18 August 2017

Interesting tidbits:

1587 – Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Governor John White of the Colony of Roanoke, becomes the first English child born in the Americas.

1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returns from a supply trip to England and finds his settlement deserted.

1634 – Urbain Grandier, accused and convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France.

1783 – A huge fireball meteor is seen across Great Britain as it passes over the east coast.

1838 – The Wilkes Expedition weighs anchor at Hampton Roads. The United States Exploring Expedition was an exploring and surveying expedition of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands conducted by the United States from 1838 to 1842. The voyage was authorized by Congress in 1836. The "Wilkes Expedition" was so named in honor of its commanding officer, United States Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. The expedition was of major importance to the growth of science in the United States, in particular the then-young field of oceanography.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Globe Tavern: Union forces try to cut a vital Confederate supply-line into Petersburg, Virginia, by attacking the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad.

1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovered helium. All ships of the air were inflated with hydrogen until 1903 when commercially available quantities of helium were discovered. That's one of the primary reasons early ballooning was considered so dangerous.

1872 - The first mail-order catalog was issued by A M Ward.

1877 – Asaph Hall discovers Martian moon Phobos. Both satellites were discovered in 1877 and were named after Phobos (panic/fear) and Deimos (terror/dread) who, in Greek mythology, accompanied their father Ares, god of war, into battle. Ares was known as Mars to the Romans. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) refers to two moons in Part 3, Chapter 3 (the "Voyage to Laputa"), in which Laputa's astronomers are described as having discovered two satellites of Mars orbiting at distances of 3 and 5 Martian diameters, and periods of 10 and 21.5 hours, respectively. The actual orbital distances and periods of Phobos, and Deimos are 1.4 and 3.5 Martian diameters, and 7.6 and 30.3 hours, respectively.

1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers. The Wrights did not get their patent for inventing heavier-than-air powered flight, but for being the first to invent a means to control such flight.

1958 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States.

Today's birthday crew:

1587 – Virginia Dare, first English child born in the Americas.

1774 – Meriwether Lewis, American soldier and explorer, leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

1867 - Percival Harrison Fawcett, British artillery officer, archaeologist and South American explorer. Along with his eldest son, Fawcett disappeared under unknown circumstances in 1925 during an expedition to find "Z" – his name for an ancient lost city, which he and others believed to be El Dorado, in the uncharted jungles of Brazil. Recent discoveries of an extensive, previously unknown civilization in the Amazon lend credence to the earlly stories of lost cities in the jungle. Fawcett was one of the people after whom Indiana Jones was modeled.

1892 – Hal Foster, Canadian-American illustrator best known as the creator of the comic strip Prince Valiant.

1925 – Brian Aldiss, British author and anthologies editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2000 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. He has received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Aldiss also invented a form of extremely short story called the Minisaga. He has edited several anthologies of the best Minisagas.

1967 – Brian Michael Bendis, American comic book writer and former artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) for his self-published, Image Comics and Marvel Comics work. With Bill Jemas and Mark Millar, Bendis was the primary architect of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, launching Ultimate Spider-Man in 2000. He relaunched the Avengers franchise with New Avengers in 2004, and has also written the Marvel "event" storylines "House of M", "Secret War", 2008's "Secret Invasion" and 2010's "Siege".

1982 - John Strangeway, best known as Steampunk Boba Fett.

Happy birthday guys!