Content by F T.Bear
Good morning! Rise and shine!
Today in history is a place for you early risers to exercise your brains as you wait for the day to begin. Please, by all means, bring your own bits of history to the comments section and add your memories of what YOU did on this day however many years ago.
The beauty of an early morning historical post is that the date can mean the event happened today “our time” or today “other side of the world” time.
From the life and death of Plato through to the latest most recent history as it happens, we intend on bringing you stimulating and educational historical knowledge.
June 19th
1940: Off the coast of Northlands Bream Head the trans-pacific liner “Niagara” is sunk. Fortunately, the only loss of life was the ship’s cat “Aussie”. The ship was on it’s way to Suva and struck 2 of 228 mines that had been laid by the Germans in the approaches to The Hauraki Gulf.
1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed by the electric chair in Sing Sing Prison in New York. They had been convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. They were the first people executed for espionage in peacetime.
1829: Sir Robert Peel, introduces the Metropolitan Police Act into parliament to establish a unified police force for London. The Bobbies are born.
240: Greek scholar Eratosthenes, estimates the circumference of the earth using two sticks. He also used angles and the distance from two known points. He was 46 kilometres, or 0.16%, out. He is also known for calculating the tilt of the earth’s axis and predicting the distance to the Sun.
