February 13 : Great Groups need to know that the person at the top will fight like a tiger for them.

On this day, 13 Feb....

1601 - John Lancaster leads first East India Company voyage from London.

1633 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition for professing the belief that the earth revolves around the sun. Enemies of Galileo had convinced Pope Urban VIII that the character Simplicio in the 'Dialogue' ineptly defending the Ptolemaic system, was a thinly veiled caricature of himself. A document was produced alleging that Bellarmine in 1616 forbade Galileo to discuss Copernican ideas in any way. He faced two charges: disobeying Bellarmine's order and misleading censors who published his book. Humiliated and threatened with torture, Galileo had no choice but to admit guilt, and “abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies...”

1822 - A U.S. patent was issued for the first practical grass mowing machine to Jeremiah Bailey of Chester County, Pennsylvania, said to mow ten acres a day. It was horse-drawn.

1832 - First appearance of cholera in London.

1856 - East India Company captured Lucknow along with the Avadh Kingdom.

1875 - The first well-documented U.S. birth of quintuplets was five boys born at Watertown, Wisconsin, to Mrs. Edna Beecham Kanouse. Though the babies appeared normally developed, one was stillborn, three died within minutes of delivery, and the remaining one survived only a few hours. Their total birth weight was 10-lb 2-oz. The doctor and the father who fetched him arrived after the birth, delayed by heavy snow. (Until the 28 May 1934 birth of the famous healthy Dionne quintuplets in Canada, the longest known survival of a quint was 55 days, born in Lisbon, Portugal).

1895 - A French patent was issued for the Cinématographe, a combined motion-picture camera and projector.

1922 - The Indian National Congress suspends its civil disobedience campaign in the face of mounting violence.

1946 - The world's first electronic digital computer, ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was first demonstrated at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, by the late John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. The ENIAC machine occupied a room 30 by 50 feet. Its birth lay in WW II as a classified military project known only as Project PX. The ENIAC is historic because it laid the foundations for the modern electronic computing industry.

1960 - France detonated their first plutonium bomb from a 330-foot tower at the Reggane base in the Sahara in what was then French Algeria.

2010 - A bombing at the German Bakery in Pune kills 10 and injures 60 more.

Born

1879 - Sarojini Naidu "Nightingale of India". She holds a place of pride among the women freedom fighters of India. She took an active part in Salt Satyagraha and represented Indian women in Round Table Conference, London.

1945 - Vinod Mehra, actor.

RIP

2008 - Rajendra Nath actor.

2012 - Akhlaq Mohammed Khan Shahryar, lyricist.

Titbits

1959 - Barbie doll goes on sale.

You may have known....

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.