February 10 : People want guidance, not rhetoric.

On this day, 10 Feb....

1837 - Russian poet Alexander Pushkin is fatally injured in a duel with French officer Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès. (Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwriPushkin waitlist of the Romantic era, who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. He published his first poem at age fifteen. His most famous play  was the drama Boris Godunov. Pushkin was fatally wounded in duel with the above French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment who attempted to seduce the poet's wife, Natalya Pushkina).

1846 - British defeat Sikhs in battle of Sobraon. (The First Anglo-Sikh war began in late 1845, after a combination of increasing disorder in the Sikh empire following the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839 and provocations by the British East India Company led to the Sikh Khalsa Army invading British territory).

1859 - General Horsford defeats Begum of Oudh and Nana Sahib.  

1863 - Dubois D. Parmelee was issued a U.S. patent for an "Improvement in Artificial Legs" using a custom-moulded suction cup to receive the stump.  Atmospheric pressure held the socket in place such that "straps usually employed for this purpose can be dispended with, and at the same time a perfect fit of the bucket is attained." 

1863 - The first U.S. patent on a fire extinguishing system for buildings was granted to Alanson Crane.   The patent drawing   showed a longitudinal vertical section of a building.  The innovation catered for flooding the building through pre-laid pipes and extinguish the fire.  

1915 - US President Wilson protests to Britain on the use of US flags on British merchant ships to deceive the Germans.

1916 - Conscription begins in Britain. (Conscription in the United Kingdom has existed for two periods in modern times. The first was from 1916 to 1920, the second was from 1939 to 1960, with the last conscripted soldiers having left the service in 1963. Known as Military Service from 1916 to 1920, the system of conscription from 1939 to 1960 was called National Service, but, between 1939 and 1948, it was often referred to as "war service").

1931 - Capital of India shifted from Old Delhi to New Delhi, formal inauguration of New Delhi City took place.

1952 - India holds its first general election: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru remains in power.

1958 - Radar signals were bounced off the planet Venus by MIT engineers at Lincoln Laboratories in experiments conducted during an inferior conjuction with Venus.

1961 - The Niagara Falls hydroelectric project, the largest (at the time) hydroelectric facility in the Western world, was officially opened.

1979 - Itanagar was declared as capital of Arunachal Pradesh.

1992 - Andaman and Nicobar Islands opened for foreign travellers.

1999 - P. Gopi Chand (A.P.) and Aparna Popat (Karnataka) won the men's and women's singles titles respectively in the National badminton championship in Delhi.

Born

1970 - Kumar Vishwas, poet.

RIP

1921 - Wilhelm Conrad Von Roentgen, professor and nobel prize winner. He had discovered X-Ray.

1974 - Pahadi Sanyal, actor.

You may have known....

There are almost surely more planets like ours. Space scientists have found evidence of Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars, including an alien planet called Kepler 22-b circling in the habitable zone of a star much like ours. Whether any of these planets will harbour life is an open question.