On this day, 20 Mar...
1800 - Volta announces his battery.
1815 - Napoleon enters Paris after escape from Elba, begins 100-day rule.
1883 - Jan Matzeliger was issued his first U.S. patent for his shoe “Lasting-Machine”. It significantly increased the output of finished shoes compared to usual handwork.
1916 - Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity was published as an academic paper. This theory accounted for the slow rotation of the elliptical path of the planet Mercury, which Newtonian gravitational theory failed to do. Fame and recognition came suddenly in 1919 when the Royal Society of London photographed the solar eclipse and publicly verified Einstein's general theory of relativity. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his photoelectric law and work in the field of theoretical physics, but such was the controversy still aroused by this theory on relativity that these were not specified in the text of the award.
1920 - A story was printed regarding the return of the Treaty of Versailles which was returned to President Wilson. It had failed Senate ratification four times the night before.
This treaty was intended to mark the official end of World War I, even though a majority of the fighting had stopped in 1918. This was probably one of the most controversial documents created within the 20th Century and was signed between Allied and Associated forces of World War I and Germany.
1934 - The first test of a practical radar apparatus was made by Rudolf Kuhnold in Kiel Harbour, Germany, Chief of the German Navy Signals Research Department.
1945 - British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma from the Japanese. The Japanese had captured Mandalay in May 1942.
1954 - 60,000 Viet Minh with heavy artillery surround 16,000 French troops, but the French held out for a further 6 weeks before being overcome by the greater numbers and defeated.
1959 - For the first time, officials of the Indian government confirmed reports of widespread resistance to the Chinese occupying forces in Tibet. Open warfare erupted in the capital city of Lhasa.
1965 - Venkataraghavan takes 8-72 vs New Zealand at Delhi.
1977 - Premier Indira Gandhi loses election .
1993 - Memon brothers, the prime suspects in the Bombay bomb blasts, escape from Dubai.
1997 - Maharashtra (like H.P.) proposes to make caring for aged parents mandatory.
1999 - Bertrand Piccard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of Britain complete non-stop balloon circumnavigation around the world. (They had set off from Switzerland on March 1st, 1999 traveling 45,755 kilometers lasting 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes and landing in Egypt on 20th March 1999).
Born
1951 - Madan Lal, cricketer, Indian medium pacer in the 70's
1952 - Anand Armitraj, tennis player.
1966 - Alka Yagnik, singer.
1987 - Kangna Ranaut, actor. (Anurag Basu spotted her having coffee in a Mumbai cafe and signed her up for the movie "Gangster").
RIP
1351 - Mohammed ibn-Tughluq, sultan of Delhi.
1727 - Sir Isaac Newton. English physicist and mathematician who made seminal discoveries in several areas of science, and was the leading scientist of his era. His study of optics included using a prism to show white light could be split into a spectrum of colors. The statement of his three laws of motion is fundamental in the study of mechanics. He was the first to describe the moon as falling (in a circle around the earth) under the same influence of gravity as a falling apple, embodied in his law of universal gravitation.
1925 - Lord Curzon, served as Viceroy and Governor General of India. (He came close to becoming prime minister in 1923, his aristocratic past militated against him.
1968 – Ghulam Mohammed, composer. He is most remembered for his work in musical-hit films like Mirza Ghalib (1954 – national award) ), Shama (1961) and Pakeezah(1972).
2000 - Unidentified militants gun down 35 Sikhs in the south Kashmir village of Chatti Singhpora in one of the worst incidents of violence in the State.
Titbits
1966 - The World Cup was stolen while on display at Westminster Hall in London. (The World Cup was on the show prior to the start of the World Cup tournament in Britain later in the year. It was found 1 week later in an in South London garden wrapped in a newspaper. England did go on to win the World Cup later in the year beating West Germany in the final).
1974 - Princess Anne and husband Captain Mark Phillips escape a kidnapping attempt as they were returning to Buckingham Palace.
1991 - Michael Jackson signs $65M 6 album deal with Sony records.
You may have known...
The average distance that women in developing countries walk to collect water per day is four miles and the average weight that women carry on their heads is approximately 44 pounds.
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