April 13 : Leadership is raising the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

A VERY HAPPY BAISAKHI TO ALL.

On this day, 13 Apr...

1625 - The word microscope was coined as a suggested term in a letter written by Johannes Faber of Bamberg, Germany, to Federico Cesi, Duke of Aquasparata and founder of Italy's Accademia Dei-Lincei.

1796 - The first elephant was taken to the U.S. from Bengal. She was two years old and 6-1/2 feet high, and had behavior described as, "It eats thirty pounds of rice besides hay and straw - drinks all kinds of wine and spirituous liquors, and eats every kind of vegetable; it will also draw a cork from a bottle in its trunk."

1831 - The first US patent for a stone crushing machine was issued to Benjamin F. Lodge and Ezekial T. Cox of Ohio.

1919 - Jallianwala Baug massacre. The great Indian tragedy occurred in Amritsar which claimed 389 lives and wounded 1,516 activists fighting for Indian independence. Early in 1919, the Rowlatt Act (Black Act) was passed. This authorized the Government to imprison any person without any trial and conviction in a court of law. This furious act was under the guidance of cruel Brigadier General R. E. H. Dyer and his 50 men troop. Michael O' Dwyer was then the Governor of Punjab who naturally defended the action. This day is observed as Jallianwala Baug Day.

1928 - 1st trans-Atlantic flight Europe-US.

1933 - 1st flight over Mount Everest by Lord Clydesdale.

1948 - Bhuvaneshwar became the capital of Orissa.

1970 - An explosion during the Apollo 13 mission led to one of the most spectacular rescue missions in US space history. The explosion aboard the Odyssey spacecraft left the crew stranded for four days more than 200,000 miles from Earth. An oxygen leak forced the Apollo 13 astronauts to abandon ship and return in the lunar module. Against all odds, the three astronauts and thousands of others brought the capsule safely back to Earth. The astronauts were Fred Haise, Jack Swigert, and Commander Jim Lovell, and the mission was to have made the third manned landing of the moon.

Born

1890 - Ramchandra Gopal Torne (Dadasaheb), film director. {He was the first Indian Director and Producer to make a feature film in India; that film was named Shree Pundalik. Although Torne made his first film, Shree Pundalik (1912) just under a year before Dhundiraj Govind "Dadasaheb" Phalke made him it is the latter who is regarded as the father of Indian cinema. The distinction may lie with the fact that, unlike Phalke, Torne sent his film overseas for processing. Moreover, Torne's Pundalik was 22 minutes long, whereas Phalke's Raja Harischandra, ran for about 40 minutes}.

1956 - Satish Kaushik, film director.

RIP

1973 - Balraj (Yudhisthir) Sahni, actor. {Best known for Dharti Ke Lal (1946), Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Kabuliwala (1961) and Garam Hawa (1973)}.

1982 - Pandit Parmanand, founder member of `Gather Party'.

1993 - Lalita Devi Shastri, wife of Lal Bahadur Shastri (Ex. PM).

1999 - D. Sripada Rao, the former Speaker of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, is shot dead by People's War Group Naxalites near Annaram village in Karimnagar district.

Titbits

2012 - Indian actor Shahrukh Khan is detained by the U.S. at a New York airport for 90 minutes, angering S. M. Krishna, India's External Affairs Minister

You may have known...

Former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma was appointed the new interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir in 2017. He continues to interact with different stakeholders of the State.