#TodayInHistory – August 12

August 12 – Some important events on this day.

3 👉🏼 Venus-Jupiter in conjunction-Star of Bethlehem
1121 👉🏼 Battle of Didgori: the Georgian army under King David the Builder wins a decisive victory over the famous Seljuk commander Ilghazi
1323 👉🏼 Treaty of Nöteborg between Sweden and Novgorod (Russia) regulates the border for the first time
1480 👉🏼 Battle of Otranto: Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam

1851 👉🏼 American inventor Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine

1853 👉🏼 The frigate Madagascar left Melbourne for London with more than 150 passengers and its crew…but also nearly three tons of gold on board. It was never seen again.
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1869 👉🏼 Self-proclaimed Emperor Joshua Abraham Norton of the USA issues edict abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties.

1877 👉🏼 Thomas Edison completes 1st model for the phonograph, a device that recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders.
Thomas Edison was one of the great inventors and designers in the history of the world: he invented the first practical light bulb, the motion picture camera and the phonograph itself. Others had attempted to invent the latter but Edison’s was the first to actually reproduce the sound.
The phonograph was Edison’s first major invention and the one that earned him the moniker “the wizard of Menlo Park” as the invention was so unexpected by the public as to appear magical. His first invention recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder, and although the recordings could only be played a few times due to low quality, Edison’s reputation was cemented.
He demonstrated the device on November 29, 1877, having announced its invention days before. He would patent it later that February. Recalling a demonstration in December, an employee of Scientific American magazine wrote: ” “In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, and placed before the editors a small, simple machine about which very few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: “Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?” The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph…”
Edison did not improve on his design but Alexander Graham Bell invented an improved phonograph using wax cylinders in 1880.

1883 👉🏼 The last quagga (zebra subspecies) dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.

1908 👉🏼 Henry Ford’s company builds the first Model T car.

1923 👉🏼 Enrico Tiraboschi is 1st to swim English Channel westward
1928 👉🏼 IX Summer Olympic Games close in Amsterdam, Netherlands
1981 👉🏼 IBM introduces its first Personal Computer (PC & PC-DOS version 1.0)
1985 👉🏼 520 people die when Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes in Ueno, Japan, the second-deadliest aviation disaster of all time
1990 👉🏼 Fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson discovers three huge bones jutting out of a cliff near Faith, South Dakota. They turn out to be part of the largest-ever Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered.
1991 👉🏼 Heavy metal band Metallica release their 5th album “Metallica”, debuts at No. 1 on Billboard 200 chart
2012 👉🏼 XXX Summer Olympic Games close in London, England
2016 👉🏼 Cannes becomes first French resort to ban the burkini