On this very day in the year 47 BC the Roman dictator Gaius Iulius Caesar won the battle of Zela against Pharnaces II. king of Pontus. As the Roman victory was won rather quickly, Caesar wanted to emphasize that very fact by the brevity and conciseness of his report sent to the senate and people of Rome. He only wrote three little words:
"Veni, Vidi, Vici."
543 years ago today, Florentine civil servant, diplomat, historian, philosopher and author Niccolò Machiavelli was born. Besides his seminal work 'Il Principe' (The Prince) he also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and even poetry.
On this day in 1877 Thomas A. Edison conceived the first idea for his phonograph, the very first mechanical tool for recording and reproducing (replaying) sound. The phonograph also was the invention that first gained him public notice.
394 years ago, famous astronomer Johannes Kepler discovered the 3rd and also last of his planetary laws, and concluded the general revolution of our celestial world that started with Nikolaus Kopernikus about 100 years earlier. And that made him rather popular as he still is today. Did you know that there is a Kepler crater on the Moon, a Kepler crater on Mars, a Kepler asteroid, a Kepler supernova, of course there has to be a space mission named after him, even an opera
Today for us it's pretty normal that electricity can be transmitted on a wire, because it's part of our daily life. But, in the early 18th century, when the English nature-scientist Stephen Gray was able to show that electricity really can be transmitted on a string of copper, it was an unheard-of revelation.
Without difficulty, you can notice that a pioneer in musical engineering is to be remembered today. Today's Google Doodle shows the Moog synthesizer, invented by Robert Arthur Moog, who was born today 78 years ago.
On May 27th 1937 The Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco spanning over the opening of the San Francisco Bay and connecting the City with Marin County was opened for public traffic. When the planning for the bridge started back in 1916 many experts said that a bridge couldn’t be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait.
Today 199 years ago, the first (modern) optical telegraph line following the mechanical telegraphy system of the French inventor Claude Chappe was established between Metz and Mainz was established. No, this wasn't the first of its kind, but it was the first to connect the former already in France established telegraphy system with a (now) German city.
On June 10th 1829 the very first of now legendary annual boat races of Oxford and Cambridge on the river Thames took place. The race came about because two friends from Harrow School, Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth), of Christ Church College, Oxford, and Charles Merrivale of St. John’s, Cambridge, met during the vacation in Cambridge, where Wordsworth’s father was master of Trinity. Wordsworth went rowing on the river Cam, and the two school fellows decided to set up a challenge.