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Quotations

In the lab/classroom I try to fire student's imaginations by putting inspirational quotes at the top of the whiteboard. It seems to work with some students, some notice if it has not been updated from the previous day, others offer me alternative quotes. It also gives me a thrill when I mark student's books and find they have been copying them off the board. Best of all is when students that I haven't taught stop me in the corridor to comment on the quotes.

Something else I do is have one or two anniversaries under the date, preferably with a science/technology slant. Failing that, something to do with learning, or New Zealand.

Talking of the date, that goes up in Te Reo.

So, below is nearly a years supply, there are some holes to plug e.g. weekends and holidays. Note 2020's year starts on January 27.

The quotes have been collected over the years, some of the historical events are from the New Zealand Herald, supplemented by others, again collected over the years. The source that I have used most is Today in Science.
There are others; Brainy Quote, Quoteland, Quote World, The Quotations Page, or The Quote Garden.

January February March April May June
July August September October November December

January

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

1For every person wishing to teach, there are thirty not wanting to be taught: Robert Julian Yeatman.
1884: First volume of Oxford English Dictionary published.
2000: Scientists in laboratory in New Mexico say they have traced the origin of Aids virus to around 1930.
2If you think education is expensive - try ignorance: Derek Bok.
1839: First photograph of the Moon by French photographer Louis Daguerre.
1959: Soviet Union launch first spacecraft to the Moon - Luna 1.
3I learn the way a monkey learns - watching it's parents: Charles, Prince of Wales.
1924: The sarcophagus of Tutankhamun is found by British Eqyptologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings.
1958: Edmund Hillary's team reach the South Pole.
4If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him: Benjamin Franklin.
1885: Probable first appendectomy, by Dr William Grant of Davenport, Iowa.
1967: Donald Campbell killed on Coniston Water during world water speed record attempt.
5Even while they teach, men learn: Seneca (c. 4 BC - 65 AD).
Top1896: Wilhelm Roentgen announces the discovery of X-rays.
Jan1977: Start of 16 month occupation of Bastion Point.
6Replace teachers by super intelligent cyborgs: Ned Flanders.
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7A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops: Henry Brooks Adams
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8Once you get people laughing, they're listening and you can tell them almost anything: Herbert Gardner
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9Never educate a child to be a gentlemen or a lady only, but to be a man, and a woman: Herbert Spencer
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10Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers: Tom Waits.
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11Champions know there are no shortcuts to the top: David Tua (TV ad, 2005)
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12Life is a choice - as is how you handle the pitfalls along its bumpy road: Julie Donner Andersen
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13Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine: Arthur Eddington, Sir
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14If we think happy thoughts, we will be happy. If we think miserable thoughts, we will be miserable: Dale Carnegie
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15We have the ability to decide what thoughts we are going to dwell on: David DeNotaris
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16Positive anything is better than negative nothing. Elbert Hubbard
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17What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens: Thaddeus Golas
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18Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on Earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude: Thomas Jefferson
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19Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world: Albert Einstein
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20We must use time as a tool, not as a couch: J.F.K.
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21Children need models more than they need critics: J.Joubert
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22The prenuptial state of mind alters their physical abilities and slows down the precipitation which occurs in the heart.
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23One day your life will flash before your eyes, so you had better make sure it is good viewing: unknown
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24If you aimed big and failed, you've failed begger than anyone else: James Cameron
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25If at first you don't suceed, you're running about average: Flash Hopkins
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26A mistake is actually a second chance even though it may not seem like it at the time: Te Wehitaua Winikerei Smith
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27Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
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28Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out: Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471 - 1530)
1986: Challenger Space Shuttle accident.
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29No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up: Lily Tomlin
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30Don't just stand there and shout it, do something about it: Depeche Mode
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31Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once: Anon
1961: Ham, the chimpanzee is sent into space.
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February

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

1We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them: Einstein
1851: Submarine, Le Plongeur-Marin sinks with it's inventor on board. He survived by waiting for the inside air pressure, compressed as more water leaked in, to match the water pressure outside. Seven hours later, he and his crew opened the hatch and rose to the surface to find funeral services in progress.
1911: First use of fingerprints - Thomas Jennings was convicted, and executed on 16 Feb 1912.
1951: First public broadcast of an atomic explosion by TV station KTLA. Event filmed on Mount Wilson, 300 miles away from the test blast at Frenchman Flats, Nevada.
1981: Australian Trevor Chapel bowls underarm to New Zealand number 10 Brian McKechnie to stop him going for a 6 that would draw the match!

START TERM 1 - TBA January/February 2018
2Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new: Einstein
1046: First known record of the beginning of the 200 year period of exceptional cold, known as the "Little Ice Age".
1795: A prize of 12,000 francs was offered by the French government for a method of preserving food and transporting it to its armies. The winner was Nicholas Appert, a French chef who developed the method of heating food in airtight glass jars.
1869: James Oliver invented the removable tempered steel plow blade.
1892: William Painter patents the bottle cap with cork seal, today caps use plastic cap "liners", instead of cork.
3Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts: Unknown
1879: First practically usable incandescent filament electric light bulb was demonstrated to an audience of 700 by its inventor Joseph Wilson Swan at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne.
1966: First US operational weather satellite, ESSA-1 launched to provide cloud-cover photography for weather analyses and forecasts.
1966: First soft landing on the Moon by the unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft in the Ocean of Storms.
4Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe: Einstein
1913: First automobile tire rim that was designed to be removed and remounted.
1941: Roy Plunkett received a U.S. patent for "Tetrafluoroethylene Polymers," now known under the trade name Teflon.
5Wind is caused by trees waving their branches: Ogden Nash.
Top1929: First U.S. patent for athletics starting blocks.
Feb1971: Commander Alan B. Shepard and Lunar Module pilot Edgar D. Mitchell in Apollo 14 become the third US manned mission to land on the Moon.
6Leave "the world" just a little bit better than you found it. I’m starting to wipe up sinks, clean up trash. I do my very best to leave every situation I’m in just a little bit better than I found it: Tim Allen
1840: Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
1959: First test-firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral.
7Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
1863: HMS Orpheus wrecked on the Manukau Bar, killing 189.
1991: IRA morter bomb 10 Downing Street, official residence of the British Prime Minister. I was actually working in London at the time and heard the explosion!
8To make headway, improve your head: B.C. Forbes
1672: Isaac Newton presents his first paper on optics.
1931: First fatal air accident in NZ, a De Sotter monoplane crashes at Wairoa.
1974: the third and final Skylab crew returns to Earth.
9Just can't live that negative way … make way for the positive day: Bob Marley
1540: First recorded horse race meeting at Roodeye Fields, Chester, England.
1951: Start of the waterfront dispute which lasted 151 days.
2002: Princess Margaret, 71, younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, dies.
10Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going: Jim Ryuh
Top1840: Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Feb1996: IBM computer, Deep Blue, makes history by beating the world chess champion, Gary Kasparov.
11Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious: Peter Ustinov.
1971: Treaty banning nuclear weapons from the ocean floor signed by 63 nations in ceremonies at Washington, London, and Moscow.
1975: Margaret Thatcher becomes first woman to head a British political party when elected leader of the Conservative party.
1990: African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela released after 27 years in South African prisons.
12Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood: Mary Hirsch.
1912: 2000 years of imperial rule in China ends with the abdication of Pu Li, the "last Emperor".
2001: The first landing of a spacecraft on an asteroid - the NEAR spacecraft touches down on Eros.
2002: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring gets 13 Acadamy Award (Oscar) nominations.
2005: Stonehenge Aotearoa is opened by New Zealand Nobel Laureate Professor Alan MacDiarmid.
13Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be: Abraham Lincoln
1945: Dresden, Germany bombed by US bombers, wiping out the city and killing over 35,000 civilians.
1947: Opera singer Inia Te Wiata leaves NZ for London, the start of her international career.
2002: Fox hunting is banned by the Scottish Parliament.
14He that is good with a hammer tends to think eveything is a nail: Abraham Maslow
1663: Canada becomes a royal province of France.
1893: Hawaii annexxed by treaty to United States.
1922: First regular radio transmissions from England by Guglielmo Marconi, Italian scientist.
1946: Early computer called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) at the University of Pennsylvania - calculations that took hours, then took seconds.
2002: A cat is cloned at US Texas A&M University - the sixth species to be cloned.
2003: Dolly the Sheep, world's first cloned mammal dies. She had a progressive lung disease.
15If we were the same, we wouldn't be different: Adam Hanft
Top1879: US female lawyers allowed to argue cases before the Supreme Court.
Feb1882: The Dunedin leaves Port Chalmers carrying the first cargo of refrigerated NZ meat to Europe.
16Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him: Aldous Huxley
1923: Howard Carter opens the sealed door to King Tutankhamen's tomb.
1946: First commercial helicopter, the Sikorsky S51 first flew.
1948: Miranda, a moon of Uranus, was photographed for first time.
1959: Fidel Castro becomes Prime Minister of Cuba after ousting dictator Fulgencio Batista.
17I am a very lucky person, and the harder I work, the luckier I seem to be: Alan Macdiamid
1853: Nelson proclaimed a separate province.
1909: Geronimo, last Apache chief to surrender, dies in custody.
18Time is the best teacher; but unfortunately, it kills all its pupils: Hector-Louis Berlioz
1949: End of 8 day Mt Ngauruhoe eruption.
1977: First flight of the space shuttle Enterprise - on top of a 747.
1997: US astronauts finish 33 hours of space walking to finish the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
19Try not, do or do not, there is no try: Yoda.
1878: Thomas Edison patents his phonograph.
1942: First Japanese attack on Australia, bombing Darwin.
20If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy: Anon
Top1547: King Edward VI enthroned after the death of Henry VIII.
Feb1876: Submarine cable connected between NSW and NZ.
1962: Astronaut John Glenn is the first American to orbit the Earth in the Mercury space capsule "Friendship 7".
1996: Russia's MIR space station flies into it's second decade in space.
1998: Central Auckland plunged into five weeks of darkness and commercial chaos when 4 main electricty cables fail. Laugh, I nearly did, unfortunately I worked just outside the devestated area.
21Poor eyes limit a man's sight; poor vision, his deeds: Anon
1741: Death of Jethro Tull, English agrculturist (not the rock band) who invented the seed drill and pioneered planting seeds in rows.
1842: John Greenough patents sewing machine.
1947: Edwin H. Land demonstrates his Polaroid camera that produces a B&W photo in 60 seconds.
22Success comes before work only in the dictionary: Anon
1819: Spain cedes Florida to the United States.
1879: Frank Winfield Woolworth opens a 5 cent store in Utica, New York.
1968: The use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is banned in NZ.
23The wheel was man's greatest invention until he got behind it: B. Ireland
1836: Start of the siege of Alamo in Texas.
1997: Scientists in Scotland announce they cloned a sheep, producing "Dolly".
24Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do: Benjamin Franklin
1771: "Encyclopaedia Britannica" first published.
1887: Paris and Brussels become the first two capital cities to be linked by phone.
1989: Cargo door of United Airlines jumbo jet blows out on flight from Honolulu to Auckland. 9 passengers killed including NZer Lee Campbell.
25A year from now you may wish you had started today: Karen Lamb
Top1616: Galileo was ordered by Cardinal Bellarmine "to give up altogether the false doctrine (that the earth moves around the sun),... and if you should refuse.. you should be imprisoned."
Feb1899: First petrol engined car crash in which the driver died - Grove Hill Harrow, England.
26The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits: Albert Einstein
1878: French scientist, Littré chooses the word "microbe" to describe microscopic life.
1896: Henri Becquerel discovers a new form of penetrating radiation - radioactivity.
1935: Radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) was demonstrated to Air Ministry officials at Daventry, England.
1966: First Saturn 1B rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
27Money can't buy friends but it can get you a better class of enemy: Spike Milligan
or: All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy: Spike Milligan
or: Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery: Spike Milligan
1889: Railroad opened in Burma from Rangoon to Mandalay.
1980: First election in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) giving Blacks full voting powers.
2002: Spike Milligan, 83 dies in Rye, England.
28Millions saw the apple fall, only Newton asked why?: Berard Baruch
1943: Norwegian commandos sabotage German heavy water installations near Ryukan, Norway.
1966: Lunar 9 makes the first soft landing on the Moon.
1995: Maori occupy Moutoa Gardens in Wanganui for 80 days.
29Men fail through lack of purpose rather than through lack of talent: Billy Sunday
Top1736: Birth of Ann Lee also known as Mother Ann, Manchester-born blacksmith's daughter who emigrated with a handful of followers to the USA in 1774 and founded the religious group the American Society of Shakers, split from the Quakers!
Feb1880: The St. Gotthard Tunnel linking Switzerland and Italy was finished.
1908: Solid Helium is made by Dutch scientists.
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March

