On this day in history: First French nuclear explosive test, 1960

The French have a long association with nuclear research since the days of Marie Curie. In 1945 the French government created the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA) - the French Atomic Energy Commission - under the direction of the Nobel laureate Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Nevertheless, Joliot-Curie's communist sympathies resulted in him being removed from his position before the beginning of the nuclear power programme in the 1950s.

In 1956 a secret committee met to review the possible military applications for atomic energy. Work began on delivery systems for nuclear weapons, but another year passed before President René Coty authorised the creation of the Centre Saharien d'Expérimentations Militaires (C.S.E.M.) - a military research facility in what was then the French Sahara. In 1958 the newly installed President Charles de Gaulle gave the final authorisation for France to develop a nuclear bomb, only the fourth country to do so after the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

At 7.04am on 12th February 1960 the scientists at C.S.E.M. conducted their first nuclear explosive test, codenamed Gerboise Bleue ("blue jerboa" - a jerboa is desert rodent). The scientists had mounted the pure fission plutonium implosion device on a 105 meter high tower near Reganne in the desert of Tanezrouf (now in Algeria). The resultant explosion was the most powerful first nuclear test by any nation with a yield of seventy kilotons. They conducted two other tests of much smaller devices in April and December of that year codenamed Gerboise Blanche and Gerboise Rouge - making up the three colours of the tricolore. In April 1961 the scientists detonated the final bomb in the programme, Gerboise Verte.


Footage of the Gerboise Bleue fireball.

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On this day in history: Electricity generated by nuclear power for the first time, 1951

In 1934 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi produced nuclear fission for the first time for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics four years later. After receiving his prize, Fermi emigrated to the United States with his Jewish wife, Laura, to escape Mussolini's increasingly anti-semitic fascist regime in his homeland. He worked at Columbia University where he continued experimenting on nuclear fission before joining the project at the University of Chicago constructing the world's first nuclear reactor.

Following America's entry into the Second World War, the experimental work conducted on Chicago Pile-1 became part of the Manhattan Project, which was engaged in creating nuclear weapons. Following the end of the war, development began on more peaceful applications of reactor research, including the generation of electricity. To this end the United States government established the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) - now called the Idaho National Laboratory - in the Idaho desert in 1949.

That year construction work began on the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 (EBR-1) at NRTS. Walter Zinn, who had also worked on the Manhattan Project, and his team at the Argonne National Laboratory designed EBR-1 as an attempt to prove that it was possible to create a breeder reactor rather than to become a working power plant. A breeder reactor is one that creates nuclear fuel at a rate that is greater than it can consume it.

On 24th August 1951 the reactor went critical for the first time. At 1:50pm on 20th December 1951, the power station produced electricity for the first time. It generated enough electricity to illuminate four 200watt light bulbs. The next day the scientists repeated the experiment, producing enough electricity for the EBR-1 building.

Two years later, it successfully began producing fuel as a breeder reactor. Experiments continued on the EBR-1, even after the reactor suffered a partial meltdown in November 1955, until it was deactivated in 1964. The following year EBR-1 became a National Historic Landmark.

To learn more about the reactor see the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 fact-sheet available as a pdf file from the Idaho National Laboratory site.

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On this day in history: UNESCO established, 1945

In November 1942, the education ministers of the allied governments then exiled in London attended a meeting at the invitation of the President of the Board of Education of England and Wales, Richard A. Butler. The group, which became known as the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME), continued to meet for the duration of the war. As part of the fifth session of CAME in June 1943, the delegates agreed that their conference could form the basis for a worldwide educational organisation, an idea which soon attracted international interest.

AS CAME developed their plans for an international educational organisation, the U.S. government invited the allied powers to consider the creation of an international security organisation. In October 1944, a draft charter for the proposed organisation, called the United Nations (UN), was published. In April 1945, delegates met in San Francisco in a conference that not only established the UN, but also agreed to invite the British government to hold a meeting to discuss the creation of an international organisation for cultural co-operation.

On 1st November, delegates from forty-three nations arrived at a conference to establish the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization, presided over by Ellen Wilkinson, the British Minister of Education. A number of scientists pushed for the inclusion of science, not only in the name of the organisation, but also in its programme. The conference agreed, and on 16th November 1945, the delegates signed the agreements that established the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

To learn more about the history of UNESCO visit the 'About us' section of their web site and the UNESCO history project.

