June 19: The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it.

On this day, 19 Jun...

240 BC - Eratosthenes, a Greek astronomer, and mathematician estimated the circumference of the earth. As the director of the gr, at the library of Alexandria, he read in a papyrus book that in Syene, approaching noon on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, shadows of temple columns grew shorter. At noon, they were gone. The sun was directly overhead. However, a stick in Alexandria, far to the north, could cast a pronounced shadow. Thus, he realized that the surface of the Earth could not be flat. It must be curved. Not only that but the greater the curvature, the greater the difference in the shadow lengths. By measurement on the ground and application of geometry, he calculated the circumference of the earth.

1269 - King Louis IX of Frances decrees all Jews must wear a badge of shame. 

1829 - Robert Peel founds the London Metropolitan Police (Bobbies).

1841 - An underwater torpedo operated by electric current was described by its inventor, Samuel Colt in a letter to U.S. President John Tyler. The invention was a combination of Robert Fulton's stationary torpedo and Prof. Robert Hare's galvanic current. Colt proved his mines could sink ships with a demonstration on 4 Jul 1842 sinking the gunboat Boxer in New York Harbour.  By 13 Apr 1843, He was called upon to demonstrate to the President and his Cabinet, and Colt blew up a schooner on the Potomac River by an electric main from a distance of five miles.

1888 - Thomas A. Edison, with co-inventor Ezra T. Gilliland was granted a patent for "Railway Signaling".

1900 - Michael Pupin was granted a U.S. patent for long distance telephony.

1910 - Father's Day celebrated for 1st time (Spokane, Washington).

1931 - Installation was completed on the first commercial doors operated by the photoelectric cell.  

1941- O-shaped 'Cheerios'  whole grain oat cereal was invented to provide a more convenient and better-tasting alternative to cooked oatmeal.   Since a competitor had exclusive rights on the word ‘oats’, its manufacturer, the General Mills called it simply ‘Cheerios’.      

1949 - People of Chandernagar, the French Indian Settlement, decided to merge with the Indian Union.

1966 - Shiv Sena was established. Founded by Balasaheb Thackeray (also known as Bal Thackeray) in Mumbai. Balasaheb Thackeray, initially a cartoonist with an English daily, was immensely inspired by his father Keshav Sitaram Thackeray who was a prominent figure in the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement. This movement, which was at its peak during the 1950’s, demanded the creation of a separate linguistic state of Maharashtra, with  Bombay as its capital.

1978 - Garfield, created by Jim Davis, 1st appears as a comic strip.

1979 - Morarji Desai resigns as PM after split in Janata Party.

1981 - India's APPLE satellite, 1st to be stabilized on 3 axes, launched.

1999 - The ''people's bus'' from Calcutta rolls into Dhaka and is formally received by the Prime Minister and his Bangladesh counterpart.

2013 - Microsoft takes negative feedback into account, and announces plans to change many features of its Xbox One.

Born

1595 - Guru Har Govind, the sixth Guru.

1945 - Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician, leader of the National League for Democracy and human rights activist (1991 Nobel Peace Prize). 

1947 - Salman Rushdie, British Indian novelist.

1958 - Mukesh Khanna, actor.

1970 - Rahul Gandhi, politician.

RIP

1949 – Syed Zafarul Hasan, Indian philosopher and academic.

Titbits

1942 - Actress Marilyn Monroe (16) marries first husband James Dougherty (21), a policeman. (She married thrice).

1981 - Heaviest known orange (2.5 kg) exhibited, Nelspruit, South Africa.

You may have known...

The oldest bookshop in the world is located in Portugal.