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Otto Lilienthal. Died Aug. 10, 1896, Berlin, Germany.
German Aeronautical Engineer
Otto Lilienthal, (born May 23, 1848, Anklam, Prussia [now in Germany]—died Aug. 10, 1896, Berlin), German aviation pioneer. Lilienthal was the most significant aeronautical pioneer in the years between the advancements of the Englishman George Cayley and the American Wright brothers. Trained as a mechanical engineer, Lilienthal established his own machine shop and flight factory following service in the Franco-German War. Lilienthal began to conduct studies of the forces operating on wings in a stream of air in the late 1870s. The results of that research appeared in 1889 in a book entitled Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst (“Bird …
Robert Goddard. Died August 10, 1945, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
American Professor and Inventor
Robert Goddard, in full Robert Hutchings Goddard, (born October 5, 1882, Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.—died August 10, 1945, Baltimore, Maryland), American professor and inventor generally acknowledged to be the father of modern rocketry. He published his classic treatise, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in 1919. Goddard was the only child of a bookkeeper, salesman, and machine-shop owner of modest means. The boy had a genteel upbringing and in early youth felt the excitement of the post-Civil War Industrial Revolution when Worcester factories were producing machinery and goods for the burgeoning country. From childhood on he displayed great curiosity about physical …
Leo Fender. Born August 10, 1909, Anaheim, California., U.S.
American Inventor and Manufacturer
Leo Fender, in full Clarence Leo Fender, (born Aug. 10, 1909, Anaheim, Calif., U.S.—died March 21, 1991, Fullerton, Calif.), American inventor and manufacturer of electronic musical instruments. Together with George Fullerton, Fender developed the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar, in 1948. Called the Fender Broadcaster (renamed the Telecaster in 1950), it was produced under the auspices of the Fender Electric Instruments Company, which Fender had formed in 1946. In 1951 the Fender Precision Bass, the world’s first electric bass guitar, was unveiled, and in 1954 the Fender Stratocaster was put on the market. More stylish and technically improved than the …
Tony Wilson. Died August 10, 2007, Manchester, U.K.
British Music Industry Entrepreneur
Tony Wilson, in full Anthony Howard Wilson, (born Feb. 20, 1950, Salford, Lancashire, Eng.—died Aug. 10, 2007, Manchester), British music industry entrepreneur who, as cofounder of Factory Records and founder of the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester, was the ringleader of the so-called “Madchester” postpunk music and club scene of the 1980s and early ’90s. Wilson was a cultural reporter for Manchester’s Granada Television when in the mid-1970s he was given his own pop music show, So It Goes. He was galvanized by a 1976 Sex Pistols concert and booked the band on his show. In 1978 he cofounded the record …