Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom. – Sandra Day O’Connor
1254 – 1254 – Marco Polo, Italian merchant and explorer is born.
Marco Polo was an Italian merchant traveller whose travels are recorded in Livres des merveilles du monde (Book of the Marvels of the World, also known as The Travels of Marco Polo, c. 1300), a book that introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China.
1857 – Anna Winlock, American astronomer is born.
Anna Winlock was an American astronomer and daughter of Joseph Winlock and Isabella Lane. Like her father, she was a computer and astronomer. It is plausible that this connection allowed her to be among the first of the women to be known as “the Harvard Computers.” She was also a distinguished woman computer as she made the most complete catalogue of stars near the north and south poles of her era. She is also remembered for her calculations and studies of asteroids. In particular she did calculations on 433 Eros and 475 Ocllo.
1947 – RCA releases the 12AX7 vacuum tube.
12AX7 (also known as ECC83) is a miniature dual triode vacuum tube with high voltage gain. It was developed around 1946 by RCA engineers in Camden, New Jersey, under developmental number A-4522. It was released for public sale under the 12AX7 identifier on September 15, 1947. The 12AX7 was originally intended as replacement for the 6SL7 family of dual-triode amplifier tubes for audio applications. It is popular with tube amplifier enthusiasts, and its ongoing use in such equipment makes it one of the few small-signal vacuum tubes in continuous production since it was introduced.
1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
Zond 5 launched on September 15 and became the first spacecraft to circle the Moon and return to land on Earth. On September 18, the spacecraft flew around the Moon. The closest distance was 1,950 km. High-quality photographs of the Earth were taken at a distance of 90,000 km. A biological payload of two Russian tortoises, wine flies, meal worms, plants, seeds, bacteria, and other living matter was included in the flight.
1981 – The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Sandra Day O’Connor is a retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan until her retirement in 2006. She was the first woman to be appointed to the Court.
Prior to O’Connor’s appointment to the Court, she was an elected official and judge in Arizona serving as the first female Majority Leader in the United States as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. On July 1, 2005, she announced her intention to retire effective upon the confirmation of a successor. Samuel Alito was nominated to take her seat in October 2005, and joined the Court on January 31, 2006.
Considered a federalist and a moderate conservative, O’Connor tended to approach each case narrowly without arguing for sweeping precedents. She most frequently sided with the court’s conservative bloc, although in the latter years of her tenure, she was regarded as having the swing opinion in many cases. Her unanimous confirmation by the Senate in 1981 was supported by most conservatives, led by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, and liberals, including Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and women’s rights groups like the National Organization for Women.
O’Connor was Chancellor of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and served on the board of trustees of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several publications have named O’Connor among the most powerful women in the world. On August 12, 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the United States, by President Barack Obama.
2010 – Adafruit adds wishlists for your shopping pleasure!
BIG NEWS! Adafruit now has WISH LISTS! For your shopping pleasure! This means you can add things to a “wish list” and then send it to someone else (or yourself) and that person, or you can add ALL the items to cart and buy them!
Over the last year or so many customers, students, hacker spaces and more told us what type of features they’ve wanted in a wish list and we’re please to launch this before the holiday season!
To use the wish list just visit any product page and click the “Add to Wishlist” button. Later you can email it to someone, or yourself!
The email can be HTML or text, Adafruit does not store, collect or spam any address you use – you must be logged in to your Adafruit.com account to email a wishlist.
Above, a short video with a quick overview!