February 12 : Strong leaders are strong because they have been tempered by the negative. They have discovered the secret of combining the negative and the positive to PRODUCE their very own POWER plant.

On this day, 12 Feb....

1502 - Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal on his second voyage to India.

1851 - Gold was discovered at Lewis Ponds Creek,   Australia. English prospector, Edward Hargraves,   was travelling on horseback with his guide, John Lister, when they stopped at a water hole. Hargreaves was excited. After the California Gold Rush began on 24 Jan 1848,  these surroundings resembled the terrain he had seen there. Hargraves dug in, panned the dirt in the water hole and found a few specks of gold. After further weeks of exploration, he had a tiny amount more to take to the colonial secretary and claim a reward. (The gold found from 1851 onwards created gold rushes and led to significant immigration of workers).

1877 - A news dispatch was sent using Alexander Graham Bell's new invention, the telephone, for the first time in the U.S. 

1898 - The first car crash resulting in a fatality happened to Henry Lindfield whose electric car's steering gear failed, and he crashed at the bottom of a hill at Purley Corner, Surrey.  His passenger, 18 or 19 year-old son Bernard, was thrown clear of the vehicle and escaped almost unhurt. (The first pedestrian fatally struck by a car died on 17 Aug 1896. The first petrol-fuelled fatal car crash happened on 25 Feb1899).

1914 - "The Squaw Man", 1st feature-length film shot in Hollywood, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar Apfel, is released in the US.

1928 - Bardoli Satyagrah (Gujarat) was led by Vallabhbhai Patel against the Bombay government's decision to hike the revenue on cotton by 22 percent while its prices declined Internationally. Ultimately the government quashed the hike.

1941 - First penicillin  injection  into a human test subject was conducted by Ernst Chain and Howard Walter Florey, who developed this antibiotic. The patient, Albert Alexander, 43, an Oxford policeman had scratched his face on a rose bush. When the scratches turned septic, there followed blood poisoning and numerous abscesses. Because he was “in great pain, desperately and pathetically ill,” he was happy to be treated with the new drug. According to the attending doctor, the result was that “within four days, there was a striking improvement... he was vastly better... with obvious resolution of the abscesses.” (Due to limited available penicillin, treatment stopped, the infection returned, and he died four weeks later).

1946 - 14 killed in Calcutta riots; Muslim leader Jinnah threatens civil war.

1950 - Albert Einstein warns against hydrogen bomb.

1960 - Chinese army kills 12 Indian soldiers.

1990 - The Berlin Wall is taken down. Germany is reunited over the next year. Warsaw Pact is dissolved.

1999 - US President Bill Clinton acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial.

2013 - The International Olympic Committee announces that the sport of wrestling has been dropped from the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Born

1824 - Maha Rishi Dayanand Sarsvati , metaphysician, social reformer, religious leader founder of Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement of the Vedic tradition.

1920 - Pran Krishan Sikand, film actor often cast as the villain in Hindi cinema.

1947 - Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Indian leader of Damdami Taksal.

1949 - Gundappa Viswanath, cricketer.

1982 - Shiv Kapur, golfer.

RIP

1998 - Om Prakash, 78, Actor (comedian).

Titbits

1947 - French fashion designer Christian Dior presents his first influential collection, named the "New Look".

You may have known....

 More than one billion people in the world live no less than  $ 1 per day.

 Economic news

RBI governor clear US Policies may disrupt global markets

Govt is looking to provide the facility of premature withdrawal in small saving schemes like PPF to investors to deal with financial exigencies.

ITAT refuse to stay the demand of Rs 110 cr on flipkart in the case of reclassification of discount and marketing expenditure as capital expenditure.

Vodafone and Idea may have a new name ,Post  merger.

After the crackdown on shell cos, Sebi is now looking to pull up those indulge in insider trading and share price manipulation through ‘ layering of fund flow’.

The Singapore Exchange(SGX) said it will develop new products to provide with access to Indian securities after Indian exchanges terminated their licensing of indices and data feeding aggreements.

Aditya Birla Capital to launch ARC business this Qtr.

Telecom cos want govt to treat levies such as spectrum usage charges and licence fees ,as tax  so that they can claim the input tax credit.