Scott Allsop's Blog, page 117

19th February 1913: Pedro Lascurain began the world’s shortest ever presidency in Mexico

Pedro Lascuráin began the shortest presidential term in history when he became President of Mexico for less than an ...

18th February 1885: Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” published in the United States

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, under his pen-name Mark Twain, had previously published the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which the character of Huckleberry “Huck” Finn is introduced for the first ...

17th February 1966: First recording session for the Beach Boys song ‘Good Vibrations’ takes place at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles

Referred to by Wilson as a ‘pocket symphony’, the modular process used for ‘Good Vibrations’ involved the recording and re-recording of individual sections of the song using the Wall of Sound formula that had been developed by record producer Phil ...

16th February 1937: Organic chemist Wallace Carothers is awarded a patent for nylon

The DuPont company’s organic chemist Wallace Carothers received a patent for linear condensation polymers, the basis of the material better known as ...

15th February 1971: Decimal Day in the United Kingdom and Ireland as they abandon their old currency of pounds, shillings and pence

The early introduction of three of the six new coins, together with an extensive publicity campaign, contributed greatly to the smoothness of Decimal Day when it finally came about in ...

14th February 1990: Voyager 1 creates the ‘Pale Blue Dot’ image of Earth

Pale Blue Dot, the most distant photograph ever taken of Earth, was created by the Voyager 1 space ...

13th February 1689: William and Mary become the new co-regents of the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland after agreeing to the Declaration of Right

The couple were declared King and Queen after agreeing to the Declaration of Right. Their coronation took place on 11 ...

12th February 1924: First performance of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was performed for the first time at a concert by Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Orchestra called An Experiment in Modern ...

11th February 1979: The Iranian Revolution overthrows Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran

The overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi brought the 2,500 year old monarchy in Iran to an end and ushered in a theocracy overseen by the Ayatollah ...

10th February 1906: Edward VII launches HMS Dreadnought, a revolutionary new type of battleship that made all other ships obsolete

Germany quickly began developing an equivalent ship to the Dreadnought, resulting in a naval arms race that contributed to the outbreak of the First World War in ...