May 15 : One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

On this day, 15 May...

1718 - A "Defence" rapid-fire gun was patented by a London lawyer, James Puckle. It is sometimes considered an ancestor of the machine gun. It was, in effect, a flintlock revolver with a barrel 3 feet long and a bore of 1.25 inches. A pre-loaded "cylinder" held 11 charges and could fire 63 shots in 7 minutes. 

1873 - The proposal to dissolve East India Company was passed in England.

1902 - According to local legend, an unwitnessed heavier than air flight took place in a 20-h.p. steam-engined aircraft as claimed by Lyman Gilmore of  California. History cannot document Gilmore's fantasy of becoming the first person to achieve powered flight. Doubt was overwhelming, yet he spent the rest of his life trying to prove his claim, and he remains a skeptical footnote in history.  

1923 - Listerine was registered as a trademark. The modern Listerine is a mouthwash, but the original amber-colored product was a disinfectant for surgical procedures, dating back to its formulation in 1879 by Dr. Joseph Lawrence and Jordan Wheat Lambert. The name they chose incorporated the name of the English surgeon, Joseph Lister, famous for performing the first antiseptic surgical procedure on 12 Aug 1865 and pioneering wider use of antiseptics by surgeons.  

1928 – Walt Disney character Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy.

1935 - The Moscow metro opened, transporting an estimated 285,000 people that day. Its subterranean spaces still feature chandeliers, marble, mosaics, murals and heroic statutes. During WW II, the spacious stations served as shelters during Nazi bombing.

1940 - Nylon stockings went on general sale for the first time in the United States in Delaware. Four million pairs were sold in few hours.

1993 - A woman in Paris was surgically given two new lungs, both of which were cut from the single lung of a large man. Only previously attempted in animal trials, this was the first human to receive such surgery. The procedure is of particular interest for children, for whom finding donor lungs of the correct size is a problem.

1999 - The BJP and at least 13 of its allies rename themselves the National Democratic Alliance.

2015 - Google was to begin testing self-driving cars on the streets of Mountain View, California this summer; the company has tested modified versions of existing vehicles but would now test cars developed specifically for self-driving. (The cars drove nearly 636,000 miles last year, compared with just over 424,000 in 2015.

Born

1048 - Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer.  In geometry, he contributed to the theory of parallel lines.  He is known to English-speaking readers for his "quatrains" as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, published in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald, though it is now regarded as an anthology of which little or nothing may be by Omar.

1817 – Debendranath Tagore, Indian philosopher, and author.

1907 – Sukhdev Thapar, a revolutionary, was born in Ludhiana. He was an accomplice of Bhagat Singh and Shivaram Rajguru.

1967 - Madhuri Dixit, actor.

1973 – Shiny Ahuja, actor.

RIP

1993 - Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa.  

2010 – Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, politician.

You may have known...

A duel between three people is actually called a truel.