Count down from 2016 with real world facts!

[Clarence]

1916

Albert Einstein completes his mathematical formulation of a general theory of relativity, which includes gravity.





Also a great album by Motörhead. Seriously, give it a listen. 1916

[Wesley]

1915

Alexander Graham Bell makes 1st long distance phone call, New York San Francisco.

[Clarence]

1914

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated. He was the Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia. His assassination triggered a series of events that started the first world war!!



And it was a total accident! Read the story if you get a chance.

Also, good ol' Basil Zaharoff had his fingers in this one, too.

[Clarence]

1913

Henry Ford develops the first moving assembly line.



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Also an interesting side note to the 1914 assassination of Franz Ferdinand that started WWI...

in 1913 he was almost killed after being shot by accident while hunting quail... if he died here WW1 may not have happened .... yet, and history would be totally different!!

http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/07/31/a-h ... f-history/



That mustache is epic

[Clarence]

1912

"Not even God himself could sink this ship."

... and you know the rest of the story ...

[Wesley]

1911

John Browning's newly designed and improved Colt semi-automatic pistol is adopted as the official sidearm of the United States Military. The 1911 has not had any significant changes in over 100 years and is still in service.

[Clarence]

1910

The first air flight for the purpose of delivering commercial freight takes place in the United States. The flight, made by Wright brothers pilot Philip Parmalee, is between Dayton and Columbus, Ohio.



On 7 November 1910, Parmelee became the first pilot to transport commercial cargo. His flight took him 65 miles (105 km) from Dayton, Ohio, carrying a package of 100 pounds of silk valued between $800 and $1,000 for the opening of a store. Parmelee's route took him from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio by way of South Charleston and London, following the route of the old National Road. Newspaper clippings quoted the Wright brothers as stating he covered the distance in 66 minutes, but the flight was officially recorded at 57 minutes, a world speed record at the time.

--------

This guy died two years later when he crashed his airplane

Parmelee was piloting an airplane at an air show in Yakima, Washington, on June 1, 1912, at altitudes variously described from 400 to 2,000 feet (120 to 610 m). Air turbulence caused him to crash, killing him instantly. He was buried in East Plains Cemetery in Clinton County, Michigan.

[Wesley]

1909

The first plastic was manufactured, changing our modern world in ways we have still not fully comprehended. Named,"Bakelite," it is still in use today, largely in the consumer electronics industry due to the non-conductive nature of the stuff.

http://www.historyandheadlines.com/febr ... -invented/

An important step toward the creation of Legos!!!

[Clarence]

1908

Tunguska event

An explosion that happened near the Stony Tunguska River, in Yeniseysk Governorate, now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian Empire, on the morning of 30 June 1908

It was a sparsely populated area but the people that felt it, FELT IT! The heat made you feel like your shirt was on fire!

Was it a comet ... an asteroid? Nobody knows for 100% but it was scary, to think that stuff from space can smash into us at any time.

Look at the trees!!!





Even now, over 100 years later, you can see how the trees and landscape were blown outward. This event has been compared to the Krakatoa eruption in terms of how far it was felt and observed!

Indeedy, Zot! Here it is today:



Romeiko crater near Tunguska, Russia. Still no trees after over 100 years from the meteor air impact site.

[Clarence]

1907

The largest sailing ship ever built – the 7-masted Thomas W. Lawson – is wrecked in the Isles of Scilly.



At a cost of approximately $250,000, the Thomas W. Lawson holds the distinction of being the only seven-masted schooner, the only seven-masted sailing ship in modern time, the largest schooner, and the largest pure sailing vessel, in terms of tonnage, ever built, even today.

Pirates would be jealous.

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In other news, Oklahoma became the 46th state

[Clarence]

1906

San Francisco earthquake

The big one! 3,000 dead! buildings all over destroyed! Magnitude 7.8!

If you survived the earthquake -- the whole area was devastated by fires from broken gas lines underground etc

[Clarence]

1905

The Russian Revolution of 1905 begins on “Bloody Sunday” when troops fire onto a defenseless group of demonstrators in St. Petersburg. Strikes and riots follow.

[Clarence]

1904

New York city subway opens

There was a great blizzard in 1888 that help prove the need to have underground transit.

