École des Mines, and professor of assaying. Berthier analyzed kaolin along with dozens of other minerals and ores. He sought out phosphate deposits valuable for agriculture. He published a treatise (1943) of practical analytical procedures that were widely used by other mineralogists. In another field, Berthier noticed - before Mitscherlich - that isomorphism occurred whereby chemically different substances can have the same crystalline form and even co-crystallise.«  |
| André Parmentier | |
 |
Born 3
Jul 1780; died 26 Nov 1830.
(Anglicized name: Andrew Parmentier) Belgian-American, André Joseph Ghislain Parmentier, born in Enghien, Belgium, was a horticulturist, responsible for exhibiting many plant species in America. He was the second of four sons of a linen merchant. Little is known about his early life. In 1824 Parmentier emigrated to America where he lived for only six years until his untimely death in 1830. Soon after arriving he established a nursery in Brooklyn from which he supplied seeds and root stock he had imported or propagated himself. In 1825, he established the first botanic garden in Brooklyn, at Atlantic and Carleton Avenues. His work is also preserved at the Vanderbilt Mansion, Hyde Park, NY, the most impressive of the four known Parmentier designs. |
|
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| JULY 3 - DEATHS | |
| Jacob Schick | |
(source) |
 Died
3 Jul 1937 (born 16 Sep 1877)
American inventor and manufacturer of the first successful electric dry razor. He started in the razor business in 1925 to design and manufacture his invention of the Magazine Repeating Razor. By 1926, he was selling clips of blades that could be loaded into a safety razor without touching the blade to avoid cuts during handling. While this product was successful, he turned his attention to developing a dry razor. By 1927 he had designed a dry razor with a reciprocating head powered by a flexible drive shaft to an external motor. Although he marketed this model from 1929, it was not until 1931 that he had improved the idea as a new one-handed electric shaver with self-contained motor that sales took off. He lived only six year after that.«. |
| André-Gustave Citroën | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jul 1935 (born 5 Feb 1878)
French engineer and industrialist who introduced Henry Ford's methods of mass production to the European automobile industry. In 1908 he helped the Mors automobile firm increase its production from 125 cars to 1,200 cars per year. At the outbreak of World War I Citroën persuaded the French army of the need to mass-produce munitions. In 1915 he built a munitions plant whose production of shells reached 55,000 per day. Upon this success he was given the responsibility of organizing the supplying of all French munitions plants with certain vital raw materials. After the war Citroën converted his original arms factory into a plant to mass-produce a small, inexpensive automobile; the first Citroën car came off the assembly line in 1919. |
| William Crawford Gorgas | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jul 1920 (born 3 Oct 1854)
Major William Crawford Gorgas was a U.S. Army surgeon who contributed greatly to the building of the Panama Canal by introducing mosquito control to prevent yellow fever and malaria. Originally, Gorgas doubted the conclusion of Walter Reed's Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba (1900) that the mosquito was the only means by which the disease spread. Nevertheless, Gorgas supported the new policy and eventually became the most active proponent of the mosquito theory in the United States. In Cuba, he assisted in eliminating mosquito breeding grounds. In 1904, Gorgas led the ten-year anti-mosquito campaign to wipe out yellow fever in Panama. |
| JULY 3 - EVENTS | |
| Comet Nucleus Tour | |
(source) |
In 2002, NASA launched Contour (Comet Nucleus Tour), a U.S. unmanned
satellite on a mission to get
within 60 miles of a comet nucleus to study frozen samples of the solar
system from its infancy. It was launched aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket
from Cape Canaveral. After orbiting Earth until 15 Aug 2002, the satellite's
onboard rockets sent it toward an encounter with Comet Enke in 2003, then
Comet Schwassman- Wachman 3 in 2006. It is equipped with a special debris
shield so it can navigate closer to the comets and survive bombardment
from the minute particles of dust and frozen water that form a comet's
most distinctive feature, the tail. The shield includes a layer of Kevlar,
the material used in bullet-proof vests. |
| Transatlantic hot-air balloon crossing | |
(source) |
In 1987, British millionaire Richard
Branson and Per
Lindstrand became the first to cross the Atlantic by hot-air balloon,
named Virgin
Atlantic Flyer. They jumped into the sea as their craft went down
off the Scottish coast. They travelled a distance of 2,900 miles from from
Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine, in 33 hours to set a new record for hot air
ballooning. At the time, the balloon was the largest ever flown having
2.3 million cubic feet of capacity. Three years later, they crossed the
Pacific in another balloon from Japan to Arctic Canada, a distance of 6,700
miles, breaking all existing records with speeds of up to 245 miles per
hour. |
| First fatal nuclear accident in the U.S. | |
|
In 1961, three men were killed
in
the first fatal nuclear accident in the U.S. when an experimental reactor
exploded. The Stationary Low-Power Plant No.1 (SL-1), was part of the National
Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), near Idaho Falls, Idaho. An 80-lb control
rod was lifted by hand beyond its safe position, causing a core meltdown
and explosion of the reactor. Four days were spent to devise a safe method
to recover one of the corpses. All three bodies were extremely radioactivity,
causing problems for their burial. Clean-up took 18 months. Investigators
were never able to determine why this ''abnormal act'' occurred. Two decades
later, a documentary
speculated one of the men had marital problems and sabotaged the reactor.« |
|
| Heart surgery | |
 |
In 1952, the first surgical operation in the U.S. to expose the heart's
mitral valve for a prolonged time was undertaken by Dr Forest Dewey Dodrill
at the Harper Hospital, Detroit, Mich. The patient, a 41-year-old man,
was provided with The Michigan Heart as a substitute for the lower left
ventricle. |
| Fastest steam locomotive | |
(source) |
In 1938, the Mallard was documented
as the world's fastest steam locomotive travelling at 126 mph (202-km/h)
at milepost 90¼, on straight, slightly downhill tracks, between
Little Bytham and Essendine, on the East Coast Main line of the London
and North Eastern Railway, in England. It was hauling six coaches and a
dynamometer car recording the speed, with a total tare of 240 tons. The
Mallard was designed as a streamlined express locomotive with an
aerodynamic body, 70-ft long, weighing 165 tons with tender. Its build
date was 3 Mar 1938, and it was used in service until it was retired 1963.
