February 24 : Leaders are not born; they arise. They emerge.

On this day, 24 Feb....

1739 - Battle of Karnal: The army of Iranian ruler Nadir Shah defeats the forces of the Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah.

M

NN 1871 - Descent of man. Charles Darwin's Descent of Man was published in London.   

1908 -  The U.S. awarded its first lighter-than-air airship contract to Capt. Thomas S. Baldwin.  

1924 - U.S. Navy officials and the media witnessed the 95-sec flight of the latest design of a helicopter built by Henry Berliner. It reached a height of 15-ft and could maneuver in a radius of 150-ft, at a speed up to about 40 mph.   Although in the past two decades there had been trials of helicopters designed by others (including Berliner's father Emile on 11 Jul 1908), this day's test is claimed to be the first controlled helicopter flight. The aircraft - the oldest intact helicopter in the world - is now loaned by the Smithsonian Institution for display at Berliner's testing site in College Park Aviation Museum, Maryland.

1931 - The Fields Medal was established to recognize outstanding contributions to mathematics. It was conceived since there was no Nobel Prize for mathematicians. Although John Charles Fields probably thought of the medal at some earlier time, the first recorded mention of it was made on 24 Feb 1931 in minutes of a committee meeting.

1938 - DuPont began commercial production of nylon toothbrush bristles for the so-called "Miracle Tuft Toothbrush." (Before 1938, the world relied on toothbrush bristles of neck hairs from wild swine from Siberia, Poland, and China. When DuPont created nylon it was the toothbrush which was the first item to benefit from the use of nylon). There were many advantages in this new brush including a dramatic reduction in production costs and the ability to control bristle texture. Whereas, bristles made with wild boar hairs fell out, wouldn't dry very well or became full of bacteria. At first, the consumers were not entirely satisfied because the early nylon bristles were very stiff and hurt the gums. By 1950, Du Pont produced softer nylon bristles.

1948 - The State of Junagarh, whose accession to India was protested by Pakistan in the UN Security Council, voted in favor of India in a popular referendum held on 20 February.

1949 - "The first recorded man-made object (two-stage rocket) to reach extraterrestrial or outer space" was launched from   New Mexico.  

1961 - Government of Madras province was renamed as Tamil Nadu.

1974 - Pakistan officially recognizes Bangladesh.

1981 - Britain's Prince Charles announces engagement to Lady Diana Spencer.

1989 - 150-million-year-old fossil egg (oldest dinosaur embryo) found.

2000 - The Subrahmanyam Committee report tabled in the Lok Sabha. The panel concluded that the Pakistan intrusion in Kargil took the Indian security establishment by surprise.

2010 - Sachin Tendulkar scored the first double century in One Day International cricket.

2014 - A 4.4 billion-year-old Crystal is discovered to be the oldest known fragment of the earth's crust.

2014 - Today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the Apple Macintosh; the computer had a 9-inch monochrome display, 128 KB of memory and a 3.5" slot for a floppy disk.

Born

1924 - Talat Mahmood, singer.

1939 - Joy Mukherjee, actor.

1948 - Jayaram Jayalalitha, actress, and politician, former chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

1963 - Sanjay 

Leela Bhansali, film director.

1972 - Pooja Bhatt, actor.

RIP

1986 - Rukmini Devi, dancer, and choreographer of the Indian classical dance form of

Bharatnatyam.

1998 - Lalita Pawar, actor.

Titbits

1979 - The Highest price ever paid for a pig, $42,500, Stamford, Texas.

You may have known....

You become taller in Space. As a change to the human body in microgravity, the spine straightens out, as gravity is not pushing you down. In fact, you can be up to as much as 5cm taller in the Space Station.