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

1I never knew there were so many stars in the sky: Survivor of Hurricane Katrina
1872: US Congress creates the Yellowstone National Park.
1954: US announces its hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
1961: US President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
2001: Afghanistan's ruling Taleban begins to destroy all statues in the country.
2To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am: Berard Baruch
1836: Texas declares independence from Mexico.
1882: Unsuccessful attempt to assasinate Queen Victoria by Roderick Maclean.
1933: World premiere of King Kong in New York.
1958: Finish of the first land crossing of Antarctica - by Dr. Andrew Fuchs.
1987: Edgecumbe earthquake.
2003: Alinghi (representing land locked Switzerland) beats Team New Zealand for the America's Cup.
3We did not all come over in the same "waka", but we are all in the same boat: Berard Baruch
1969: Apollo 9 launched from Cape Kennedy.
2005: First solo non-stop and fastest flight around the world without refueling ended as Steve Fossett landed at the Salina Municipal Airport, Kansas.
4Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the mastery of it: Bill Newman
1861: Abraham Lincoln becomes President of the US.
1968: Wimbledon officials agree to admit professional players.
1975: Charlie Chaplin knighted.
5So many have great gifts, but are too lazy to unwrap them: Bill Newman
Top1946: Winston Churchill gives his famous "Iron Curtain" speech; "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent."
Mar1970: Nuclear Proliferation Treaty goes into effect after 43 nations confirm ratification.
2000: First pigs cloned, by scientists that cloned Dolly, the sheep.
6There's no such thing as an original idea: Sam Morgan
1836: The Mexican Army take the Alamo in San Antonio after a 13 day siege in which Davy Crockett and 186 defenders die.
1899: Felix Hoffman patents formula for acetylsalicylic acid, which he calls asprin.
1944: Meat rationing starts in NZ.
1987: British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes off Zeebrugge, Belgium, killing 193.
1992: The computer virus "Michelangelo" strikes around the world.
2006: Sam Morgan sells "TradeMe" for $700 million.
7Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see things right: Blaine N.Lee
332 BC: The Greek philosopher Aristotle dies, aged 62.
1933: The game of Monopoly was invented.
1936: Germany occypies the Rhineland demilitarised zone, thus violating the Treaty of Versailles.
1971: Switzerland give women the right to vote and hold office.
2001: Ariel Sharon is sworn in as Israel's Prime Minister.
8There are two ways of exerting one's strength; one is pushing down, the other is pushing up: Booker T Washington
1765: Britain's House of Lords passes the Stamp Act to tax the American colonies.
1865: A canal is started to connect Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to the North Sea.
1930: The Indian campaign of civil disobedience is started by Mohandas K. Ghandi.
1942: Japanese reconnaissance plane flies over Auckland (World War II).
1950: The Russians announce they have the atomic bomb.
9We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world: Buddha
1831: French Foreign Legion formed in Algeria by King Louis Philippe.
1965: First U.S. rocket to launch 8 satellites.
1990: The two Germanys, East and West, start preliminary reunification talks.
10Life is like riding a bicycle. You don't fall off unless you stop pedalling: Calaude Pepper
Top1869: The New Zealand Cross for military gallantry is started. Ending in 1881, with only 23 awarded, it is one of the rarest decorations in the world.
Mar1876 First telephone call when Alexander Graham Bell said "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." to Thomas Watson in the next room.
11The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere: Charles F.Kettering
105: Ts'ai Lun invented paper. Before, books were made of bamboo, or expensive silk. In the West, books were made of sheepskin or calfskin.
1953: A London engineering company Halcrow & Partners is appointed by the NZ Government to design an underground electric railway for Auckland.
12By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong: Charles Wadsworth
1912: First parachute jump from an airplane.
1969: The supersonic aircraft, Concorde, made its first flight.
1994: After 460 years of male dominance, the Church of England appoints its first women priests in Bristol Cathedral.
13If you really want something, you can figure out how to make it happen: Cher
1930: The discovery of Pluto is announced by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory.
1953: Naval ratings and Army instructors (compulsory military training is suspended) are used to man the wharves during the waterside workers lockout.
2006: The "Swashbuckler" breaks the Sydney Bridge to Auckland Bridge record by a powerboat, which stood for 45 years.
14To see a man beaten not by a better opponent but by himself is a tragedy: Cus D'Amato
1918: First concrete seagoing ship is built in USA.
1994: First time a magnetic grappling system is used in space.
15The reason why so many individuals fail to achieve their goals in life is that they never really set them in the first place: D.Waitley
Top44 BC: The Ides of March - Julius Caesar is assassinated by a group of Roman senators including his friend Brutus.
Mar1806 First official discovery of a meteorite - outside Alais, France.
16If you want to help children, you have to start looking at the brain; after all, they don't read with their kidneys: Dr Deborah Waber
1872: The first NZ born member of Parliament, John Sheehan, is elected MP for Rodney.
1919: Invention of a wireless telephone system that lets air pilots talk in flight.
17Take your work seriously, but improvise your career: Declan Donnellan & Nick Ormond
1845: The rubber band was patented.
1950: A new radioactive element (Californium) was synthesised.
1958: The Americans first satellite, Vanguard 1.
18Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised: Denis Waitley
1909: First "ham" broadcast between Danish Einar Dessau and a Government radio post 10 km away.
1965: First spacewalk by Aleksey Leonov whilst tethered to Voskhod 2.
19There are some corners of the Universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought: Dr Who, 1967
1800: Electric eels captured by Alexander von Humoldt and Aimé Bonpland in the jungles of South America.
1932: Sydney Harbour Bridge is officially opened by New South Wales Premier Jack Lang.
20I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring: Dodie Smith
Top1866: Cobb & Co start a through service between Canterbury and the West Coast.
Mar1727: Sir Issac Newton dies.
1800: Alessandro Volta announces he has invented the electric battery.
1916: Einstein's paper "Theory of General Relativity" is published.
1934: First practical radar test.
21What we know today will be obsolete tomorrow. If we stop learning we stagnate: Dorothy D. Billington
1998: Aussie cricket team suffers its worst defeat in 60 years at the hands of India in Calcutta, being beaten by an innings and 219 runs.
1999: First complete non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones in the Breitling Orbiter 3.
22Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks: Dottie Walters
1946: First US rocket leaves the Earth's atmosphere, getting as high as 50 miles.
1994: Tauranga MP Winston Peters starts the "winebox" saga - claims of tax evasion by NZ companies.
23The only thing I am afraid of is fear: Duke of Wellington
1925: Teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in state schools is forbidden in Tennessee.
1965: First US 2-person space flight - Gemini III (Molly Brown) with Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young.
1996: US space shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian space station MIR for the 3rd time.
2001: The MIR space station plunges into the South Pacific after 15 years and 3.5 billion km in space.
24Winners do the things that failures aren't prepared to do: Earl Nightingale
1603: Queen Elizabeth I dies after ruling over 40 years. James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England, uniting the two countries.
1924: Greece becomes a republic.
1927: Australian parliaments last sitting in Melbourne before moving to Canberra.
1944: The Great Escape.
1972: Britain takes over direct control of Northen Ireland to restore peace.
1989: The supertanker Exxon Valdez runs aground on Bligh Reef, Prince William Sound, Alaska. The clean up takes 3 years, and approx 300,000 birds died.
1999: NZs first woman Chief Justice - Sian Elias QC.
25Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure: Earl Nightingale
Top1807: Britain abolishes the slave trade.
Mar1992: Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns from a 10-moth stay in space.
26People with goals succeed because they know where they are going... it's as simple as that: Earl Nightingale
1827: German composer Ludwig van Beethoven dies.
1872: The fire extinguisher is patented by black US inventor Thomas J. Martin.
1896: NZs worst mine disaster - 67 die in the Brunner coal mine.
1953: Polio vaccine is announced by US Dr Jonas E. Salk.
27What is God, but a reflection of what I want to be: Michael Robinson
1703: St. Petersburg is founded by Russia's Tsar Peter the great.
1899: First international radio transmission - inventor Guglielmo Marconi sends message from England to France.
1980: North Sea accomodation platform Alexander Kielland capsized killing 123.
28Having education is the one thing that can save your life, your family's life: Manying Ip
1930: Two Turkish cities receive name changes, Constantinople and Angora become Istanbul and Ankara.
1939: Madrid surrenders to General Francisco Franco, ending the Spanish Civil War.
1979: Three Mile Island, Middletown, Pennsylvania, America's worst nuclear accident.
29Courage is doing what you're afraid to do: Eddie Rickenbacker
1867: The Dominion of Canada is created through the North America Act of the British Parliament.
1871: Queen Victoria opens the Royal Albert Hall in London.
1886: First batch of Coca-Cola is made (goes on sale 8 May). Coke contained cocaine as an ingredient until 1904.
1912: Robert Falcon Scott dies during return trip to South Pole.
1973: Last American and Australian troops leave South Vietnam.
1977: Auckland Zookeeper David Pepper-Edwards is attacked by a hippo trying to rescue a visitor's camera. David suffers cuts and bruises.
30All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing: Edmund Burke
Top1811: Birth of Robert Bunsen. He discovered Caesium and Rubidium with Gustav Kirchoff.
Mar1870: Black men get the right to vote by the 15th amendment to the US constitution.
1998: Rolls-Royce bought by BMW.
2002: The Queen Mother, widow of King George VI, mum of Queen Elizabeth II, dies aged 101.
31It's not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves: Edmund Hillary
1889: The Eiffel Tower is completed when engineer Alexandre Eiffel puts the French flag on the top.
1984: Last tolls are taken on the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
1991: Warsaw Pact ends after 36 years of Kremlin control over eastern European countries.
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April

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1Vertical thinking is digging the same hole deeper. Lateral thinking is trying again elsewhere: Edward de Bono
1875: First newspaper weather map - in The Times, London, England.
1960: First weather observation satellite, Tiros I (Television Infrared Observation Satellite), was launched from Cape Kennedy and made the first television picture from space.
2The greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one: Elbert Hubbard
1827: Lead pencils were first manufactured by Joseph Dixon in Salem, Mass, USA.
1845: First surviving daguerrotype photograph showing details of the sun was taken by French physicists Armand Fizeau and Léon Foucault.
1953: Nature published a diagram of a double helix as the structure of DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid)."
1978: Velcro was released. It was developed by Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral, who noticed how thistle burrs clung to his clothing during a hike in the mountains.
3To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing: Elbert Hubbard
1934: Percy Shaw (1889-1975) patented the catseye road marker.
1973: First portable phone call was placed by inventor Martin Cooper.
1973: Francis W. Dorion patented a "dual razor blade assembly".
4Never reach out your hand unless you’re willing to extend an arm: Elizabeth Fuller
1877: Early demonstration of the telephone, a New York audience heard a pianist perform in Philadelphia.
1932: Professor C. Glen King (Pittsburgh University) isolated vitamin C, used to prevent scurvy.
1983: Space Shuttle Challenger launched for the first time.
5Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have: Emile Chartier
Top1957: The Soviet Union tested an H-bomb.
Apr1964: Driverless trains first run on the London Underground.
6If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves: Emily Dickinson
1852: Edward Sabine announces that the 11 year sunspot cycle was "absolutely identical" with the geomagnetic cycle.
1912: Cars start using the electric starter motor.
1965: First commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, USA's "Early Bird" Intelsat 1.
1973: Pioneer 11 was launched to Jupiter and Saturn.
1993: Another nuclear 'accident' - a tank of radioactive waste explodes at the secret military facility at Tomsk 7.
7There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will: Epicetus
1795: France adopted by law, the metre as the unit of length and the base of the metric system.
1815: Mount Tombora, Indonesia erupts - making a 5 mile wide crater, lowered the island by 4,000 feet, and killed 92,000 people.
1906: Mount Vesuvius erupted.
1959: The first radar signal was bounced off the sun from Stanford, California.
8No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement: Florida Scott-Maxwell
1862: First aerosol dispenser was patented in the U.S. by John D. Lynde of Philadelphia.
1947: Largest sunspot group recorded was observed on the sun's southern hemisphere. Its size was estimated at 7 billion square miles.
9A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do: G. W. F. Hegel
1895: Proof that Saturn's rings were not solid, a spectrogram showed that the rings were made out of meteoric particles, as predicted by Maxwell.
1959: NASA announced the selection of America's first seven astronauts for project Mercury. Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton were chosen from 110 applicants.
10See things as they are and ask "why?" Dream things as they never were and ask "why not?": G.B.Shaw
Top1849: First U.S. patent for a safety pin issued to Walter Hunt.
Apr1912: The Titanic sets off from Southampton, England, on it's way to destiny and later stardom in a blockbuster film.
1930: Dr. Arnold M. Collins produces the first synthetic rubber for manufacturing.
1944: Dr. Robert Burns Woodward and Dr. William von Eggers Doering produce the first synthetic quinine an anti-malarial drug.
1972: The United States and the Soviet Union sign an agreement banning biological warfare with around 70 other countries.
11Find out everything everybody else knows, and then begin where they left off: Geoffrey Moss?
1919: New Zealanders vote against prohibition in a referendum.
1982: First circumnavigation of the Earth by both poles - by Britains Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton.
2006: Venus Express spacecraft enters Venus orbit.
12Anger is one letter short of Danger: Geoffrey Moss?
1954: The dawn of rock music - Bill Haley and the Comets record "Rock around the clock".
1961: The first man in Space - cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
1981: First Space Shuttle flight.
13Failure is the path of least persistence: Geoffrey Moss?
1970: Apollo 13 accident - an explosion caused an oxygen leak.
1997: Tiger Woods becomes first Afro-American to win a major golf title, not only that but also the youngest.

