March 12 : If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.

On this day, 12 Mar....

1755 - A steam engine was first reported used in America, at a copper mine It was imported from England by Josiah Hornblower and put to use pumping water from the mine of Colonel John Schuyler.

1789 - U.S. Post Office established.

1841 - The first U.S. patent for starch processing was granted to Orlando Jones of Middlesex, England. Previously it was extracted from corn. That shifted to rice. Corn starch is now used in deodorants, to heal diaper rash, and to thicken the gravy.

1889 - Almon B. Strowger of Kansas City patented the first automatic telephone exchange. Tradition gives that his inspiration came because a local telephone operator was his principal competitor's wife, and she would divert Strowger's clients to her husband. The first Strowger telephone exchange opened on 3 Nov 1892. This early system did not use a dial to enter the desired number. Instead, using three keys, one for each digit of a three-digit number, a subscriber pressed each key the appropriate number of times for each digit. The first dial phone was used in 1896.

1894 -The first bottles of Coca-Cola were sold. Coca-Cola was invented by Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist who created the formula in a three-legged brass kettle in his backyard on 8 May 1886. He mixed a combination of lime, cinnamon, coca leaves, and the seeds of a Brazilian shrub to make the famous beverage. Carbonated water was introduced later to make the beverage as now familiar. Coca-Cola was originally used as a nerve and brain tonic and a medical elixir. Asa Candler owned the company, after Pemberton's death. On 31 Jan 1893, the famous Coca-Cola formula was patented. He also opened the first syrup manufacturing plant in 1884. He began large-scale bottling of Coca-Cola in 1899.

1923 - The Phonofilm, the first motion picture with a sound-on-film track was demonstrated at a press conference. It was developed (1920) by Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the radio tube (1907). Dancers and musicians were shown on the film with music but without voice dialogue.

1930 - Mohandas Gandhi begins 200m march protesting British salt tax.

1942 - British troops vacate the Andaman in Gulf of Bengal.

1967 - Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India for the second time after winning the General Elections.

1992 - India and the US decide to hold joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean.

1995 - Congress party in India loses elections.

1997 - Jaspal Rana equals world mark in standard pistol 25m (ISU) event in South Asian shooting in Delhi.

Born

1946 - Liza Minnelli, American singer/actor.

1959 — Lakshmi Rajagopalan, Carnatic vocalist.

1964 - Falguni Pathak, folk singer.

1984 - Shreya Ghoshal, singer.

You may have known....

Agriculture is demographically the broadest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic fabric of India. Agriculture and allied sectors accounted for 16.6% of the GDP in 2009 and about 50% of the total workforce in India.

March 11 : Don't try so hard to fit in, you're born to stand out.

On this day, 11 Mar....

105 - Ts'ai Lun invented paper, made from bamboo, mulberry, and other fibers, along with fishnets and rags. He lived and served as an official at the Chinese Imperial Court at the Han Dynasty in China. He presented samples of paper to Emperor Han Ho Ti. He was promoted by the Emperor for his invention and became wealthy. Later he got involved in palace intrigue, which led to his downfall. Finally, he ended his life drinking poison. In China, before Tsai, Lun, books were made of bamboo, which was heavy and clumsy. Some books were made of silks, which were very expensive. (In the West at that time, books were made of sheepskin or calfskin).

1784 - Tipu Sultan and Britishers signed the treaty at Mangalore which is known as the Mangalore treaty.

1795 - Battle at Kurdla India: Mahratten beat Mogols.

1811 - The Luddite riots began in Nottingham, England. There were poverty and misery, made worse by the new inventions - machinery which could do jobs better and faster than people. In those days of low wages and the ever-present threat of actual starvation should those wages stop for any reason, these innovations must have made the prospect even more gloomy. There were food shortages resulting from the Napoleonic Wars, and high unemployment. A group of laborers attacked a factory, breaking up 63 stocking and lace manufacturing frames, the machines which they feared would replace them. During the next three weeks gangs of upwards of fifty men, armed with pistols, guns and heavy hammers broke two hundred more frames.

1881 - Ashley Eden unveiled in Calcutta Town Hall the first statue of Indians Ram Nath Tagore and Dwarkanath Tagore.

1892 - 1st public basketball game (Springfield, Massachusetts, US).

2011 - Sendai, a major 9.0 earthquake strikes offshore of Japan's Miyagi Prefecture; 10-meter high tsunamis are produced near its epicenter, reaching land through the Pacific ocean. The earthquake is also often referred to in Japan as the Great East Japan earthquake. It caused 15,894 deaths, 6,152 injured and 2,562 people missing.

