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'.

March 30 : Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.

On this day, 30 Mar...

1791 - After a proposal by the Académie des sciences, the French National Assembly finally chose that a metre would be a 1/10 000 000 of the distance between the north pole and the equator.

1842 - Physician Dr Crawford W. Long of Jefferson, Georgia, first used ether as an anaesthetic during a minor operation. He placed an ether-soaked towel over the face of James Venable and removed a tumour from his neck. This event predated Morton's public demonstration of ether by four years.

1843 - The first U.S. patent for an egg incubator was issued to Napoleon E. Guerin of New York City. It described a "mode of distributing steam heat, purifying air, etc." for hatching chickens by artificial heat.

1844 - The 30 Mar issue of the Illustrated London News reported the construction in Paris of a “vast balloon of copper. It was about 10-yards diam, of copper sheets 1/200-inch thick, weighed 800-lb, would contain 100-lb of hydrogen, and the Parisian journals stated that a French aeronaut would ascent with it.

1858 - The first U.S. patent for a combination lead pencil and eraser was issued to Hyman L. Lipman, of Philadelphia.

1899 - Black American inventor James Ricks has issued a patent for “Improvements in the Rough-Shoeing of Horses,” which was an overshoe or sleet shoe clamped with a wide band over the ordinary shoe.

1919 - MK Gandhi announces resistance against Rowlatt Act.( The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, 1919 popularly known as the Rowlatt Act was a legislative act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on March 18, 1919, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, incarceration without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act 1915 during the First World War).

1923 - The Cunard liner Laconia arrived in New York City, becoming the first passenger ship to circumnavigate the world, a cruise of 130 days.

1949 - New Union of Greater Rajasthan was ceremonially inaugurated by Patel when the existing Union of Rajasthan was joined by four premier states of Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. Hiralal Shastri became its first Chief Minister.

1959 - Dalai Lama fled China & was granted political asylum in India.

1981 - US President Ronald Reagan was shot at close range as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel about one mile from the White House.

The attacker John Hinckley was charged with trying to assassinate the president and in the following June, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a hospital.

1987 - Vincent Van Gogh 30th March 1987: An anonymous foreign buyer purchased Vincent Van Gogh's masterpiece 'Sunflowers' for nearly $36.3 million.

1999 - A jury in Portland, Oregon, in a landmark case ordered Philip Morris to pay $81 million to the family of a man who died of lung cancer after smoking Marlboros for four decades.

2002 - England: The Queen Mother died in her sleep today at the age of 101.

2012 - Japan has stated that if North Korea launches a rocket in April and it flies into Japan's territory, the country will not hesitate to shoot it down if necessary. South Korea made a similar statement earlier in the week, saying that if it was necessary they too would shoot the rocket down.

Born

1906 - General KS Thimayya, former Chief of Indian Army.

1908 - Devika Rani, famous film actress. (Devika Rani Chaudhuri, usually known as Devika Rani was active during the 1930s and 1940s. Widely acknowledged as the first lady of Indian cinema).

1913 - B. S. Soman, first Admiral of India.

RIP

2002 - Anand Bakshi, lyricist. (Bakhshi Anand Prakash Vaid was fond of writing poetry since his youth, but he did this mostly as a private hobby. He joined the Indian Army, Corps of Signals

And left after serving little over two years. He got his break writing songs in a Brij Mohan film titled Bhalaa Aadmi in 1958).

You may have known...

Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them.

March 29 : Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

On this day, 29 Mar...

845 - Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, who collect a huge ransom in exchange for leaving.

1561 - Akbar attacked on Malwa at Sarangpur and defeated Bajbahadar.

1798 - Republic of Switzerland forms.

1849 - Britain formally annexes Punjab after the defeat of Sikhs. (ANNEXATION OF PUNJAB to British dominions in India in 1849 by Lord Dalhousie, the British governor general, which finally put an end to the sovereignty of the Sikhs over northwestern India, was the sequel to a chain of events that had followed the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh ten years earlier. Internal dissensions and treachery had caused the defeat of the Sikh army at the hands of the British in the first Anglo Sikh war (1845-46). When on 16 December 1846, the Lahore Darbar was forced to sign the treaty of Bhyrowal (Bharoval), the kingdom of Punjab was made a virtual British protectorate).

1857 – Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry mutinies against the East India Company's rule in India. It inspired the long War of Independence termed as Sepoy Mutiny by the British.

1886 - The first batch of Coca-Cola was brewed over a fire in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. John Pemberton had created the concoction as a cure for "hangover," stomach ache and headache. He advertised it as a "brain tonic and intellectual beverage," and first sold it to the public a few weeks later on 8 May. Coke contained cocaine as an ingredient until 1904 when the drug was banned. {Dr John created a flavored syrup, took it to his neighborhood pharmacy, where it was mixed with carbonated water and deemed “excellent” by those who sampled it. Dr. Pemberton’s partner Frank M. Robinson named the beverage “Coca-Cola” (the name refers to two of its original ingredients: kola nuts, a source of caffeine, and coca leaves. The current formula of Coca-Cola remains a trade secret) as well as designed the trademarked, distinct script, still used today. One of the most famous advertising slogans in Coca-Cola history “The Pause That Refreshes” first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1929. The theme of pausing with Coca-Cola refreshment is still echoed in today’s marketing}.

1903 - Regular news service began between New York and London on Marconi’s wireless. On 30 Mar 1903, The Times in London became the first newspaper to establish an ongoing arrangement with the Marconi Telegraph Company for the regular transmission of news between the United States and the UK).

1942 - Britain offered dominion status to India after the war if it cooperated now.

1970 - Union Government revises the percentage of reservation in service for SC\STs from 12.5% to 15%. Orders to be effective from 25 March.

1973 - U.S. troops leave Vietnam.

1977 - Smoking risk. An analysis was publicly announced of greater risk of death when birth-control pills were used by women smokers over age 30. The combined effects of cigarette smoking and pill use seemed “synergistic” and to be more dangerous for that age group than the use of any other contraceptive measure. (Pill use by non-smokers indicated no unreasonable risk).

1980 - The first transplant of a human fingernail was accomplished on a 12-year-old boy's thumb, using one of his own toenails. Dr. Guy Foutcher performed the surgery in Strasbourg, France.

Born

1816 - The 10th Dalai Lama.

1869 - Sir Edwin Lutyens, Builder of Rashtrapati Bhavan and England's most outstanding architect of his time.

1929 – Utpal Dutt, actor, director, and playwright.

1987 – Ananya, actor.

RIP

1990 - Adoor Bhasi, Malayalam film actor.

Titbits

1848 - Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam.

You may have known...

The earth's rotation is slowing at 17 milliseconds per hundred years. In 14o million years the length of a day will have increased to 25 hours.