END TERM 1 - 13 April 2018
14If you ask a question you may look foolish for five minutes, but if you don't you remain a fool for ever: Geoffrey Moss?
1611: The word "telescope" was first used in public by Prince Federico Cesi at a banquet held to honour Galileo. Telescope comes from the Greek words* (tele = far and scopeo = see).
1912: First mayday call from the Titanic.
1932: First nuclear particle accelerator splits the atom by a proton beam on a lithium target.
15Learn to manage yourself, then you are qualified to manage others: Geoffrey Moss?
Top1912: Einstein talks of time as the fourth dimension.
Apr1923: Insulin becames generally available for diabetics' use.
1941: Igor Ivor Sikorsky made the first helicopter flight over one-hour duration in his Vought-Sikorsky VS-300.
16Look to the future. That's where you are going to spend the rest of your life: Geoffrey Moss?
1912: First female pilot to fly the English Channel - American aviator Harriet Quimby.
1947: First zoom lens for a television camera was demonstrated by the National Broadcasting Company in New York City.
1976: The Helios-B deep-space probe made (what was then) the closest controlled approach to the Sun at 43 million km (or within 0.3 AU).
17Never take your boss a problem unless you can suggest a solution: Geoffrey Moss?
1906: The 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
1964: First woman to complete a solo airplane flight around the world - Jerrie Mock of Columbus, Ohio.
1967: Spacecraft Surveyor 3 launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, and became the second US spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon.
18People can be put into three categories: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened: Geoffrey Moss?
1846: First U.S. patent for a telegraph ticker that would print letters of the alphabet - it could print at the rate of 50 words a minute.
1910: First night airplane flight in the U.S. was made by Walter R. Brookins in Montgomery, Alabama.
19The only job you start at the top is when you dig a hole: Geoffrey Moss?
1892: First automobile regularly built for sale. The start of the car industry - the Duryea Motor Wagon Company.
1971: First Space Station - Salyut 1 (DOS 1) was launched on a Proton rocket by the Soviet Union. Salyut 1 re-entered Earth's atmosphere 11 Oct 1971. Six more followed, leading up to the launch of space station Mir on 20 Feb 1986.
20We all have one thing in common - a 24 hour day. It's how we use our time that makes the difference: Geoffrey Moss?
Top1862: First test of pasteurization was completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard. Jars, sealed since 3 Mar, were opened and neither liquid showed observable decay or fermentation.
Apr1902: Marie and Pierre Curie isolated one gram of radium, the first sample of the radioactive element. They had refined it from eight tons of pitchblende ore.«
1940: First U.S. electron misroscope was demonstrated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was able to produce a magnification of 100,000 times, in an apparatus 10 feet high and weighing half a ton.
1964: First picturephone transcontinental call was made between New York City and Anaheim, California. The device consisted of a telephone handset and a small, matching TV.
21It is always brave to say what everyone else thinks: George Duhamel
1878: First U.S. firehouse pole was installed in New York City, by Capt. David B. Kenyon to reduce the time for men to travel to the ground floor from the second floor at Engine Company 21.
1962: Seattle's World Fair was opened by remote control by President John F. Kennedy from Palm Beach, Florida.
22Money is necessary in this world, obsession with it is not: Michael Robinson
1056: The supernova in the Crab nebula was last seen by the naked eye.
1823: Roller skates (called Volitos) were patented by Robert John Tyers, a fruiterer in Picadilly, London.
1915: 1915, modern chemical weapons were first used in a war. German troops released chlorine gas from several metal cylinders on the front lines at Ypres, Belgium during WW I, painfully killing 5000 soldiers.
1924: U.S. patent for a laminated padlock was issued to its inventor Harry E. Soref. He went on to establish the Master Lock company in 1921.
1955: First U.S. atomic powered submarine completed.
1969: First human eye transplant was performed.
23There's no such thing as "bad weather", just inappropriate clothing: ?
1962: First US satellite to reach the Moon was launched - Ranger IV rendezvoued at 5,963 mph.
1981: First US transplant of artificial skin - this treatment saved lives of burns victims.
24Times change, and we change with the times: ?
1886: Oil first discovered in the Middle East.
1928: First sonar equipment - called a fathometer.
25Troubles, like babies, grow larger by nursing: Lady Holland
Top1983: Pioneer 10 crosses the orbit of Pluto, the famous ex-planet.
Apr1990: The US$2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in space. Seven years behind schedule and nearly US$2 billion over budget.
26For every mountain there is a miracle: Robert H. Schuller
1921: First weather forcast on radio (USA).
1961: The IC (Integrated Circuit) is patented by Robert Noyce.
1986: Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes.
1993: First IV (intravenous) drop line in space - Space Shuttle Columbia which also marks the total cumulative space shuttle flight time passing 1 year.
27A desire can overcome all objections and obstacles: Gunderson
1887: First US appendectomy.
1898: First US Weather Bureau weather kite (up to 7 on a single line).
1970: Announcement of the discovery of Dubnium (Db), element 105, atomic mass 260. Originally named Hahnium, it was officially renamed Dubnium (Db) after Dubna, Russia, where it was first created.
28Smooth seas do not make skilful sailors: African Proverb
1919: First jump with a manually operated parachute. Leslie LeRoy Irvin jumped from an altitude of 1,500-ft, and broke his ankle on landing.
1986: Russia finally announced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
1991: Launch of the space shuttle Discovery to perform "Star Wars" defense research.
29I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much: Mother Teresa
1820: First patent to Thomas Hancock for the use of rubber in clothing.
1997: First Russo-American space walk taking 5 hours by U.S. astronaut Jerry M. Linenger and Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev from the Russian space station Mir*.

START TERM 2 - 30 April 2018
30To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can't just accept the ones you like: Mike Gafka
Top1006: Chinese and Arabic astronomers noted a supernova in our Milky Way galaxy, appearing in the southern constellation Lupus, near the star Beta Lupi.
Apr1897: Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940) first announced the existence of electrons (as they are now named).
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May

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1Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds: George Eliot
1753: Carolus Linnaeus (the father of classification) published Species Plantarum in which he gave systematic names to plants that are still in use today.
1949: Gerard Kuiper discovered Nereid, the outermost and the third largest of Neptune's known satellites.
1958: The discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star.
2The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another: George Eliot
1775: Benjamin Franklin completed the first scientific study of the Gulf Stream. He found ships took two weeks longer to bring mail from England than was required in the opposite direction.
1997: Tony Blair becomes Britain's youngest Prime Minister in 185 years.
3A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow: George S. Patton
1841: NZ becomes a British crown colony, when it is separated from New South Wales.
1968: First successful heart transplant in the United States on Everett Thomas, who lived for 204 days with the heart donated from a 15-year-old girl.
4The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer: George Santayana
1989: Tiananmen Square - 10s of 1000s Chinese students march for freedom and democracy.
2001: US is voted off the UN Human Rights Commission.
5The wisest mind has something yet to learn: George Santayana
Top1821: Napoleon Banaparte dies on St Helena.
May1961: First American in space - Alan Shepard in a 15 minute sub-orbital flight.
2001: Dennis Tito arrives back on Earth, he is the world's first paying space tourist.
6The best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past: George Savile
1937: The Hindenburg explodes on landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey - 36 die.
1954: Roger Bannister runs the mile in less than 4 minutes (3 min, 59.4 s).
1994: The Chunnel (Channel Tunnel) is opened by the Queen, and President Francois Mitterrand.
7Be absolutely determined to enjoy what you do: Gerry Sikorski
1846: 61 die in a mudslide at Te Rapa, Taupo.
1856: NZ's first Prime Minister - Henry Sewell.
1915: The ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed by a German U-boat killing nearly 1200. This brought the USA into World War 1.
8Every child has, at birth, a greater potential than Leonardo Da Vinci ever used: Glenn Doman
1945: VE (Victory in Europe) Day.
1996: South Africa adopts it's permanent post-apartheid constitution.
9An idea is a new combination of old elements: Gordon Dryden
1986: Sherpa Tenzing Norgay dies - first to successfully climb Mt. Everest with Edmund Hillary
1994: Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa's first black President.
10People will over-achieve targets they set themselves: Gordon Dryden
Top1862: The first shipment of NZ gold leaves Dunedin.
May1940: Winston Churchill becomes Britain's Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain resigns.
11If you're not part of the steamroller, you're a part of the road: Gregory Rowlins
1945: King George VI gives the VC to Captain Charles Upham.
2000: India's population officially hits 1 billion with the birth of a baby girl (called Astha - Faith in Hindi).
12Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare: Harriet Martineau
1969: Start of Cliff Tait's round-the-world flight in an Air Tourer 115 - the smallest aircraft to do such a flight.
1996: NZer Rob Hall and 9 others die in a blizzard on Mt. Everest.
13Many people may listen, but few people actually hear: Harvey Mackay
1637: The table knife was created by Cardinal Richelieu in France.
1913: the first four-engine airplane was first built and flown by Igor Sikorsky of Russia
1951: Labour leader Walter Nash gives his "fence-sitting" speech in Auckland's domain. "We are not for the waterside workers and we are not against them". This haunts him for the rest of his political life.
14Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much: Helen Keller
1963: First laser TV link between a studio camera and a receiver.
1973: Launch of "Skylab One" space station.
1987: Military coup in Fiji - Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rambuka declares a military government after kidnapping PM Dr Timoci Bavadra and his cabinet.
15Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood: Helen Keller
Top1501: Ottaviano Petrucci of Venice produced the first book of music.
May1928: Royal Flying Doctor Service started in Queensland. Called the Australian Inland Mission Aerial Service.
1957: Britain's first H-bomb exploded in the air off Christmas Island in the central Pacific Ocean.
1963: Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper blasted off aboard Faith 7 on the final mission of the Mercury Space Programme.
16The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision: Helen Keller
1888: Emile Berliner gave the first demonstration of flat disc recording and reproduction.
1943: Dr Barnes Wallis' "bouncing bombs" were dropped on the Mohne and Eder dams in the Ruhr Valley.
1946: The world's first magnetic tape recorder was demonstrated for the first time by Jack Mullin.
1960: First operation of a synthetic ruby crystal laser at the Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
1988: Nicotine declared to be addictive in ways similar to heroin and cocaine.
1992: Space shuttle Endeavour completes its maiden voyage with a safe landing in the California desert.
17We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world: Helen Keller
1883: Svante Arrhenius explains that substances like salt (ex. sodium chloride) when dissolved in water, dissociate (separate) into electrically charged ions (ex. positive sodium ions and negative chloride ions). The idea was controversial at first, but is now a basic fact in understanding the chemistry of ionic compounds.
1912: New automatic telephone equipment in Epsom, provided 320 Epson telephone users the ability to dial other numbers in the town themselves instead of having to ask the operator.
1912: The highest ever voltage of 321.5 million volts was produced by the National Electrostatics Corporation, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
18One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar: Helen Keller
1830: Edwin Budding of England signed an agreement for the manufacture of his invention, the lawn mower.
1952: Prof. W.F. Libby determined the age of Stonehenge at 1848 BC through charcoal analysis.
1969: Apollo 10 launched - a complete rehearsal of the Apollo 11 mission without actually landing on the Moon. The mission was the second to orbit the Moon and the first to travel to the Moon with the entire Apollo spacecraft configuration.
1980: Following a weeklong series of earthquakes and smaller explosions of ash and smoke, Mount St. Helens volcano erupted.
1991: First Briton into space, Helen Sharman, launched with two cosmonauts in a Soyuz spacecraft.
19The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors: Henry Becquerel
1910: The Earth passes through the tail of Halley's Comet.
1959: First submarine with two nuclear reactors was completed - the Triton.
20Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all: Henry David Thoreau
Top1747: Start of an experiment to remedy scurvy among sailors by a British ship's surgeon, James Lind, on the HMS Salisbury.
May1921: Marie Curie presented with $100,000 worth of Radium (1 gram) at the White House.
1956: First hydrogen fusion bomb (H-bomb) to be dropped from an airplane exploded over Namu Atoll at the northwest edge of the Bikini Atoll. The fireball was four miles in diameter.
1990: First photo from the Hubble Space Telescope - an image of a double star 1,260 light years away.
21No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, and disciplined: Henry Emerson Fosdick
1853: World's first public aquarium, the "Aquatic Vivarium" was opened in Regent's Park, London.
1894: Queen Victoria opens the Manchester Ship Canal in north-west England - along side of which, I grew up! At one point, Manchester (60 km inland) became Englands 3rd busiest port. It is currently the 8th longest ship canal, only slightly shorter than the Panama Canal.
1916: Daylight Saving Time was introduced in Britain as a war-time measure to save fuel.
1936: Start of Lucite production in the USA - better known as the plastic (polymethyl methacrylate), more popularly known as the crystal clear Perspex and Plexiglass.
22Failure is only the opportunity to move intelligently and begin again: Henry Ford
1849: First American president to receive a patent - Abraham Lincoln - a patent for "buoying boats over shoals - using inflated cylinders to float grounded vessels through shallow water.
1906: First airplane patent in the USA by brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright.
1995: Astronomers Amanda S. Bosh and Andrew S. Rivkin found two new moons of Saturn in photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
23If you think you can or think you can't, you're right: Henry Ford
1940: R.V. Jones, a scientist with air intelligence, tells the government that intersecting radio beams could guide bombers to their targets.
1966: Piki Paki becomes Maori Queen Te Atairahgikaahu when her father King Koroki dies.
24My best friend is the one that brings out the best in me: Henry Ford
1959: A week before the Auckland Harbour Bridge is opened over 100,000 people walk across it.
1962: Scott Carpenter becames the second American to orbit the Earth making 3orbits of the earth, reaching a maximum altitude of 164 miles.
25Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs: Henry Ford
Top1961: JFK announces that an American lunar landing will be made "before this decade is out".
May1978: Bastion Point in Orakei, Auckland. 218 Maori land protesters are arrested, and buildings demolished.
26Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal: Henry Ford
1923: First Le Mans 24 hour race.
1969: Apollo 10 astronauts returned to Earth after a successful eight-day dress rehearsal for the first manned moon landing.
27You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do: Henry Ford
1931: Auguste Piccard and Charles Knipfer took man's first trip into the stratosphere when they rode their balloon to an altitude of 51,800 feet (nearly 10 miles above the earth).
1937: San Fransico's Golden Gate Bridge is opened - connecting it to Marin County.
1994: Highest temperature produced in a lab was a plasma temperature of 510 million degrees Celsius (918,000,000 deg F) in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) operated at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory of Princeton University.
28A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes: Hugh Downs
1897: Introduction of Jell-o in the US.
1932: The Dutch Barrier Dam between the North Sea and the Zuyder Zee is completed.
1959: Sub-orbital space flight of 2 Rhesus monkeys, one died shortly after returning the orther died in 1984, aged 27.
1971: USSR's Mars 3 is launched, and becomes the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars.
2003: Plagiarism and fabricated reporting scandal at the New York Times.
29What is important is not that there are uncontrollable events in our lives, but how we respond to them: Hyrum W.Smith
1919: Einstein's theory of relativity's prediction that starlight will be bent when passing through the sun's gravitational field is verified by 2 expeditions to Brazil, and off the West coast of Africa.
1953: NZ are at the top of the world, well at least Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay become the first to reach the top of Mount Everest.
30Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life: Immanuel Kant
Top1431: Joan of Arc is burned at the stake at Rouen, France.
May1930: Pluto is named "Pluto".
31If I could see further than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants: Isaac Newton
1578: The Catacombs of Rome were discovered by accident. Dating from c 3rd century, used by as they were forbidden to bury their dead in regular burial grounds.
1942: 3 Japanese midget submarines enter Sydney Harbour and are captured after sinking the ferry Kuttabul.
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June

