June 25: Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity.

On this day, 25 June...

1630 - Fork introduced to American dining by Gov Winthrop. (Knives and spoons are ancient. But we’ve only been eating with forks for a few centuries. Knives are the descendants of sharpened hand axes—the oldest human tools. It is likely that the first spoons derived from whichever local objects were used to scoop up liquid. The word for spoon in both Latin and Greek derives from a snail shell while the Anglo-Saxon ‘spon’ means chip. The fork was commonly viewed with skepticism or even outright hostility.  The fork's image problem could be connected to its resemblance to the devil's pitchfork, a word from which it derives its name). 

1658 - 6th Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb arrested his father Shahjahan and put him in Agra Fort Jail.

1667 - 1st blood transfusion performed by French Doctor Jean-Baptiste Denys.

1783 - Antonie Lavoisier announced to the French Academy of Sciences that water was the product formed by the combination of hydrogen and oxygen. ( However, this discovery had been made earlier by the English chemist Henry Cavendish). 

1867 - Barbed wire was patented by Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio, US. His simple idea that was an artificial "thorn hedge" consisting of wire with short metal spikes twisted on by hand at regular intervals. For prairie farmers and cattlemen natural fencing materials were scarce, so the invention met the need to keep their cattle safely away from crops. (Barbed wire prevented crop damage by cattle and improved agriculture. It also reduced the cost of fencing vis-à-vis wood, particularly in areas with limited woodlands).

1924 - Tuberculosis vaccine was developed by Prof Albert Calmette and Alphonse Guerin.

1932 - Commencement of India's 1st cricket Test v England at Lord's.

1951 - Advent of color TV.  At 4:35 pm, the Columbia Broadcasting System televised the one-hour premiere of commercial color television with a programme named Premiere.

1975 - President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the declaration of Emergency Rule in India. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi implemented the same very next day.

1983 - India won 'Prudential World Cup' Cricket Championship held in England after defeating West Indies.

2011 - According to a new study, the number of adults in the world with diabetes has doubled since 1980.

Born

1900 - Louis Mountbatten, last British Viceroy and first Governor General of independent India.

1903 - George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair], British writer;   born in Motihari, Bihar.  

1931 - Vishwanath Pratap Singh, former Prime Minister of India.

1951 – Satish Shah, actor.

1974 - Karisma Kapoor, actor.

1975 – Manoj Kumar Pandey, an Indian Army Captain of 1/11 Gorkha Rifles who was posthumously awarded India's highest gallantry award ‎Param Vir Chakra in Kargil.

RIP

2009 - Michael Jackson, American recording artist, entertainer and King of Pop music. 

Titbits

1997 - Christie's auctions off Princess Diana’s clothing for $5.5 million.

You may have known...

In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for commutes that are less than 50 minutes.