This was beautiful, look how nice things could be before super over population:

[Wesley]

1903

In the small town of Tetonia, Idaho -- population 97 -- Howard Eugene Gilbert is born.

He is the Great great great great great (great great great) nephew to Sir Humphrey Gilbert as well as Sir Walter Raleigh, half-brothers and prominent explorers in their day.

Distant cousin to W.S. Gilbert, from the team of Gilbert and Sullivan, who brought us gems such as The Pirates Of Penzance.

Growing up in the shadow of the Teton Mountains (named by the horny Frenchmen in Lewis and Clark's expedition) Howard worked the dry farms, bucking barley and eventually learning to drive teams of four, then six, then eight horses. He voted for Herbert Hoover shortly before the great stock market crash of 1929, and that was the last time he ever voted Republican. During the depression, many city folk headed out to the farms for work. 5 cents a day for bucking grain, 10 cents a day for driving the horses. These city slickers would say they know how to drive a team just so they could get more money... and then they would get the horses tangled while taking a turn. A horse cost a dollar, while a set of reins and harnesses cost eleven dollars, so if the horses got tangled and riled up, they would kill the horses so as not to damage the reins. At this point they would go ask Howard if he would drive the team, and they paid him the handsome sum of 25 cents a day.

In his spare time, Howard noticed everyone had to bring their saws and axes into town to get sharpened. He decided to learn how to sharpen things to save people the time of riding all the way into town. He could get a straight razor so sharp that it would cut a hair only held by one side.

For fun, the working men and the ladies in the area would go on hay rides. As Howard put it, sometimes you might invite a lady to get under the hay to roll around, sometimes they would say no. Vera Jardine didn't say no. They were married in 1932.

Vera was the county nurse for Bonnevile County, Idaho, and they moved to Idaho Falls where Howard got a job in a cement mill and eventually joined a construction union. In 1956 he built a house on Canyon Avenue. It was recommended that he use common building techniques of the time, such as poured basement walls, and lathe and plaster on the upstairs walls. He knew a good thing when he saw it, and sheetrock -- now known as drywall -- was the hot new thing. He got a discount on cement blocks for the basement walls, and used sheetrock for the upstairs walls. For the next 43 years he lived in that house, and the walls never bowed or sagged even one bit.

When he retired from the Carpenters' Union, he dedicated much of his time to gardening. He took no small amount of pride in having the first ripe tomato of the season year after year. He would use a paintbrush to pollinate the blossoms on the vine rather than letting bees take their sweet time to do so.

I have more stories about Howard, as he was my grandfather, but I will share them later.

[Clarence]

1902

Electric Theatre, the first movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles.



Tally’s Electric Theatre is listed as the first permanent movie theater designed specifically for the exhibition of films. It was opened in the spring of 1902 by Thomas L. Tally in Los Angeles.

In later years, Tally had the idea to create an organization of exhibitors, one from each major city, which would buy, or make, and distribute their own films. He presented his idea to another exhibitor, John D. Williams of West Virginia, who liked the idea and combined forces with Tally. They named their new company First National Exhibitors Circuit.

The organization’s first office was two small rooms at 18 East 41st Street, and their motto proclaimed, “The Good Guys Get, By Getting Together”.

[Clarence]

1901

Here's a local thing I would like to share as I love covered bridges

The 1,282 foot (390 m) covered bridge crossing the Saint John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada opens. It is the longest covered bridge in the world



Ok ... it wasn't covered until 1922. But still!

The town actually rallied against having it covered cause they thought people would do bad deeds in there, but it was covered anyway as covered bridges last longer where the inner workings are protected from the elements.

And is STILL the longest covered bridge in the world !!





It's now a national, historical protected site. There's a water system that runs through it with the ability to put out fires

[Clarence]

1900

1900 Galveston hurricane



Fatalities: 6000–12,000 direct

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States.



...

Also in the same year a great wind wreaked havoc in Kansas, guess what was published?



L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is published in Chicago, the first of Baum's Oz books chronicling the fictional Land of Oz for children.

[Clarence]

1899



Yes, that's right, in this year the paperclip is patented by Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor.

[Clarence]

1898

Marie and Pierre Curie announce discovery of a substance they call radium.


...

and they lived happily ever after

[Clarence]

1897

The first Boston Marathon is held, with fifteen men competing, and won by John McDermott