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1When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity: J.F.K.
1955: First solar energy battery - gave 0.5 V of electricity.
1994: After 33 years absence, South Africa re-joins the British Commonwealth.
2002: The Czech Republic are the first nation to outlaw "light pollution" - to help thier astronomers.
2How the twig is bent may be less important than the way it bends itself: J.Krutch
1875: Alexander Bell realised that transmitting human speech was possible.
1954: First test of a VTOL airplane, the Convair XFY-1 Pogo demonstrated a vertical takeoff and landing. It was built to sit upright on it's tail.
1962: Compac (Commonwealth Pacific telephone cable) connects Sydney, Auckland, and Suva.
3The test and the use of a man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind: Jacques Barzun
1769: James Cook observes the transit of Venus across the Sun in Tahiti - the main purpose of his voyage.
1902: Thomas A. Edison received a patent for a "Reversible Galvanic Battery" - that's a rechargable battery to you.
1965: First American astronaut to make a spacewalk was Major Edward White II, went outside his Gemini 4 capsule.
4Good thoughts bear good fruit; bad thought, bad fruit: James Allen
780 BC: First Solar eclipse is recorded - in China.
1844: The last Auks killed.
1940: Last of the Dunkirk evacuees arrives in England.
1989: Tiananmen Square student protest is squashed by Chinese tanks.
5The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions: James Russell Lowell.
Top1783: First (unmanned) hot-air balloon flew for ten minutes. Made by the Montgolfier brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne at Annonay, France.
Jun1938: First sythesized speech machine.
1981: First published description of AIDS - but did not get that name till later.
6Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness: James Thurber
1882: First US patent for an electric iron.
1942: First parachute jump using a nylon parachute.
7I'd rather know some of the questions than all of the answers: James Thurber
1908: Britain gives Australia it's coat of arms.
1965: First home video tape recorder introduced by Sony.
8There are two kinds of light—the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures: James Thurber
1869: Ives McGaffrey (Chicargo) patents the suction vacuum cleaner.
1983: World's first test-tube triplets born in Adelaide.
9It is far better to know our weaknesses and failings than to point out those of others: Jawaharlal Nehru
1898: China leases Hong Kong to the British.
1928: Charles Kingsford-Smith & Charles Ulm first to fly across the Pacific Ocean flying from California to Brisbane.
10The pleasure of criticizing robs us of the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things: Jean de La Bruyere
Top1793: First public Zoo - Jardin des Plantes in Paris.
Jun1886: Eruption of Mount Tarawera, killing 153.
1943: Hungarian Laszlo Biro patents the ball point pen.
11A man reveals his character even in the simplest things he does: Jean de La Bruyère
1509: Henry VIII marries Catherine of Aragon, the first of his 6 wives.
1770: First European to sight the Great Barrier Reef is Captain Cook.
1975: First test pumpings of North Sea oil.
12Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time: Jean Paul Richter
1897: The MacGyver Kinfe, otherwise known as the Swiss Army Knife was patented by Carl Elsener.
1964: Nelson Mandela sentanced to life in South Africa.
1979: The Gossamer Albatross flew across the English Channel, an airplane powered solely by human power. Cyclist Bryan Allen used a pedalling mechanism.
13What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1940: Germans lay mines at the entrance to the Hauraki Gulf in WWII.
1969: Americans start to pull out of South Vietnam.
14What I fear most about stress is not that it kills, but that it prevents one from savoring life: Jean-Louis Seven-Schreiber
1699: Thomas Savery demonstrated a small model of a steam-powered water pump - which he patented 25 Jul 1698.
1951: Univac1 the world's first commercial computer, which was 8 feet high, 7-1/2 feet wide and 14-1/2 feet long.
1952: The keel was laid for Nautilus, the first US atomic submarine. It was launched in early 1954, commisioned later that year. It was tested under nuclear power on 17 Jan 1955 and completed 22 Apr 1955.
15People who know how to employ themselves, always find leisure moments, while those who do nothing are forever in a hurry: Jeanne-Marie Roland
Top1869: John Wesley Hyatt and Isaiah Hyatt get a US patent for the first plastic.
Jun1919: Capt. John Alcock (pilot) and Lt. Arthur W. Browne (navigator) successfully completed the first, non-stop, transatlantic, airplane flight: Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in 16 hr 12 min.
16It takes two wings for a bird to fly: Jessie Jackson
1657: The first pendulum clock was patented by its inventor, Christiaan Huygens. He needed time accuracy for his astronomical measurements.
1903: The Pepsi-Cola trademark is registered with the U.S. Patent Office.
1963: Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space on Vostok 6 for 48 orbits lasting nearly three days.
17Before you put on a frown . . . Make absolutely certain there are no smiles available: Jim Beggs
1867: Joseph Lister in Glasgow, Scotland became the first surgeon to perform surgery under antiseptic conditions.
1967: China tested its first hydrogen bomb, China's sixth nuclear test.
18What we say is important . . . For in most cases the mouth speaks what the heart is full of: Jim Beggs
1928: First woman to fly the Atlantic - Amelia Earhart.
1948: Birth of the long playing record (33,1/3 rpm) by Columbia Records.
1983: First American woman in space - Sally Ride in the Shuttle Challenger.
19Don't wish it was easier - wish that you were better: Jim Rohn
240 BC: Eratosthenes, a Greek astronomer and mathematician, estimated the circumference of the earth.
1931: First commercial doors operated by photoelectric cell, the "magic eye" controlled automated swinging doors between the kitchen and main dining room of Wilcox's Pier Restaurant in West Haven, USA.
20Either you are making plans or somebody is making plans for you: Jim Rohn
Top1939: Ernst Heinkel's He-176 experimental rocket airplane - flew for first time, at Peenemunde, Germany.
Jun1986: Because of Chernobyl fallout - the slaughter of lambs in parts of Cumbria, Scotland, was temporarily banned. Movement and slaughter were still restricted 10 years after Chernobyl.
21Pressure usually comes when we have no plan: Jim Smoke
2004: Mike Melvill became the first civilian to pilot a craft "SpaceShipOne" into space, flying to 100-km. The rocket engine fuel was a solid rubber propellant with liquid nitrous oxide.
2005: World's first solar sail spacecraft placed in orbit.
22It takes time to save time: Joe Taylor
1633: Galileo Galilei was forced by the Inquisition to "abjure, curse, and detest" his Copernican heliocentric views.
1960: First U.S. rocket to launch two satellites.
1973: First Skylab crew splashed down safely after a then record 28 days in space.
1978: Discovery of the moon (Charon) of Pluto, by astronomer James W. Christy of the Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, USA.
23Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself: Joel Hawes
1848: Adolphe Sax was awarded a patent for the saxophone.
1982: A record low temperature of -82ºC (-117ºF). was recorded at the South Pole.
24A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
1943: Dr. William Randolph Lovelace II jumped out of a B-17 bomber flying at 40,200 feet in order to test the emergency oxygen unit.
1975: A moon tremour, caused by a strike of Taurid meteors, was detected by the seismometer network left on the Moon's surface by American astronauts.
25We should quietly hear both sides: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Top1867: Barbed wire is patented by Lucien Smith of Ohio.
Jun1876: Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana - Custer's last stand.
26There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up: John A.Holmes
1721: First smallpox inoculations in America were given in Boston by Dr. Zabdiel Boylston.
1819: First US patent for a velocipede, a predecessor of the bicycle.
1886: Henri Moissan isolates the element fluorine. His work had been interrupted four times by serious poisoning.
1974: First commercial use of a bar code scanner (by IBM).
27Failures are divided into two classes----those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought: John Charles Salak
1926: First public demonstration of a true television system in London.
1948: In 1948, Wire Recording Corporation of America announced the first magnetic wire recorder.
28The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year: John Foster Dulles
1613: Galileo may have unknowingly viewed the undiscovered planet of Neptune.
1896: First speeding fine was handed out to a British motorist for exceeding 2mph in a built-up area.
1998: World record for balloon endurance flight at nine days and 17 hours - or, to be exact, 233 hours and 55 minutes - Andy Nelson and navigator Bertrand Piccard, in the Breitling Orbiter II.
29Me lift thee and thee lift me, and we'll both ascend together: John Greenleaf Whittier
1929: First high-speed jet wind tunnel was completed at Langley Field, California, for speeds of up to 600-mph.
1961: First U.S. rocket to launch three satellites was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1994: First near-complete fossil of a pygmy mammoth skeleton (12,840 years old) was found in rapidly eroding sea cliffs on Santa Rosa Island, one of the Channel Islands of California.
1995: The US space shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian space station Mir for a mission which lasted until 4 Jul 1995.
30The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts: John Locke
Top1879: California Electric Light Company, becomes the first electric company in the U.S. formed to produce and sell electricity.
Jun1894: London's Tower Bridge across the River Thames was officially opened by the Prince of Wales.
1908: Over Tunguska, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a meteorite over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 25 km per second (60,000 mph) penetrated Earth's atmosphere, the blast released the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 2,200 sq km of forest leaving no trace of life.
1910: U.S. trial the use of aeroplanes to drop bombs.
1973: Solar eclipse, the longest for 1,000 years.
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July

