March 13 : Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

On this day, 13 Mar....

1781 - English astronomer William Herschel detected Uranus in the night sky, but he thought it was a comet. It was the first planet to be discovered with the aid of a telescope.

1852 - Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly.

1877 - The first U.S. patent for earmuffs was issued to teen-aged Chester Greenwood of Farmington, Maine. While trying out a new pair of ice-skates one winter, he experienced stinging ears and solved his problem with beaver fur pads on a wire frame. By his mid-twenties, he had a factory and 11 workers producing in his hometown of Farmington producing 50,000 earmuffs yearly. His distribution grew to 400,000 pairs in 1936, the year he died. (He patented many other inventions. In 1977, Maine's legislature declared 21 Dec, the first day of winter, as the annual Chester Greenwood Day. His hometown celebrates with a parade in early December, although the Greenwood Ear Protector factory is now a laundry).

1878 - The Vernacular Press Act was passed which subsequently made the Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta an English newspaper.

1894 - J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate.

1930 - The discovery of a ninth planet was announced by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory. It is only one-tenth as large as Earth and four thousand million miles away. The planet was named Pluto on 24 May 1930.

1935 - Driving tests introduced in Great Britain.

1938 - Hitler merged Austria in Germany.

1940 - Michael O' Dyer, former Governor of Punjab, was shot by Udham Singh in Caxton Hall at point-blank range in full view of a large gathering in London.

1963 - Indian Government announced 'Arjun Awards' to boost the morale of various sports personalities.

1989 - The first straw-fired thermal power plant was laid in Jakhari village of Punjab.

1997 - Sister Nirmala Joshi, 63, is chosen to succeed Mother Teresa as the Superior-General of Missionaries of Charity.

2000 - Parliament approves TRAI Bill seeking to bifurcate it into a Tribunal and a Regulator, with the Rajya Sabha passing the measure by a voice vote.

2003 - The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy.

2012 - A Harvard Medical School study claims that red meat increases the risk of death and has additional negative health implications.

2013 - Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected the new pope, taking the papal name Pope Francis.

Born

1980 - Varun Gandhi, politician.

1984 - Geeta Basra, actor.

RIP

1800 - Nana Phadanvis (Balaji Janardan Bhanu), veteran leader of Peshwa Kingdom.

1842 - English soldier and inventor of the Shrapnel shell, a spherical case designed to explode in midair, spreading its content of small lead musket balls to injure enemy soldiers over a wide area. He affected other improvements infuses, ammunition and small arms. He also prepared important artillery range tables and originated the brass tangent slide to improve the sighting of guns. Incorporating his idea of the parabolic chamber, howitzers and mortars were operated more efficiently.

1940 - Michael O' Dyer, former Governor of Punjab, was shot by Udham Singh in Caxton Hall at point-blank range in full view of a large gathering in London.

You may have known....

Most of India is chiefly dependent on monsoon rains for the purpose of irrigation. If monsoon fails the Indian economy suffers a huge setback and more than that there is unrest.