March 31 : Follow the people you want to lead.

On this day, 31 Mar...

1851 - Leon Foucault demonstrated his pendulum experiment at the Pantheon of Paris at the request of Napoleon Bonaparte. He had installed a pendulum in his cellar in Paris. It was made from 2 m long wire supporting a 5-kg weight. He observed a small movement of the oscillation plane of the pendulum - showing that the Earth was rotating underneath the swinging pendulum. A month later, he repeated the experiment at the observatory of Paris, with an 11-m pendulum which gave longer swings and a more clearly visible deviation. His March demonstration at the Pantheon used a 28-kg sphere on a 67-m wire.

1870 - 1st black to vote in U.S. (Thomas P Mundy of Perth Amboy New Jersey)

1889 - The Eiffel Tower, Paris was inaugurated, becoming the world’s tallest tower of its era. Designed by 56-years old engineer Gustave Eiffel to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution, it is 324-m high and its base is square, measuring 125 metres on each side. It remained the world’s tallest man-made structure until surpassed by the Empire State Building, 41 years later. The tower has three levels for visitors, with restaurants on the first and second levels. The tower attracted 6.2.miilion visitors in 2017.

1896 - Whitcomb Judson, Chicago, patents a hookless fastening, also known as the zipper. (Judson was an inventor who was awarded 30 patents over a sixteen-year career. His most noteworthy invention, a chain-lock fastener. This was the precursor to the modern zipper which he developed and invented in 1890. Judson is recognised as the inventor of the zipper).

1903 - New Zealander Richard Pearse reputedly flew a powered heavier-than-air machine, some nine months before the Wright brothers' more famous and well-documented flight. Pearse built a high-wing monoplane powered by his design of a petrol engine. Accounts vary, but his flight was probably 350 yards in the air, though uncontrolled, ending with the machine striking a large hedge.

1904 - British slaughter hundreds of Tibetans.

1933 - the German Republic gives power to Hitler.

1959 - On fleeing from Tibet, Dalai Lama was granted political asylum in India.

1964 - Tram-way service ended in Mumbai. This last electric tram left Bori Bunder (CST) for Dadar at 10 p.m., crowds lined the route all the way at that late hour to bid farewell to the common man's transport medium.

1966 - Luna 10, the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, was launched by the USSR from an Earth-orbiting platform.

1999 - The PIO card, conferring privileges on persons of Indian origin settled abroad, is formally launched.

Born

1504 - Guru Angad Dev.

1934 - Kamala Das, writer.

1938 – Sheila Dixit, politician.

RIP

1972 - Meena Kumari, famous film actress.

2005 – O.P. Jindal, politician.

You may have known...

The female equivalent of 'dude' is 'dude'.