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1Many people have more money than brains - but not for long: Unknown
1796: First smallpox inoculation (of cowpox) experiment made by Dr Edward Jenner.
1934: First X-ray photograph of the whole body.
2Every man's got to figure to get beat sometime: Joe Louis
1937: Amelia Earhart, aviator, disappears over the Pacific.
2002: First solo round-the-world balloon flight by Steve Fossett.
3Be awful nice to 'em going up, because you're gonna meet 'em all comin' down: Jimmy Durante
1886: First automobile - by Karl Benz, reached a top speed of 16 kph (10 mph).
1961: First fatal nuclear accident in the USA - three men were killed when an experimental reactor exploded.
1987: First crossing of the Atlantic by hot-air balloon (Virgin Atlantic Flyer), piloted by Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand.
2002: NASA launches Contour (Comet Nucleus Tour), aiming to get within 96.5 km (60 miles) of a comet nucleus (Comet Enke in 2003, then Comet Schwassman-Wachman 3 in 2006).
4They who wish to sing always find a song: Swedish Proverb
1054: A supernova was observed that was visible in daylight for 23 days and at night for almost 2 years. It is believed the Crab Nebula is the remanant of this supernova.
1997: The Mars Pathfinder reaches the Martain atmosphere. It carried Sojourner, a 10-kg wheeled rover.
1998: Japan becomes the third nation (after Russia and the U.S.) to reach for Mars launching Nozomi("Hope").
2002: An elephant receives 2 stainless steel dental caps on it's tusks - 50cm long by 13-cm diameter.
5No one leaves a footprint on the sands of time by sitting down: Unknown
Top1865: New speed limit in Britain - lower speed limit - of 3.2 kph (2 mph) in town and 6.4 kph (4 mph) in the country + three drivers for each vehicle - two on the vehicle and one to walk ahead carrying a red flag.
Jul1944: First rocket airplane (MX-324) piloted by Harry Crosby had its maiden flight.
1996: Dolly, the cloned sheep, was born at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland.
6The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does: Herbert V. Prochnow
1885: Louis Pasteur started first rabies immunisation on 9-year-old boy, it was successful!
1920: First use of a radio compass for aircraft navigation.

END TERM 2 - 6 July 2018
7Who rides a tiger cannot dismount: Chinese Proverb
1550: Chocolate introduced to Europe.
1668: Sir Isaac Newton received his M.A. from Trinity College in Cambridge.
1936: Several U.S. patents were issued for the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver to its inventor, Henry F. Phillips.
1981: First solar-powered aircraft, Solar Challenger, crossed the English Channel.
8Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is: Arnold Palmer
1862: Patent for a revolving gun turret.
1881: Invention of the Chocolate Sundae.
9A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without adversity: Chinese Proverb
1877: First Wimbledon tennis championship.
1942: Anne Frank goes into hiding in Amsterdam.
10Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own: H G Bohn
Top1958: The first parking meters (625) were installed in England.
Jul1962: Telstar 1, the world's first geosynchronous communications satellite, was launched.
1985: The French bomb Greenpeace's ship the Rainbow Warrior.
11It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age: Unknown
1892: Joseph Wilson Swan, England patented the electric light bulb a year before Thomas Edison.
1979: Skylab re-entered Earth's atmosphere, killing a cow in Western Australia.
1985: Zips used on patients instead of stitches - when the surgeon thought he might have to re-operate.
12If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd ghave taken better care of myself: Leon Eldred
1844: First demonstartion of the Fog Horn - it was actually called a telephone!!!
1957: First report connecting smoking to lung cancer - if it was known so long ago - why are people younger than 54 smoking??
13It's what you learn after you know it all that counts: John Wooden
1977: Lightning strikes on high voltage transmission lines caused New York's Blackout, taking 25 hours to restore power to all the city.
1995: First probe (released by Galileo) to enter the atmosphere of any of the outer gas giants.
14If you don't do your own thinking, you may do someone else's work: Unknown
1867: Dynamite is demonstrated by Alfred Nobel for the first time - at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey.
1965: First close-up photos of Mars sent by Mariner 4.
15A person is never too old to learn, and that's probably why so many of us keep putting it off: Unknown
Top1869: Margarine was patented by the Frenchman Hippolyte Mège Mouriés, winning a competition by Emperor Napoleon III for a butter substitute for the French Navy.
Jul1954: Maiden flight of the first commercial jet transport airplane built in the US - the Boeing 707 prototype.
16Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it: Washington Irving
1918: Bolsheviks execute Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, and their 5 children.
1935: First parking meters - Oklahoma City.
1945: First atom bomb test in the New Mexico desert.
1969: Apollo 11 blasts off to the Moon.
17Time is at once the most valuable, and the most perishable of all our possessions: John Randolph
709 BC: Earliest record of a confirmed total solar eclipse was written in China.
1790: Thomas Saint, London, patented possibly the first sewing machine.
18Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do: John Robert Wooden
1860: A series of photographs of a total solar eclipse was made by Warren De la Rue (1815-1889) in Spain, and by Father A. Secchi at another location 500-km away.
1990: After a spacewalk by Anatoly Solovyov and Aleksandr Balandin, the airlock hatch on the Soviet space station Mir could not be closed. They had to stay behind an interior airlock eight days.
19People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness: John Wanamaker
1837: Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship S.S. Great Western, was launched at Bristol. A wooden steamer propelled by paddle wheels, crossed the Atlantic from Bristol to New York in 15 days.
1935: First parking meters - Oklahoma City business district.
20I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small: Neil Armstrong
Top1969: Apollo XI astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon, at 10:56 ET.
Jul1976: America's "Viking I Lander" spacecraft, successfully landed on Mars at Chryse Planitia.
21Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality: Jules de Gaultier
1904: After 13 years of work, the 8,000 km Trans-Siberian railway was completed.
1970: Completion of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt after 18 years of work.
22Life is easier to take than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable and bear the intolerable: Kathleen Norris
1983: First solo helicopter flight around the world, Dick Smith takes a leisurely 11 months. Smith's helicopter is now in the Sydney Aeronautical Museum.
1994: The last of comet Shoemaker-Levy strikes Jupiter (Fragment W).

START TERM 3 - 23 July 2018
23Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny: Kin Hubbard
1829: William Austin Burt gets a patent for his "typographer", the forerunner of the typewriter.
1952: NZer Yvette Williams wins long jump gold medal at Helsinki Olympics.
1973: US President Nixon refuses to release the Watergate tapes.
24The secret of happiness is not doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do: King George V
1933: First successful lung removal (because of cancer), successful because the patient lived.
1969: Apollo 11 astronauts splash down.
25You don't always win your battles, but it's good to know you fought: Lauren Bacall
Top1909: French aviator Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel in a monoplane.
Jul1946: Atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Created a 30m wave that sank several test ships (including the Battleship Arkansas.
1959: First crossing of the English Channel by an all metal hovercraft, SR.N1.
1978: First test tube baby was born in Oldham, England - Louise Joy Brown.
1984: Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.
1999: Swedish pilot (Mikael Carlson) re-enacted Louis Blériot's historic journey in the original Blériot XI plane. He said: "This was the first big heroic flight when the century was young, and I wanted to celebrate the end of this century in the same way it started."
26Chance favours the prepared mind: Louis Pasteur
1895: Pierre Curie marries Marie Sklodowska.
1969: Scientists get first look at the Moon rock from Apollo 11.
27The ability to choose puts human beings in control of their actions: M.W.Pitts
1586: Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco to England from Virginia.
1921: Insulin (an effective treatment for diabetes) was isolated at Toronto University by Canadians Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best.
1949: First jet-propelled airliner, the British De Havilland Comet.
28I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1883: Mr. Ferry pedalled a water tricycle across the English Channel.
1977: The 1,286 km (799 mile) trans-Alaska oil pipeline began full operation.
29When you are right, you have no need to be angry. When you are wrong, you have no right to be angry: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1870: First asphalt pavement in the U.S. Asphalt roads were originally for cyclists wanting a smooth surface.
2005: Announcement of 2003 UB313, a Dwarf Planet, about 3,380 km (2,100 miles), about 1 - 1.5 times that of Pluto.
30May the Clock, the Candle, may everything I see, teach and instruct me something: Margaret Godolphin
Top1928: First colour film shown by George Eastman.
Jul1935: First paperback book published by Penguin.
1966: England win the Soccer World Cup.
1980: Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides) gains indepentence.
31In youth we learn; in age we understand: Marie von Ebner Eschenbach
1965: Last cigarette commercial on British television.
1966: A gas pipeline from Taranaki to Auckland and Wellington is given the go-ahead by the NZ Government.
1971: First person to drive on the Moon - Dave Scott drove the battery-powered Lunar Rover (LRV) on Apollo 15.
2003: First man to cross the English Channel by unpowered flight - Felix Baumgartner. He jumped from a plane 9,800-m above England and glided 36-km to France wearing a special suit with carbon-fibre wings across his back.
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August