2015 - The U.S. will support Ukraine in its fight against separatist militants by providing $75 million in non-lethal aid in the form of drones, ambulances, and radios; Humvees will also be sent under a separate agreement.

Born

1903 - General MM Shrinagesh, former Army Chief.

1915 - Vijay Samuel Hazare, cricketer (prolific Indian batsman 1946-54).

1931 - Rupert Murdoch, Australian media mogul.

1942 - Amarinder Singh, Chief Minister of Punjab.

RIP

1689 - Sambhaji, Shivaji's successor, who was captured at Sangameshwar, was assassinated in the prison of Aurangzeb by Mughal officer Muqurab Khan.

1955 - Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin.

Titbits

1302 - Romeo and Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare.

You may have known....

The Apollo crews did not have any life insurance. On the chance that the 3 man crew of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins did not return safely from the moon, they were not covered by any life insurance policy. So before their trip, all 3 men signed photographs that could be sold in the event of their death. These Insurance covers were also stamped and posted on the start date of the mission, July 16th, 1969 by a friend.

March 10 : Happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the ability to deal with them.

On this day, 10 Mar....

1553 - Ambroise Paré published a second edition of his Method of Curing Wounds Made by Arquebus and Arrows   to popularise a revolutionary method he had discovered to treat the new medical problem of gunshot wounds. During the siege of Turin (1536-37), having run out of the oil used to cauterize wounds in the conventional way, Paré turned instead to simple dressings and soothing ointment, and immediately noted the improved condition of his patients. In his career, Paré wrote several important medical works which advanced the art of surgery, for which he became known as “the father of modern surgery.” 

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell made what was, in effect, the first telephone call. His assistant, Thomas Watson, located in an adjoining room heard Bell's voice over the experimental device say to him, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." This was Bell's first successful experiment with the telephone, which is recorded in the 10 Mar entry of his Lab Notebook. That same day, an ebullient Bell wrote to his father of his "great success" and speculated that "the day is coming when telegraph [phone] wires will be laid on to houses just like water and gas - and friends converse with each other without leaving home." Bell had received the first telephone patent three days before.(Later that year, Bell succeeded in making a phone call over outdoor lines).

1903 - Harry C. Gammeter, a typewriter salesman of Cleveland, Ohio patented the multigraph “duplicating machine” . It was the first successful machine in the U.S. to simplify the printing processes, so that a layman could print from type.

1910 - China ends slavery.

 1923 -  Time magazine reported the statement “You throw your geniuses in the dust heap,” made by tropical disease expert Sir Ronald Ross to the British Science Guild in London. He drew attention to two scientists that were not employed by Great Britain despite their medical accomplishments: Waldemar M. W. Haffkine who discovered methods of inoculation against cholera and Sir David Bruce who discovered the cure for sleeping sickness. He also commented that the American, Walter Reed, who linked yellow fever transmission to mosquitoes, died without knowing how his wife and children would be provided for.

1939 - 17 villages damaged by hailstones in Hyderabad.

1948 - Herbert H. Hoover became the first civilian pilot to exceed the speed of sound when he flew a Bell X-1 research aircraft at Edwards AFB, California. Instead of making its own take-off, the X-1 was loaded under the bomb bay of a B29 mother ship which carried it aloft, then released it at 20,000 feet. He reached Mach 1.065.

1969 - Indian Parliament passed the Act that made Central Industrial Security Force as an Armed Force of the union.

1991 - The Army Dental Corps celebrates its Golden Jubilee and proudly recounts its past glory.

2015 - Pakistan reinstates the death penalty for all crimes, extending a previous reinstatement only for terrorism cases; the country has had a moratorium on capital punishment since 2008 but lifted it after terrorist attacks in December 2014.

Born

1926 - Dilbagh Singh, Air Chief Marshal, former Chief of Air Staff of Indian Air Force.

1949 - Padma Khanna, actor,dancer.

1957 - Osama bin Laden, Islamic militant and founder of al-Qaeda.

RIP

37 - Tiberius Claudius Nero, Roman emperor.

1984 - IS Johar, actor. He was an idiosyncratic individual, a lifelong liberal (if not a libertine: he had five marriages, an extraordinary number by Indian standards, both then and now) who poked fun at all forms of institutionalised self-satisfied smugness. He also wrote and directed films. Yash Chopra started his film career as an assistant director with I. S. Johar.

You may have known....

The North Star will change…eventually. The North Star used for navigation, a steady point in the night sky will change, however not in our lifetime. The Earth is rotating like a spinning top and therefore the pole of our planet wobbles. Currently it points to Polaris but in the year 13727 our Pole Star will be the star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra. Vega was the also North Star in 12000BCE.