This Day is Important-3rd September

Skyscraper Day

September 3rd is Skyscraper Day is a day to appreciate and admire the world's tallest skyscrapers. skyscraper buildings have become taller and taller. The world's tallest man-made structure is the 829.8 m (2,722 ft) tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The building gained the official title of "Tallest Building in the World" at its opening on January 4, 2010. Burj Khalifa was designed to be the centerpiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development that would include 30,000 homes, nine hotels, 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of parkland, at least 19 residential towers, the Dubai Mall, and the 12-hectare (30-acre) man-made Burj Khalifa Lake.

Burj Khalifa

It holds many records-

• Tallest existing structure        
• Tallest structure ever built
• Building with most floors: 163 (previously World Trade Center – 110)
• Building with world's highest occupied floor: 584.5 m (1,918 ft)
• World's highest elevator installation (situated inside a rod at the very top of the building)
• World's longest travel distance elevators: 504m (1,654 ft)
• Highest vertical concrete pumping (for a building): 606 m (1,988 ft)
• World's tallest structure that includes residential space
• World's second highest outdoor observation deck: 124th floor at 452 m (1,483 ft).  When it first opened, the observation deck was the highest outdoor observation deck in the World, but it has since been surpassed by Cloud Top 488 on top of Canton Tower.
• World's highest installation of an aluminium and glass façade: 512 m (1,680 ft)
• World's highest nightclub: 144th floor^[25]
• World's highest restaurant (At.mosphere): 122nd floor at 442 m (1,450 ft)
• World's highest New Year display of fireworks.
• World's second highest swimming pool: 76th floor (world's highest swimming pool is located on 118th floor of Ritz-Carlton Hotel at International Commerce Centre, Hong Kong).

World's Tallest Buildings
	Building	Country	Height(Feet)	# Floors	Year Built
1.	Burj Khalifa	Dubai	2,717	163	2010
2.	Shanghai Tower	Shanghai, China	2,073.	121	2014
3.	Makkah Royal Clock Toewr Hotel	Mecca, Suadi Arabia	1,971	120	2014
4.	One World Trade Center	New York City,  NY, USA	1,776	104	2014
5.	CTF Finance Centre	Guangzhou, China	1,740	111	2016
6.	Taipei 101	Taipei, Taiwan	1,671	101	2004
7.	Shanghai World Financial Center	Shanghai, China	1,614	101	2008
8.	International Commerce Cnetre	Hong Kong, China	1,588	118	2010
9.	Petronas Tower 1	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	1,483	88	1998
9..	Petronas Tower 2	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	1,483	88	1998
11.	Zifeng Tower	Nanjing, China	1,476	89	2010
12.	Willis Tower (formerly The Sears Tower)	Chicago, Il	1,450	108	1974
13.	KK100	Shenzhen, China	1,449	100	2011
14.	Guanzhou International Finance Center	Guanzhou, China	1,440	103	2010
15.	Trump International Hotel and Tower	Chicago, IL., USA	1,389	98	2009
24.	Empire State Building	New York, New York	1,250	102	1931

NATIONAL WELSH RAREBIT DAY

September 3rd annually celebrates National Welsh Rarebit Day.  What is a rarebit?  It is acually a Welsh term for “rabbit”.  Not unlike mock turtle soup having no turtle in it, Welsh rarebit does not contain rabbit.  This dish is actually made with toast that has hot cheese poured over it. In the eighteenth century, Welsh Rarebit was served as a succulent supper and was also known as a pub/tavern dish. It was mostly made with cheddar cheeses and a wheat-type bread, opposed to the typical European fondue and swiss cheeses.  As with any dish, there are different versions and variations of Welsh Rarebit.

Welsh Rarebit

Famous all over Europe, Welsh Rarebit is a distant cousin to cheese on toast, made with a cheese and ale sauce, and Welsh Rarebit Day celebrates this famous dish. Nobody’s quite sure of the origin of the name, but it’s generally believed to be a jest at the expense of the early poor of Wales, who may largely have subsisted on rabbit and ale (though how this relates back to cheese on toast, we’re not sure).  If you are up to trying new things, what better way to celebrate National Welsh Rarebit Day than to go search for a recipe and try out your own version of this interesting dish!  Enjoy!

NATIONAL ANOTHER LOOK UNLIMITED DAY

Today (third September) is National Another Look Unlimited Day.  It is a day dedicated to take a look around your house and cleanse it of the excess of things you have accumulated.

We all have a lot of “things” that we don’t really need and instead of them collecting dust in our homes, we can reuse/upcycle them and/or donate them to someone/some place that could make better use of them. Today is about finding another use for the items we no longer want, instead of just trashing them.

On 3^rd September 1940 there was 1st showing of high definition color Television

On 3^rd September 1971 Qatar regains complete independence from Britain

Resources

http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/National_Symbols/American_Hollidays.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Rarebit

http://nationaldaycalendar.com/2013/09/03/september-3-2013-national-another-look-unlimited-day-national-welsh-rarebit-day/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa

This Day Is Important-World Coconut Day

  September 2 is observed as World Coconut Day to make people understand that this crop has a vital role in poverty reduction. There is one organization called 'Asian and Pacific Coconut Community', head quartered at Jakarta. This organization of Coconut is associated with the socio-economic aspects of millions of people, who directly and indirectly depend on this crop. It provides food, food security, livelihood security, export earning, import substitute and comprehensive protection to small and big holders and other agro-industries depending on it.

Coconut is described as 'Tree of life' or 'Heavenly tree' or 'Tree of abundance', because of its unique property by providing food, nutrition, drink, health, aesthetic sense, building material and other useful household material. Hence coconut farming is of immense importance, seeing its value in different aspects of human life. Every part of the fruit is valuable and useful in someway or the other. Coconut production is an alternative method of food production as well as employment generation.