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1Passion + vision + action is the equation for success: Marilyn King
1774: Joseph Priestley, identified a gas which he called "dephlogisticated air" -- later known as oxygen.
2000: A man in Israel become the first recipient of the Jarvik 2000, the first total artificial heart that can maintain blood flow in addition to generating a pulse.
2The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them: Mark Twain
1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted to aid naval navigation, but was not was used on land until transportation improved.
1892: Charles A. Wheeler patented ideas for the first practical moving staircase, though it was never built.
3Thunder is good; thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that gets the job done: Mark Twain
1858: The source of the Nile, Lake Victoria, discovered by English explorer John Speke.
1958: The atomic sub Nautilus makes first undersea crossing of the North Pole.
4You must be the change you wish to see in the world: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1914: NZ follows Britain in declaring war on Germany.
2000: Queen Mum celebrates her 100th birthday.
5It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness: Christopher Society motto
Top1879: First night football game held in Melbourne under gas-light.
Aug1914: First electric traffic lights - Cleveland.
6Positive thinkers do not refuse to recognise the negative, they refuse to dwell on it: Norman Vincent Peale
1181: A supernova was observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers.
1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, by the Americans.
1971: End of the first "wrong way" (east - west) round the world voyage by Chay Blyth.
7Victory belongs to the most perservering: Napolean Bonaparte
1807: The first servicable steamboat, the Cleremont, goes on first voyage.
1947: The wooden raft Kon-Tiki, which carried Thor Heyerdahl and five companions more than 6,400 km (4,000 miles), crashed into a reef in the Pacific
8Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit: Napoleon Hill
1709: First known ascent in a hot-air balloon made in Portugal by Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão - indoors - as a demonstration before the Portuguese court.
1854: Metal bullet cartridges were patented by Smith & Wesson.
1899: A.T. Marshall patents the refrigerator. It took quite a few more years for refrigerators to become common in households.
9Just do it!: Nike
1910: The electric washing machine was patented by Alva J. Fisher of Chicago, Illinois.
1945: Atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by the Americans. Three few days earlier, the first wartime use of an atomic bomb was the destruction of Hiroshima.
10Laughter is inner jogging: Norman Cousins
Top1675: King Charles II laid the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Aug1889: Dan Rylands patents the screw cap.
1990: Space probe Magellan arrives at Venus, going into a polar orbit.
11A mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions: Oliver Wendell Holmes
1877: American Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars, which he named Phobos and Deimos.
1962: Soviet cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev is the third Russian into space. Pavel Popovich was launched in Vostok IV the next day.
1999: Last total eclipse of the millenium. Because it travelled across many populated areas, (including Cornwall, England, Europe, India, Iran) it was perhaps the most-watched eclipse of all time.
12Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing: Oscar Wilde
1883: Extinction of the quagga - the last mare at Amsterdam Zoo died.
1939: First showing of the film "Wizard of Oz".
1953: First hydrogen bomb detonated by the Soviet Union.
1981: IBM introduced the PC personal computer. Its specs: 4.77 MHz, up to 640K of memory, 5.25" floppy drives, cassette tape, and later hard disks.
13Do a little more than average and from that point on your progress multiplies itself out of all proportion to the efforts put in: P.J.Meyer
1521: Spanish conquistadors end the Aztec Empire taking the capital city Tenochtitlan.
1974: US troops finally leave Vietnam.
14The only dumb question is a question you don't ask: Paul MacCready
1953: Wiffle ball - a light, perforated (on one hemisphere only) rubbery plastic ball. For a game similar to baseball. The wiffle ball curved easily when it was thrown, and was invented by David Mullany Sr. for his 12-year-old son.
1994: Hubble space telescope photographs Uranus with rings.
15If you do not live in the future today, you will live in the past tomorrow: Peter Ellyard
Top1877: Thomas Edison coined the telephone greeting "Hello." He suggested the use of Hello to the president of the Telegraph Company to answer the phone instead of "Ahoy" suggested by Alexander Bell.
Aug1914: Panama Canal was officially opened by an American ship sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
1934: American zoologist William Beebe and Otis Barton made their pioneering, record-breaking ocean descent of 923 m (3,028 feet) in a bathysphere designed by Barton.
1994: Physicists cooled atoms to 700 nanokelvins using lasers, the coldest temperature ever recorded for matter.
16Everyone's potential goes far beyond anything ever realised: Peter Kline
1960: Captain Joseph W. Kittinger made the longest delayed parachute jump on record when he bailed out of a balloon at 31,333 m (102,800 feet) and dropped 25,817 m (84,700 feet or 16.04 miles) before opening his parachute over New Mexico.
2003: Chemists met in Ottawa to vote and make official a proposed name for the element 110: Darmstadtium, symbol Ds. First identifieded in a high-energy physics laboratory in Germany (1994), it was created for a fraction of a thousandth of a second.
17Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change. And when we are right, make us easy to live with: Peter Marshall
1877: Asaph Hall discovered Mars' second moon Phobos.
1896: First pedestrian to be killed by a motor vehicle in Britain.
1978: First crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by hot-air balloon was completed when three Americans, Ben Abruzzo, Max Anderson and Larry Newman, landed in France.
18Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned: Peter Marshall
1868: Pierre Janssan discovered helium in the solar spectrum during eclipse.
1932: Scottish aviator Jim Mollison made the first westbound transatlantic solo flight.
19Over the long run, superior performance depends on superior learning: Peter Senge
1839: Announcement of the daguerreotype photographic process by Louis Daguerre. This was the first process to allow an image to be chemically fixed as a permanent picture.
1960: Sputnik 5 launched carrying two dogs which were the first dogs to return from space alive.
1960: First commercial atomic energy reactor, and the third in the U.S., achieved a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. It began producing power for distribution on 10 Nov 1960.
20The future of the race marches forward on the feet of little children: Phillip Brooks
Top1913: Stainless steel first cast in Sheffield.
Aug1977: Voyager 2 launched by NASA - an unmanned spacecraft to explore the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
21Of our troubles we must seek some other cause than God: Plato
1986: Toxic gas (CO2) eruption from Lake Nyos, a volcanic lake in Cameroon. More than 1700 people died, travelling up to 25 km away from the lake.
1989: Voyager 2 fired its thrusters to bring it closer to Neptune's mysterious moon Triton.
1993: Contact was lost with the Mars Observer spacecraft, three days before it was to begin orbiting the Red Planet.
22The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited: Plutarch
1865: Liquid soap is patented.
1906: First record player consealed in furnture.
1950: First Nuclear reactor dedicated to peaceful applications of atomic energy.
1962: First nuclear-powered ship, completes her maiden voyage.
1989: Discovery of a complete ring around Neptune.
23Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped: African Proverb
1609: Galileo demonstrates his telescope.
1617: First one-way streets in London.
1904: Snow chains patented.
1966: Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photograph of the Earth from the Moon.
1977: First human-powered flight, Bryan Allen pedalled the Gossamer Condor for at least a mile.
24You don't learn as much from success as you do from failure: Arabic Proverb
79: Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash.
1907: First vertical flight, by the Breguet-Richet Gyroplane No. 1.
1909: First pouring of concrete on the Panama Canal.
1968: France becomes the 5th nuclear power.
25Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead: ChineseProverb
Top1929: The Graf Zeppelin passed over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, heading for Los Angeles after a trans-Pacific voyage from Tokyo.
Aug1973: First CAT (Computer Assisted Tomography) scan.
1981: Voyager II comes within 100,000 km (63,000 miles) of Saturn's cloud cover.
26I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand: Chinese Proverb
1346: First use of a cannon in battle, firing a round ball carved from rock, Edward III of England reportedly used 22 cannon during the defeat of Philip VI of France at Crécy.
1883: Start of the eruption of Krakatoa.
1909: Discovery of an almost perfectly preserved Cro-Magnon man skeleton by Swiss paleontologist Otto Hauser.
27The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials: Chinese Proverb
413 BC: A lunar eclipse caused panic among the sailors of the Athens fleet allowing the Syracusans to defeat the entire Athenian fleet and army.
55: First trip to Britain for Julius Caesar.
1859: Colonel Edwin L. Drake drilled the first successful oil well in the United States near Titusville, Pennsylvania, only 69 feet, 6 inches deep.
1883: Krakatoa eruption continues - heard over 4,600 km away.
1939: First jet powered aircraft to fly (7 minutes). Invented by Sir Frank Whittle and Hans J.P. von Ohain.
1875: Discovery of the element Gallium, after a 15 year search - he was not using enough raw material!
2003: World's biggest battery - US$35 million, 13,760 large nickel-cadmium cells, 1,300 tonnes, covers 2,000 square metres, and can provide 40 megawatts of power, enough for around 12,000 people, for up to seven minutes, while diesel backup generators are started, because winter temperatures can drop as low as -51ºC.
28Weaving a net is better than praying for fish: Chinese Proverb
1789: Sir William Herschel discovered Saturn's moon Enceladus.
1883: First controlled flight in a glider by John J. Montgomery flying 184 m (603 feet) at a height of about 4.5 m (15 feet).
1993: Discovery of the first moon orbiting an asteroid. Photographs from NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
29Keep company with those who make you better: English Proverb
1949: First USSR atomic device, "First Lightning", 20 kiloton yield.
1982: Meitnerium (Mt), a new element was made. It started to decay 5 ms after striking the detector.
30One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it: French Proverb
Top1963: The "Hot Line" communications link between the White House, Washington D.C. and the Kremlin, Moscow, went into operation. Note, this was not a telephone voice link
Aug1979: Comet Howard-Koomen-Michels (SOLWIND I) collided with the Sun, the first recorded comet to collide with Sun and the first discovered by a spacecraft.
31Help thy brother's boat across, and lo! thine own has reached the shore: Hindu Proverb
1910: First U.S. airplane flight over water was made by Glenn Hammond Curtiss in his biplane over Lake Erie from Euclid Beach Park, Cleveland, Ohio, to Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio. At an altitude between 122 and 152 m (400 and 500 feet), the 113 km (70 mile) trip took 78 minutes nonstop.
1955: First solar-powered car was publicly demonstrated.
1971: Dave Scott becames the first person to drive a vehicle on the Moon - the battery-powered Lunar Rover (LRV) - as part of the Apollo 15 mission to the mountainous Hadley-Apennine region.
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September

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1When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends: Japanese Proverb
1854: First US observation of a previously unknown asteroid now known as 31 Euphrosyne.
1865: First antiseptic surgery performed by Joseph Lister.
1914: The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) becames extinct - the last surviving bird of the colorful native American species of dove died at the Cincinnati Zoo.
1997: Discovery of a new sub-atomic particle - the "exotic meson."
2A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to care for his tools: Spanish Proverb
1985: A U.S. and French expedition located the wreckage of the Titanic about 900 km (560) miles off Newfoundland, 73 years after the British luxury liner sank.
1993: The United States and Russia formally ended decades of competition in space by agreeing to a joint venture to build a space station.
3Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it: Publilius Syrius
1189: King Richard 1 of England is crowned in Westminster.
1752: This day never happened in England - as it adopted the Gregorian Calendar (as in Pope Gregory XIII). In 1752 The Julian Calendar (as in Julius Caesar) was out by 11 days - the Julian Wednesday of 2 September 1752 was followed by the Gregorian Thursday of 14 September 1752. The Julian calendar has leap years every 4 years which is progressively out of synch with the seasons. The Gregorian leap years are every 4 years except for years divisible by 100, however, those years divisible by 400, are leap years.
1939: Start of World War II as Britain and France declare war on Germany.
4The bow too tensely strung is easily broken: Publilius Syrius
1951: President Harry Truman inaugurated the transcontinental television service in the U.S. when AT&T carried his address to the United Nations in San Francisco to viewers as far away as New England.
1964: The Forth Road Bridge is opened. It brought to an end a ferry service that could be traced back 800 years.
5If there's something about your life you don't like, change it: Rachel Snyder
Top1862: A balloon ascent to a height of 11.3 km (7 miles) was made by metereologist James Glaisher and his pilot Henry Tracey Coxwell.
Sep1885: First U.S. gas pump sale by Sylvanus Bowser.
6Neither you nor the world knows what you can do until you have tried: Ralph Waldo Emerson
1819: U.S. patent for a profile lathe that can make irregular forms, such as gun stocks.
1892: First gasoline tractor to be sold in the U.S., a 16-horsepower machine included forward and reverse gears. Froelich formed the Waterloo Gasoline Tractor Engine Company on 10 Jan 1893, which was was taken over in 1918 by the John Deere Plow.
1954: Start of work on the first U.S. atomic power station at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. 60 megawatts that can supply 250,000 homes. Decomissioned in 1982.
7Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect: Ralph Waldo Emerson
1888: First baby to use an incubator - Edith Eleanor McLean, weighing 1.11 kg (2 pounds, 7 ounces).
1936: The last Tasmanian Tiger (in captivity) dies.
1978: Scientists produce insulin through genetic engineering.
8That which we are, we are all the while teaching, not voluntarily, but involuntarily: Ralph Waldo Emerson
1854: Dr. John Snow removed the handle of the Broad Street water pump in London, effectively halting further spread of a cholera. He had mapped the outbreaks, and thus suspected contamination of this community source of water. Within days after the pump handle was removed, new cases of illness had ceased.
1930: Scotch tape was developed by Richard G. Drew at 3M.
9The future belongs to those who prepare for it: Ralph Waldo Emerson
1945: First computer "bug" discovered, a moth was found in a relay.
2000: For the first time, the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica stretched over a populated city - the southern Chile city of Punta Arenas, exposing residents to very high levels of ultra violet radiation.
10The only way to have a friend is to be one: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Top1846: American Elias Howe gets a patent for a sewing machine.
Sep2002: Switzerland becomes the 190th member of the United Nations.
11Tomorrow's employees will be doing what robots can't do, which means that their work will call for sophisticated intelligence: Renate Nummela & Geoffrey Caine
1841: First U.S. patent for collapsible metal tubes was issued to an artist, John Rand for storing paint. The idea was reinvented in 1892 for tootpaste!
1985: The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) flew through the gas tail of comet P/Giacobini-Zinner, at 21 km/sec.
1991: Africanized "killer" bees made their first major attack in the U.S. by stinging a 65-yr-old man more than 300 times.
1997: Lightning killed 19 people and injured 6 at Andhra Pradesh, India.
1997: The Mars Global Surveyor went into an elliptical orbit around Mars. It spent two years mapping the surface of Mars.
12The world improves people according to the dispositions they bring into it: Renier Guistina Michiel
1959: Launch of Luna 2 (USSR), the first spacecraft to strike the Moon.
1970: Launch of Luna 16, the first unmanned spacecraft to carry lunar soil samples back to Earth.
13Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better: Richard Hooker
1826: First rhinoceros to be exhibited in the U.S.
1899: First horseless carriage fatality in the US.
14The man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune: Richard Whately
1905: The oldest car race still being run was first held on the Isle of Man, Great Britain for the Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy. Tourist Trophy = TT races.
1959: Luna 2, launched 2 days ago, hits the Moon.
15It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow: Robert H. Goddard
Top1830: World's first intercity passenger railway operated solely by steam locomotives - the Liverpool to Manchester line was opened. William Huskisson, stumbled in front of the train which ran over his leg, he died later that evening. Among other government positions, he had been colonial secretary and leader of the House of Commons.
Sep1904: First balloon used for meteorologic research in the U.S.
16To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life: Robert Louis Stevenson
1835: Charles Darwin onboard the ship HMS Beagle arrived at the Galapagos archipelago, a cluster of islands on the equator 966 km (600 miles) west of South America.
1908: Former carriage-maker William Crapo "Billy" Durant founded General Motors (GM).
17Don’t expect perfect products unless you are willing to pay for perfection: Robert Siegmeister
1683: Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society reporting his discovery of microscopic living animalcules (live bacteria).
1908: First U.S. airplane fatality was Thomas Etholen Selfridge, passenger with Orville Wright while demonstrating to the army.
18History repeats itself, because we do not learn from history, we only memorise historical dates and names, not the lesson: Robert T Kiyosaki
1830: First US built locomotive, Tom Thumb, loses a 14-km race to a horse due to a boiler leak.
1980: Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendéz became the first person of color and the first Latin American sent into space on board Soyuz 38, spending several days aboard the Soviet space laboratory Salyut 6.
19To learn it, do it!: Roger Schank
1783: Jacques Etienne Montgolfier send a duck, a sheep and a rooster on a hot-air balloon trip at Versailles in France.
1848: Hyperion, moon of Saturn, discovered by Bond (US) & Lassell (England).
1988: First Israeli satellite, "Offeq-1" (Horizon 1) makes Israel the ninth country in space.
1991: The Iceman, a Stone Age wanderer and the most ancient human being ever found, was discovered in the Similaun glacier in the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border.
20Unless you try to do something beyond what you already have mastered, you will never grow: Ronald Osborn
Top1892: Frank Schulman patents wire glass.
Sep1952: Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase publish a report confirming DNA holds hereditary data.
21If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today: Rotarian
1895: The Duryea Motor Wagon Company became the first auto manufacturer to open.
2003: NASA Galileo space probe ended its eight-year mission to Jupiter as planned, burning up in Jupiter's atmosphere.
22I keep 6 honest serving men, they taught me all I knew; Their names are What, Why, When, How, Where, and Who: Rudyard Kipling
1735: First British Prime Minister, Sir Ropert Walpole, moves into 10 Downing Street.
1955: First commercial television broadcasting began in Britain by ITV (Independent Television).
23Vision is the art of seeing things invisible: Jonathan Swift
1846: Neptune is discovered by German astronomer Johan G. Galle within one degree of the position that had been computed by Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier. Independently of the English astronomer John C. Adams.
1879: Richard S. Rhodes invented the Audiophone, the first hearing aid.
1999: The Mars Climate Observer apparently burned up as it was about to go into orbit around the Red Planet. A sub-contractor used non metric units. $327.6 million entered the Martian atmosphere rather than into an orbit.
24Do not regret growing old; many are denied the privilege: Anon
1852: First powered and controlled flight - Henri Giffard used a small (3 h.p.) steam engine in the gondola of a 147-foot-long spindle shaped coal-gas balloon.
1960: First nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, was launched in Newport, Virginia. Eight nuclear reactors, crew 5765.
25Laugh: A smile that burst: John E. Donovan
Top1818: First human blood transfusion at Guy's Hospital, London.
Sep1957: 9 black children are escorted by US National Guard into Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas.
26Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value: Einstein
1907: New Zealand becomes self governing.
1945: Captain Charles Upham VC receives his second VC.
27Another human weakness is the nice man's belief that wrong isn't wrong if done by a nice man like him: Unknown
1948: Ending of meat rationiong in New Zealand.
1995: Israeli cabinet agree to hand over much of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
28When the world laughs at you, laugh back, it's just as funny as you are: Unknown
1745: "God save the King" is first performed at the Drury Lane Theatre, London.
1900: New Zealand decide to incorporate the Cook Islands.