After restoration in the 1980's it made a few special runs, and is now
in the National Railway Museum, York. |
| Foam rubber | |
 |
In 1929, foam rubber was developed at the Dunlop Latex Development Laboratories
in Birmingham. British scientist E.A. Murphy whipped up the first batch
in 1929, using an ordinary kitchen mixer to froth natural latex rubber.
His colleagues were unimpressed - until they sat on it. Within five years
it was everywhere, on motorcycle seats, on London bus seats, Shakespeare
Memorial Theatre seats, and eventually in mattresses. |
| Transpacific cable | |
 |
In 1903, the first cable
across the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii, Midway,
Guam and Manila was completed and spliced at Manila, Philippine Islands.
After testing, the first official message was sent the next day. A cable
across the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii had already been
established at the beginning of the same year, with its first official
message sent on 1 Jan 1903. This technological event ended Hawaii’s isolation
by connecting it to the mainland U.S. and the rest of the world. The cable
was a mainstay of communications into the early 1950s when newer technology
rendered it obsolete. (The 1902 all-British telegraph line from Canada
to Australia and New Zealand was the first line to cross the Pacific Ocean.) |
| Narrow-gauge locomotive | |
In 1871, the first U.S.-made, narrow-gauge
locomotive - for mountain use - was built by the Baldwin Locomotive
Works in Philadephia, Pa. On this day, it was first used by the Denver
and Rio Grande Western Railway Company. Called the Montezuma,
from
a location
it served, it had a 3-foot guage, a length of 30-ft, and a total weight
of 25,000-lb. It had 9-in cylinders with a 16-in stroke. Narrow gauge was
more adaptable to rough terrain, required less earthworks, permitted steeper
gradients and sharper curves - as well as costing less to build than standard
gauge lines. Narrow-gauge railroad could be used hauling passengers or
freight. Logging, mining and industries and factories also operated narrow
gauge lines. |
|
| Benz auto | |
 |
In 1886, Karl Benz drove the first automobile in the world in Mannheim,
Germany, reaching a top speed of 10 mph. |
| Linotype newspaper | |
(source) |
In 1886, the first U.S. newspaper page set by Linotype
was the New York
Daily Tribune for this day's editorial page. Ottmar
Mergenthaler (born in Württemberg, Germany on 11 May 1854) had produced
the world’s first linecasting machine; the time-consuming process of setting
type by hand was eliminated. The machine was originally called "Blower"
and later renamed "Linotype" (short for "Line of type"). Within six years
of this day's demonstration, 1,000 Linotype machines
had been made. By 1904, worldwide there were 10,000 Linotype casting machines
in service. |
| Pluto | |
 |
In 1841, John Couch Adams decided to determine the position of an unknown
planet by the irregularities it causes in the motion of Uranus. He entered
in his journal; "Formed a design in the beginning of this week in investigating,
as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion
of Uranus... in orderto find out whether they may be attributed to the
action of an undiscovered planet beyond it..." In Sep 1845 he gave James
Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory, accurate information on
where the new planet, as yet unobserved, could be found; but unfortunately
the planet was not recognized at Cambridge until much later, after its
discovery at the Berlin Observatory on 23 Sep 1846. |
| Strawberry | |
Keens Imperial (source) |
In 1806, Michael Keens, a market gardener of Isleworth near London, exhibited
the first cultivated strawberry
that combined size, flavor, and color at the Royal Horticultural Society.
The 600 strawberry varieties found today stem from five or six original
wild species, and are a member of the rose family. The wild, small, fragrant
forest strawberry of Europe was available to the Romans in the Middle Ages.
Europeans discovered wild strawberries in Virginia when their ships landed
there in 1588, grown by local American Indians who had cultivated strawberries
as early as 1643. When Virginia sent a better flavored, strawberry to England
in 1642, and a large white strawberry from Chile was introduced in 1806,
the big fruit we know today, emerged. Strawberries are unique, because
they are the only fruit with seeds on the outside. |