On the special request of Karnataka Department of Horticulture, it was decided to organize the World Coconut Day celebrations at Bangalore. Karnataka is one of the  major coconut growing states in India with an area of 5.11 lakh hectare producing 4,408 million nuts  with a per hectare productivity of 9,942 nuts.  Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers Ananth Kumar will inaugurate the function. Karnataka Minister for Agriculture Krishna Byre Gowda will preside over the function.  Chairman of the Coconut Development Board T K Jose will deliver the keynote address.

This Day Is Important-1st September

Today, on 1^st September 1887 Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) got the patent for Gramophone (An obsolete machine today).

                                               Emile Berliner (Courtesy-Wikipedia)

We know it better as the record player. Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner was a German-born American inventor. 

Emile,sfirst gramophone

Though Emile got the patent, but Thomas Edison got the fame (for making it work and making music with his American invention).

Thomas Edison (Courtesy-Wikipedia)

Berliner's legacy also lives on in his trademark (later adopted by RCA): a picture of a dog listening to "his master's voice" issuing from a gramophone.

Price we paid for industrialization and urbanization

1^st September brings sad memories for bird watcher and bird lovers. On this day that is on 1^st September 1914, the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) became extinct as the last surviving bird of the colorful native American species of dove died at the Cincinnati Zoo. 

Male Passanger Pigion (courtesy-Wikipidia)

It was once the most abundant bird in North America, and possibly the world. The species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world during the 19th century to extinction early in the 20th century. At the time, passenger pigeons had one of the largest groups or flocks of any animal, second only to the Rocky Mountain locust. Some reduction in numbers occurred from habitat loss when European settlement led to mass deforestation. Next, pigeon meat was commercialized as a cheap food for slaves and the poor in the 19th century, resulting in hunting on a massive and mechanized scale. A slow decline between about 1800 and 1870 was followed by a catastrophic decline between 1870 and 1890. 

"Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know."

Martha, thought to be the world's last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her body was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where it was skinned, dissected, photographed and mounted. Currently, Martha is in the museum's archived collection and not on display. A memorial statue of Martha stands on the grounds of the Cincinnati Zoo.

Remains of the last wild passenger pigeon Martha at Cincinnati Zoo (Courtesy- Wikipidia)

John Herald, a bluegrass singer, wrote a song dedicated to the extinction of the species and Martha, that he titled "Martha (Last of the Passenger Pigeons)". 

This Day Is Important

30th august is very important in the history of science because-

Maurice R. Hilleman (courtesy-Wikipedia) 

Maurice R. Hilleman American microbiologist was born today in 1919. Hilleman specialized in vaccinology and developed over 36 vaccines, more than any other scientist. Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current vaccine schedules. He developed vaccines for  measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria. He also played a role in the discovery of the cold-producing adenoviruses, the hepatitis viruses, and the cancer-causing virus SV40. He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century. He is remembered as  "the most successful vaccinologist in history". Hats off to a saviour like him. Hilleman died on 11th April 2005 at the age of 85. 

John William Mauchly an american engineer and physicist was born today in 1907. Mauchly in 1946 invented the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was the size of a three-bedroom apartment, weighed 30 tons, and cost nearly half a million dollars to build-and $650 an hour to run. But in 1945, this behemoth was the cutting edge in technology, and a herald of the digital age to come. This "little gem of a book" tells the story of this machine and the men who built it-as

(Courtesy- history-computer.com)

well as the secrecy, controversy, jealousy, and lawsuits that surrounded it-in a compelling real-life techno-thriller.

ENIAC (courtesy- Wikipedia)

ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed more than 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8 by 3 by 100 feet (2.4 m × 0.9 m × 30 m), took up 1800 square feet (167 m2), and consumed 150 kW of power. This led to the rumor that whenever the computer was switched on, lights in Philadelphia dimmed. Mauchly died on 8th Jan 1980 at the age of 72.

It is the birthday of Sir Ernest Rutherford a New Zealand-English physicist who is known as the father of nuclear physics. He was born on 30 Aug 1871.

(Courtesy-Wikipedia)

Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday. In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation.  It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances". In 1907 he and Thomas Royds proved that alpha radiation is helium ions. Rutherford performed his most famous work after he became a Nobel laureate. In 1911, although he could not prove that it was positive or negative, he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom. He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton. Under his leadership the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932 and in the same year the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner, performed by students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. After his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.

 Vacuum cleaner was discovered today in the year 1901 by a British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth (4 July 1871 – 14 January 1955).

(Courtesy-Wikipedia)

Story of its invention is quite interesting.  Booth witnessed a demonstration of a new cleaning machine for railway cars. This machine was like no other he had seen. It took the dust from one side of the car and sent it to a dustbox on the other side. He decided to take this idea into the home. The idea of a vacuum cleaner had been around for some time before. The first vacuum cleaner was a 2-man show. 1 person had to operate the bellows while the other moved the mouthpiece across the floor. However, this was not a vacuum cleaner as we know it today. This one actually just blew the dust into the air and scattered it about. With no means of removal, the dirt simply used to settle again. Once struck with the idea of using suction, Booth made a preliminary experiment by placing a pocket handkerchief over the plush back of a seat. He put his lips to it, and after sucking, a ring of black spots on the handkerchief proved his principle. He started a mobile cleaning service. Built on a horse-drawn cart, his vacuum machine had an engine driving a pump provided with a long hose to extend into a house to be cleaned. An early task was to clean the great blue coronation carpet in Westminster Abbey for Edward VII's coronation. Later he became Chairman and Managing Director of the British Vacuum Cleaner and Engineering Co.