END TERM 3 - 28 September 2018
29You wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you knew how seldom they do: Unknown
1399: First English King to abdicate - Richard II.
1829: First regular police patrols in London. Nicknamed "Bobbies" after Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary.
30The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have: Ring Lardner
Top1946: Nuremberg War Trial finds 22 Nazi leaders guilty, 11 sentanced to death.
Sep1980: Israel re-introduces the Shekel as currency.
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October

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1You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need: Vernon Howard
1908: First Model T Ford costing US$825.
1918: T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) helps Arab forces to capyure Damascus from the Turks.
1949: First flag of the Peoples Republic of China is raised by Mao Zedong in Beijing.
2The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet: J. Robert Oppenheimer
1608: First optical (refracting) telescope made by Johannes Lippershey (c.1570-c.1619), a lens grinder.
1836: Charles Darwin returned from his voyage on the HMS Beagle to the Pacific. "Origin of Species was published 23 years later.
1866: First U.S. patent for a tin can with a key opener was issued to J. Osterhoudt of New York.
1956: First atomic clock, the Atomicron. Timing came from the constant frequency of the oscillations of the caesium atom - 9,192,631,830 MHz.
3The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness: Eric Hoffer
1899: Motor-driven vacuum cleaner was patented, called a "pneumatic carpet renovator" by John S. Thurman of St. Louis.
1952: First U.S. video recording on magnetic tape of off-air black and white recordings was made by John T. Mullin at the electronics division of Bing Crosby Enterprises, Inc.
1952: First British-made atomic bomb test (called Hurricane) at the Monte Bello Islands off the northwest coast of Australia.
1963: The X-15 rocket plane achieved a world record speed of Mach 6.7, which is 4,520 mph or over a mile per second, with U.S. Air Force pilot Pete Knight at an altitude of 58,552 m.
4Happiness is in the heart, not in the circumstances: Anon
1535: First complete printed English translation of the Bible was published by Miles Coverdale (1488-1569), and printed in Antwerp
1675: Christian Huygens patented a pocket watch.
1957: The Space Age began with the Soviet Union launching Sputnik, the first manmade satellite, into orbit around the earth. The craft circled the earth every 95 minutes at almost 20,000 miles per hour 500 miles above the Earth.
1957: Two Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory scientists tracking Sputnik found they could determine its orbit by analyzing the Doppler shift of its radio signals during a single pass. This eventually led to today's Global Positioning System (GPS).
5The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts: Marcus A. Antoninus
Top1582: The Gregorian calendar was introduced in Italy, other Catholic countries (Oct. 5 became Oct. 15); Britain and its colonies did not adopt until years later.
Oct1923: Edwin Hubble identified the first Cepheid variable star - used to measure distances to galaxies.
1982: An unmanned rocket sled (a la Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull) reached a record 9,851 kph or 6,121 mph (Mach 8) over the 9.5 mile-long rail track at White Sands Missile Test Base, New Mexico.
6Real happiness comes from inside. Nobody can give it to you: Sharon Stone
1956: Dr. Albert Sabin developed the oral Polio vaccine.
1995: First discovery of a planet around a star similar to the sun was announced (about 160 times the mass of the Earth around the star 51 Pegasus).
1997: American biology professor Stanley B. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering "prions," described as "an entirely new genre of disease-causing agents."
7Happiness is the art of learning how to get joy from your substance: Jim Rohn
1954: IBM displayed a large all-transistor calculator needing only 5% of the power of comparable electronic ones.
1959: First photos of the far side of the Moon by Russia's Luna 3 spacecraft.
1970: BP made the first big oil find in the British sector of the North Sea. The Sea Quest drilling platform found found oil 2,135 metres below the seabed in a 170 metre layer in water depth of 128 metres.
8It's not whether you get knocked down. It's whether you get up again: Vince Lombardi
1871: Great fire of Chicago kills 200 and destroys 17,500 buildings.
2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California.
9Follow your heart and grap your luck: Sabrina Guiness
1769: Captain Cook makes contact with Maori on the banks of the Turanganui River.
1975: The Treaty of Waitangi Act becomes law.
10Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind: Samuel Johnson
Top1796: The official birthday of the metric system - Oct 10 (10/10), i.e. signifying the base 10 way of using measurement.
Oct1846: Triton, Neptune's moon, is discovered by William Lassell.
11No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1957: Jodrell Bank radio telescope, the world's largest radio telescope, designed by Sir Bernard Lovell, began operating.
1994: Space probe Magellan ended its mission to explore Venus when it plunged into the planet.
12It is amazing how much people can get done if they do not worry about who gets the credit: Sandra Swinney
1823: Charles Macintosh of Scotland began selling raincoats (Macs).
1928: First demonstration of an artificial respirator, now called an iron lung.
1964: World's first multi-manned spacecraft, Voskhod 1. 3 crew Col. Vladimir Komarov (pilot), scientist (Konstantin Feoktistov) and physician (Boris Yegorov).
13We don't stop having fun when we're old; we're old when we stop having fun: Saying
1860: First successful aerial photograph in the U.S. by James Wallace Black in a balloon over Boston.
1884: Greenwich was adopted as the universal meridian.
14Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them: Norman Vincent Peale
1586: Mary, Queen of Scots goes on trial, accused of conspiring against Queen Elizabeth I.
1912: Theodore Roosevelt is shot, he is saved by his thick coat and a bundle of paper in his brest pocket.

START TERM 4 - 15 October 2018
15Our greatest battles are that with our own minds: Jameson Frank
Top1917: German spy Mata Hari is excecuted by firing squad.
Oct1987: Resignation of Fiji's Governor-General, leading the way for Fiji to become a republic.
16As long as you live, keep learning how to live: Seneca
1908: First aeroplane flight in England at Farnborough.
1964: China detonated the country's first atomic bomb, becoming the fifth country with nuclear arms after the United States (1945), Great Britain (1953), the Soviet Union (1961), and France.
17One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius: Simone de Beauvoir
1885: The steel-making "Bessemer Process," was patented by Sir Harry Bessemer, a British inventor and metallurgist. The method of making steel by blasting compressed air through molten iron to remove impurities and excess carbon.
1956: The Queen opens Calder Hall, Britain's first nuclear power station. It closed on 31 Mar 2003.
18Existing systems produce existing results. If something different is required, the system must be changed: Sir Christopher Ball
1870: Sandblasting was patented by Benjamin Chew Tilghman.
1922: The BBC (British Broadcasting Company) was formed.
1955: A new atomic subparticle, the antiproton is discovered (at U.C. Berkeley), it is a negative proton (antiproton).
19No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible: Stanislaus Lezczynski
1872: Holtermann's Nugget found in New South Wales, a slab of slate containing 82.11 kg of gold.
1952: 27-yr-old Frenchman Alain Bombard began a single-handed sea voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to test his theory that a shipwrecked person could survive without provisions. He reached Barbados 65 days later on 23 Dec 1952, having lost about 25-kg (55-lb) in weight.
20The greatest risk is the risk of riskless living: Stephen R. Covey
Top1935: End of Mao Zedong's Communist forces end their "Long March" at Yan'an, China after 1 year.
Oct1983: Length of the meter redefined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
21Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable: Theodore N. Vail
1879: Thomas Edison invents the electric lamp.
1950: Tibet is occupied by Chinese forces.
22The individual who knows the score about life sees difficulties as opportunities: Norman Vincent Peale
1797: First skydiver (Andre-Jaques) above Paris.
1978: Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II.
23I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000 step process: Thomas A. Edison
1861: First transcontinental telegraph message from San Francisco to Abraham Lincoln in Washington.
1956: Anti-Communist revolution starts in Hungary.
24Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards: Vernon Sanders Law
1836: First U.S. patent for the phosphorous friction safety match (No. 68). First friction matches were made and sold in England in 1827.
1882: (Heinrich Hermann) Robert Koch discovered the tuberculosis germ. Later getting the 1905 Nobel Prize.
25If you can dream it, you can do it: Walt Disney
Top1616: Australia discovered by Duth mariner Dirk Hartog.
Oct1854: The charge of the Light Brigade, near Sevastopol, Russia, during the Crimean War.
26The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do: Walter Bagehot
1881: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone.
2000: One Tree Hill becomes no tree hill when the damaged 125 year old Pine is removed.
27A friend is one who walks in when others walk out: Walter Winchell
1938: DuPont announces a new synthetic yarn called Nylon.
1995: France tests a nuclear bomb at Mururoa Atoll.
28There are two ways of meeting difficulties; you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them: Phyllis Bottome
1492: Columbus discovers Cuba.
1890: New Zealand's first Labour Day, celebrating the struggle for the 8 hour working day.
1946: The Atomic Energy Commission was established by the U.S. Atomic Energy Act approved 1 Aug 1946.
29It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone that can make anyone happy or miserable: Roger L'Estrange
1945: First ballpoint pen goes on sale.
1975: First professional fight of Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali).
30It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared: Whitney Young Jr.
Top1929: First test flight of a rocket powered aircraft.
Oct1961: Detonation of the world's largest nuclear device by Russia over an Arctic island.
31Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there: Will Rogers
1517: Martin Luther starts the Reformation in Germany by nailing theses on Wittenberg Palace door.
1888: Pneumatic bike tyre patented by John Boyd Dunlop.
1995: "Forgotten Silver" a hoax film screens on NZ TV - I wasn't taken in!
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November

