Prof. Henrich Focke, a German inventor, devised the first practical helicopter called the Focke-Wulf Fw 16, which was successfully flown in 1936. By 1938 it set many world records for altitude, speed and flight duration. It could be flown by a pilot after only one hour of pilot briefing.
The original word for chess is the Sanskrit chaturanga, meaning four members of an army, which were most likely elephants, horses, chariots and foot soldiers. According to a German Indologist researching on the origin of chess, in the 6th century, the Maukhari rulers of Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, used to play chaturanga with 16 cabinet terracotta before venturing into military …
Rocketgrams are mail delivered by firing crude rockets towards their destinations. Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith, an Indian aerospace engineer, launched the first rocketgram in the 1930s. In the ten-year span of his experiments he made around 270 launches. The first successful livestock dispatch was of a cock and a hen, Adam and Eve, across the Damodar River …
In 1769, a Franciscan priest Father Juan Crespí accompanied a group of Spanish soldiers on the first European land expedition through California. In his journal he described a ‘beautiful river from the northwest’ and named it ‘Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Porciúncula’. In 1781, a settlement by the river was established. This settlement was …
John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) was an American physician who worked to develop a healthy diet. Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg invented several food items from grains. These eatables were rolled and made into sheets of dough, which were cooked. One day they accidentally left the cereals exposed for a longer period of time, …
Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron, was chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s analytical machine, or the computer. She worked on the engine with notes of her own, which are recognized today as the world’s first computer programme.
