February 17 : The evidence of quality of your leadership, is known from the type of leaders that emerge out of your leadership.

On this day, Feb 17....

1698 - Aurangzeb captured Jinjee fort, seat of Maratha power, after eight-year siege. (Gingee Fort or Senji Fort is one of the surviving forts in Tamil Nadu. The fort is so fortified, that Shivaji, the Maratha king, ranked it as the "most impregnable fortress in India" and it was called the "Troy of the East" by the British. The Fort complex is on three hillocks: Krishnagiri to the north, Rajagiri to the west and Chandrayandurg to the southeast).

1817 - 1st US city lit by gas (Baltimore).

1818 - Bicycle forerunner. Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun patented the "draisine", the forerunner of the bicycle.

1867 - 1st ship passes through Suez Canal.

1869 - Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. Dmitri Mendeleev cancelled a planned visit to a factory and stayed at home working on the problem of how to arrange the chemical elements in a systematic way. To begin, he wrote each element and its chief properties on a separate card and arranged these in various patterns. Eventually he achieved a layout that suited him and copied it down on paper. Later that same day he decided a better arrangement by properties was possible and made a copy of that, which had similar elements grouped in vertical columns, unlike his first table, which grouped them horizontally. These historic documents still exist, and mark the beginning of the form of the Periodic Table as commonly used today.

1911 - The first self-starter, based on patented inventions created by General Motors engineers Clyde Coleman and Charles Kettering, was installed in a Cadillac.

1911 - 1st hydroplane flight to & from a ship (Glenn Curtiss, San Diego).

1915 - Edward Stone, 1st US combatant to die in WW I, is mortally wounded.

1933 - 1st issue of "Newsweek" magazine published.

1936 - The world's first superhero, The Phantom, a cartoon strip by Lee Falk, makes his first appearance in comics.

1938 - The first public experimental demonstration of Baird colour television was transmitted from Crystal Palace to the Dominion Theatre, London.

1948 - Gorkha Rifles Battalion Group (INDBATT) unit was re-designated as the 5th Battalion the 8th Gorkha Rifles (the Sirmoor Rifles).

1952 - Britain became the third nuclear power after the U.S. and Russia to include the atomic bomb in its armoury.

1996 - Computer chess. World chess champion Gary Kasparov defeated Deep Blue, IBM's chess-playing computer, by winning a six-game match 4-2, in a regulation-style match held in Philadelphia.

1997 - Notorious criminal Charles Sobhraj released from jail after 20 years, and re-arrested soon after release under Foreigners' Regional Registration Act.

RIP

1670 - Tanaji, Maratha warrior. (Shivaji won Singh Garh Fort from Mughals. This victory was on the shoulders of Tanaji who was martyred in this attack. Shivaji proclaimed "Garh Alaa pan Singh Gela" which means that Fort was won but the Lion was lost).

Titbits

1795 - Thomas Seddal harvests 8.3-kg potato from his garden Chester, England.

You may have known....

At the top of a monkey's tail is a patch of bare skin that acts similar to human's fingertips. It is sensitive to touch and also has tiny ridges that gives the tail a better grip.