Jakob Bernoulli, born in 1654, is best known for his work Ars Conjectandi (The Art of Conjecture), where he described the known results in probability theory and in enumeration, including the application of probability theory to games of chance.
Today 16 years ago, one of the most important engineers of the 20th century passed away. Frank Whittle was well known for inventing the Jet engine that he developed independently and at the same time as German engineer Hans von Ohain.
The character of Shakespeare's MacBeth is based on the historic Mac Bethad mac Findlaich, Mormaer of Moray, an 11th century Scottish nobleman, who commited regicide to become Kink of Scottland.
The atomic number uniquely identifies a chemical element. This discovery is thanked to the British physicist Henry Moseley, who justified this empirical and chemical concept of the atomic number also from physical laws.
Most people know American author Herman Melville only by his most famous novel, the story of Captain Ahab and his paranoid hunt for the white whale Moby Dick, but Herman Melville was a productive writer as well as an intrepid world traveller.
On this day in 1948, the New York Herald published the news that gold has been found in California causing thousands of people to try their luck and seek for gold.
On August 8, 1902, English theoretical physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born. Dirac is best known for his fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.
On September 19, 1840, Marie-Fortunée Lafarge was convicted of murdering her husband by arsenic poisoning. Her case has become notable because she was the first person convicted largely on direct forensic toxicological evidence.
On October 18, 1989, the unmanned NASA spacecraft Galileo was launched on her mission to study the planet Jupiter and its moons. Named after the astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted of an orbiter and entry probe, which descended into Jupiter's atmosphere.
On October 28, 1886, U.S. president Grover Cleveland, the former New York governor, presided the dedication ceremony of the Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United States from the people of France.
Mid November 1923, the Hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic reached its peak. Due to Germany's obligation to pay large reparations after World War I, a hyperinflation was induced reaching its peak in November 1923, when the American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks.
On December 9, 1717, German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann was born. Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art.
On December 2, 1594, German cartographer, philosopher and mathematician Gerardus Mercator passed away. He is best known for his work in cartography, particular the world map of 1569 based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines. He was the first to use the term Atlas for a collection of maps.
On December 1, 1981, the AIDS virus is officially recognized as a disease. Aids is a disease of the human immune system caused by infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
The complete origin of HIV are not really known to researchers on this day. Clear is however, that the human immunodeficiency virus is very similar to the Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a retrovirus that is able to infect over 40 species of African primates. It is assumed, that this virus exists for more than 32.000 years, which was measured at the African island Bioko and the African mainland....
On July 29, 1805, French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was born. He is best known for his Democracy in America, where he analyzed the rising living standards and social conditions of individuals and their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Today, it is considered an early work of sociology and political science.
On July 30, 1511, Italian Renaissance painter, architect, writer and historian Giorgio Vasari was born. He is best known today for his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.
On August 23, 1769, French naturalist and zoologist Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier aka Georges Cuvier was born. He was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century, and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.
From Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666, a major conflagration swept through the central parts of the English city of London, destroying the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall. The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Evacuation from London and resettlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Despite numerous radical proposals, London was reconstructed on essentially the same street plan used before the fire.
On October 9 or 10, 1813, famous Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi was born. He is primarily known for his romantic operas, and together with Richard Wagner, Verdi is considered the most influential composer of operas of the nineteenth century.
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