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

1We all find time to do what we really want to do: William Feather
1512: First public viewing of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings.
1924: Debut of George Nepia for the All Blacks.
2The more we do, the more we can do: William Hazlitt
1785: First lifeboat patent by London coach builder Lionel Lukin.
1868: Start of NZMT New Zealand Mean Time - standard ised time to be observed by the whole country.
3I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like to be taught: Winston Churchill
1871: Dr David Livingstone is found by Henry Stanley, he presumed!
1957: Launch of Sputnik 2 carrying Laika, a dog.
4The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
1890: First electric underground railway opened in London.
1930: Phar Lap wins the Melbourne Cup.
5It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes: Louis Kossuth
Top1605: Guy Fawkes' plot to blow up the English Parliament is foiled.
Nov1911: First transcontinental aeroplane flight in America, it took 49 days.
6You find three things travelling lifes highways and byways - Drivers, Passengers, and Road-kill: Anon
1927: New Zealand adopts daylight saving for the first time.
1928: First electric razor is patented by Jacob Schick.
7Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood: Mary Hirsch
1769: Endeavour reaches Mercury Bay.
1872: The Mary Celeste leaves New York - found abandoned a month later.
8Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious: Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)
1880: Start of civil war in Samoa.
1895: Roentgen discovers X-rays.
1950: First ever dogfight between jet fighters on both sides.
9Never miss a good opportunity to shut up!: Anon
1961: The X-15 rocket plane made a world record speed of 4,093 mph and flew to 30,970 m in height by USAF Major Robert M. White.
1994: First atom of the element 110 (mass 269) was detected. A thin lead foil target was bombarded with accelerated nickel atoms.
10Ain't nothing like it when you're reaching for the stars and you grab one!: Anon
Top1868: Te Kooti and followers kill 70 at Matawhero, Gisborne.
Nov1974: An announcement of the discovery of the "charmed quark" subatomic particle.
1983: First computer virus - created as an experiment in computer security.
1989: First person to fly single-handed around the world arrives back in Sydney.
11Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict: William E. Channing
1880: Ned Kelly hanged at Melbourne Jail.
1918: Hostilities end on the Western Front with the signing the Armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
2004: Unknown NZ Warrior from WWI laid to rest at the National War Memorial.
12Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion: B. C. Forbes
1912: Robert Falcon Scott's body is found in the Antarctic.
1942: The battle for Guadalcanal begins - a crucial battle in the Pacific during WWII.
13Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it!: Anon
1855: First proposal for a tunnel under the English Channel is reported.
1971: First man-made object to orbit another planet, Mariner-9, entered Martian orbit.
1998: Discovery of the 1,000th pulsar in our galaxy was announced in a press release by the Jodrell Bank Observatory, University of Manchester, using the 64-meter Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.
14If you can't be first, be next: Anon
1666: English physician, Samuel Pepys, made an record in his diary describing Richard Lower making the first documented blood transfusion - on dogs.
1896: British speed limit for horseless carriages was raised to 22.5 km/h from 6.4 km/h in the country or 3.2 km/h in towns.
1910: First airplane take-off from a ship was made by Eugene Ely from the bow of the scout cruiser Birmingham.
15Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do: Anon
Top1492: Christopher Columbus noted in his journal the use of tobacco among Indians - the first recorded reference to tobacco
Nov1744: Gowan Knight presented his research on permanently magnetising hard steels to the Royal Society.
1887: German scientist, Dr. Carl Gassner, gets U.S. patent for the first "dry" cell, much like the carbon-zinc, general-purpose batteries sold today.
16Some days you are the bug, some days you're the windscreen: Anon
1945: Two newly discovered elements were announced: americium (atomic number 95) and curium (atomic number 96).
1972: Launch of Skylab III, carrying a crew of three astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on an 84-day mission that remained the longest American space flight for over two decades.
17Nature doesn't demand that we're perfect. It only asks that we grow: Anon
1869: Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas.
1967: First lift-off from the surface of the Moon - Surveyor 6 made a six-second flight from its landing site.
1970: First computer mouse patent - a simple hollowed-out wooden block, with a single push button on top.
18Happiness is more a state of health than of wealth: Frank Tyger
1477: First printed book in English produced by William Caxton - "The Dictes and Sayengis of the Phylosophers.
1852: State funeral of the Duke of Wellington in London.
19Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision: Ayn Rand
1863: US President Abraham Lindoln delivers his Gettysburg address. Government of the people, by the people and for the people.
1969: Apollo 12 lands on the Moon.
1984: NZ's Ministry of Women's Affairs set up.
20Be careful what rut you choose. You may be in it the rest of your life: Anon
Top1866: First patent for a yoyo in the United States. The patent also demonstrates the use of the terms "Bandalore" and "Whirligig".
Nov1906: Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce formed Rolls-Royce.
1979: First use of artificial blood in a transfusion. A Jehovah's Witness had refused a transfusion of real blood because of his religious beliefs.
1998: First module of the International Space Station (ISS) was launched on a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
21Stressed' spelled backwards is just 'desserts': Anon
1783: World's first human aeronaughts, a physicist and an army major went up 900 m in a hot air balloon.
1953: A 40-year-long hoax of the Piltdown Man ended when the British Museum revealed that it was a "perfectly executed and carefully prepared fraud," planned and executed sometime between 1907 and 1911.
22Every path has its puddles: Anon
1842: First volcano eruption in America for which a date can be established was recorded at Lassen Peak, California.
1906: The S.O.S radio distress signal was adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin
23Lord, make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am: Anon
1889: First jukebox in San Francisco.
1997: Phil Stubbs and Rob Hamill beat the transatlantic rowing record by 32 days.
24The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others: Hasidic Saying
1859: Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species" about his theory of evolution.
1956: Norman Read wins gold in the 50km walk at the Melbourne Olympics, after paying his own way being a late addition to the team.
25Never be satisfied with what you achieve, because it all pales in comparison with what you are capable of doing in the future: Rabbi Nochem Kaplan
Top1884: Patent for evaporated milk by John Mayenberg of St Louis.
Nov1960: First atomic reactor for research and development - Richland, Washington.
1969: John Lennon of The Beatles returns his MBE protesting Britain's Biafran policy and for supporting the US in Vietnam.
1975: First U.S. patent for a whole-body X-ray scanner.
26The reward of a thing well done is to have done it: Ralph Waldo Emerson
1922: King Tutankhamen's tomb opened in Egypt.
1987: Ngati Whatua's claim to Bastion Point is upheld by the Waitangi Tribunal.
1993: Four die when a police helicopter collides with a traffic spotter plane over Auckland.
27A thousand wishes won't fill a bucket with fishes: Old Saying
1582: William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway.
1895: Alfred Nobel signs his last will, thus establishing the Nobel Prize.
28You can't talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into: Stephen R. Covey
1948: First GM Holden goes on sale.
1979: All 257 on board an Air New Zealand DC-10 die when it flies into Mount Erebus in the Antarctic.
29Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals: Sydney Smith
1929: First aeroplane flight over the South Pole by US Navy Lieutenant Richard E. Byrd.
2005: Last glass milk bottle produced in NZ.
30I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside: Wayne W. Dyer
Top1872: First international soccer match - Scotland drew with England in Glasgow.
Nov1929: Western Springs Stadium opens in Auckland.
1936: London's Crystal Palace (built in 1851) is destroyed by fire.
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December

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

1Not trying guarantees failure, trying gives you a chance of success: Unknown
1967: First NZ born Governor-General, Sir Arthur Porritt.
1988: First woman to lead a modern-day Muslim nation - Benazir Bhutto becomes Pakistan's prime minister.
1989: First Soviet leader to visit the Vatican and meet the Pope.
2It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed: Kin Hubbard
1877: First person to liquefy oxygen - Louis-Paul Cailletet (1832-1913) also the first to liqeufy nitrogen, hydrogen, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and acetylene.
1942: First self-sustained nuclear chain reaction happened in Chicago, as part of the Manhattan Project. This was the start of the modern nuclear age.
1982: First transplant of a totaly artificial heart by Dr. William De Vries. Usually used as a temporary device while awaiting heart transplants.
3Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together: Vincent Van Gogh
1732: First recorded instance of someone getting the "kiss of life".
1910: First use of neon lighting at the Paris Motor Show. It was developed by French physicist Georges Claude.
1967: First human heart transplant 1967, in Cape Town, by Dr. Christiaan Barnard plus a team of 20 surgeons.
4Failure inspires winners, and failure defeats losers: Anon
1154: First and only Englishman to be elected Pope - Nicolas Breakspear becomes Adrian IV.
1996: NASA launches a spacecraft to Mars carrying the first Mars rover.
5Winning means being unafraid to lose: Anon
Top1848: The gold rush of 49 is triggered when US President James Polk confirms the discovery of gold in California.
Dec2001: Peter Blake is murdered by Brazilian pirates on the Amazon River.
6Learn from the mistakes of others, you won't live long enough to make them all yourself: Anon
1877: Thomas Edison demonstrates the first sound recording, reciting "Mary had a little lamb".
1935: NZs first Labour Prime Minister - Michael Joseph Savage.
7Never wrestle a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it: Anon
1941: Japanese planes attack the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour.
1996: Longest shuttle flight, when the Coumbia returned after 18 days in space.
8You can keep going long after you can't: Anon
1925: Adolf Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf".
1998: Japanese scientists report the cloning of 8 calves from a dead cow.
9Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life: Burton Hills
1884: First U.S. patent for ball-bearing roller skates, allowing much faster speed.
1921: Tetraethyl lead was first tested as an additive to petrol. It silences knocking in the engine. It took 7 years of testing of at least 33,000 compounds.
1968: First demonstration of a computer mouse, invented by Doug Engelbart also demonstrated - the graphical user interface (GUI), display editing, integrated text and graphics.
10Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?: Matthew 6:27
Top1868: First traffic lights (gas lit) - corner of Bridge Street and New Palace Yard, London. A constable turned the lantern using a lever at the base. Removed in 1872, no other traffic control of its kind was made for half a century.
Dec1901: First Nobel Prizes were awarded, handed out by the King of Sweden.
1954: Lt. Col. John Paul Stapp rode a rocket sled to 632 mph to see if a pilot could eject from an airplane at supersonic speed and live. At the end of the ride Stapp was stopped in 1.25 seconds which subjected him to 40 Gs - the equivalent of hitting a brick wall in a car traveling at 120 mph.
1984: The National Science Foundation reported the discovery of the first planet outside our solar system, orbiting a star 21 million light years from Earth.
11Hard work will pay off later. Laziness pays off now!: Anon
1894: First motor show in the World, opens in Paris with 9 exhibitors.
1936: George VI becomes king after Edward VIII abdicates.
12Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die: Anon
1642: Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.
1959: Bruce McLaren wins the US Grand Prix.

END TERM 4 - 12 December 2017
13You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose: Dr. Seuss
1816: First U.S. patent for a dry dock was issued to John Adamson of Boston.
1920: First U.S. direct measurement of the size of a star was made on Betelgeuse, a red giant, which was found to be 260 million miles in diameter - 150 times greater than the Sun.
14Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside: Anon
1911: First man to reach the South Pole - Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
1992: An avalance on Mount Cook reduces it's height by 10m.
15Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Top1612: First observation of the Andromeda galaxy through a telescope by Simon Marius (who also named Jupiter's 4 inner satellites).
Dec2000: The Chernobyl nuclear plant was ceremoniously permanently shut down, more than 14 years after one of its reactors exploded in the world's worst civil nuclear catastrophe on 26 Apr 1986.
2001: The Leaning Tower of Pisa was reopened to the public after a $27 million realignment that took over a decade.
16Love is a little company of two where joy is doubled, grief is divided and the road travelled together: Anon
1935: The use of eye prints (pattern of capillaries in the retina) was described.
1954: Synthetic diamonds were produced at General Electric Research Laboratories by Prof. H. Tracy Hall.
1962: First satellite dedicated to only study meteorites, Explorer 16, was launched from Cape Canaveral.
17A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, and a little less than his share of the credit: Arnold Glason
1903: First powered flight by the Wright brothers in the Kitty Hawk, at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina.
1979: First rocket "car" reached 739.7 mph (faster than the speed of sound), it had a 48,000 h.p. rocket boosted by a 12,000 h.p. Sidewinder missile.
18The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to him his own: Benjamin Disraeli
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END TERM 4 - 18 December 2018
19Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future: Dr. Dale E. Turner
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20Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level: Dr. Joyce Brothers
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21The space within becomes the reality of the building: Frank Lloyd Wright
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22Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble: Frank Tyger
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23When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on: Franklin D. Roosevelt
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24The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes: George Sand
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25There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in: Graham Greene
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26And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be: Grandma Moses?
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27Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past: H.F.Hedge
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28Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers: Henry F. Amiel
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29Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil: Henry Fielding
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30Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages: Henry Ward Beecher
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31Drop the question what tomorrow may bring, and count as profit every day that fate allows you: Horace
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