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On this day in history: Only spaceflight of Buran, 1988

In 1974 engineers of the Soviet Union began work on the Buran ("Blizzard") project, which was a response to NASA's Space Shuttle programme. The Russian engineers favoured a design for a lighter reusable spacecraft where the entire body of the craft created lift, but the military leadership demanded that they copy the delta-wing design of the American Shuttle. Six years later, construction commenced on the spacecraft, with the first full-scale prototype reaching completion in 1984 and the first of the two completed production vehicles appearing in 1986.

As with the NASA design, in order to achieve space flight the Buran needed an external source of thrust that would be jettisoned when no longer needed. Buran employed an Energia rocket supplemented by four smaller liquid-fuel Zenit booster rockets, unlike the Shuttle, which uses two solid-fuel booster rockets connected to a fuel tank. The Energia made a successful test-launch in May 1987, paving the way for an unmanned test-flight of Buran.

At 3am local time on 15th November 1988 orbiter OK-1.01 lifted off from the launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome. The space flight lasted 206 minutes, during which Buran orbited the Earth twice before making a successful automatic landing on a runway back at Baikonur despite of a powerful cross-wind. Nevertheless, the success of the test flight was not enough to save the project, which was mothballed due to lack of funds and the shifting political situation in the Soviet Union before President Bosis Yeltsin officially cancelled the project in 1993.

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On this day in history: First manmade object to orbit another planet, 1971

On 30th May 1971, an Atlas-Centaur rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying the Mariner 9 spacecraft. NASA's Mariner program was an investigation of Mars, Venus and Mercury using unmanned probes. Mariner craft achieved many firsts: Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to fly past another planet (Venus) and Mariner 4 was the first to pass close to Mars.

The program also had its fair share of setbacks: Mariner 1 was destroyed following a rocket malfunction; Mariner 3 failed to reach Mars due to a technical fault; and Mariner 8 ended up in the Atlantic Ocean after an unsuccessful launch. With the demise of Mariner 8, its identical sister craft was tasked with becoming the first object to orbit another planet. Mariner 9 arrived at Mars on 13th November when it entered orbit.

For nearly a year, NASA received data from the probe's infrared and ultraviolet instruments. Mariner 9 also took photographs of the planet's surface after having to wait for a couple of months because of the amount of dust in Mars' atmosphere. The scientists switched Mariner 9 off on 27th October 1972 after it depleted its supply of gas that fuelled the altitude control.

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On this day in history: Entrance to the tomb of King Tutankhamun discovered, 1922

In 1891, at the age of just seventeen, Howard Carter arrived in Egypt to work as an artist tracing the scenes on the walls of newly discovered tombs. While working for the passionate archaeologist W. M. Flinders Petrie at the excavation at el-Amarna, Carter first felt the inspiration to become an archaeologist himself. Nevertheless, he continued to work as an illustrator until 1899 when Gaston Maspero, the director-general of the antiquities service of Egypt, gave him the position of chief inspector of antiquities in Upper Egypt in recognition of his managerial skills.

The appointment surprised the archaeological community because Carter had no formal qualifications in the field; however, he proved a capable administrator working hard to preserve and protect existing antiquities, and overseeing new excavations. In 1904, Carter was transferred to lower Egypt but during the following year he resigned after a violent incident between a group of foreign visitors and Egyptian antiquities guards. After spending a couple of years barely supporting himself selling his watercolour paintings and working as a tourist guide, Carter formed a relationship with Lord Canarvon after being introduced to him by Maspero.

Canarvon provided the financial backing for a number of digs in Egypt, and before long Carter was supervising them all. Carter approached Canarvon for funding for a project of his own: the hunt for the tomb of Tutankhamun, a previously unknown pharaoh whose existence Carter had recently discovered. A number of years passed with little success and as a result the two agreed that the 1922 expedition would be the last.

On 4th November 1922 Carter located the steps leading down to Tutankhamun's tomb, the best preserved example of its type in the Valley of the Kings. The excavation work and removal of the artifacts took a decade to complete while Carter traveled the world presenting lectures that fueled a period of egyptomania. Ill health prevented Carter from producing a complete scientific report of his discovery, and he finally died aged 64 in 1939.

The Griffith Institute web-site hosts Howard Carter's records of the five seasons of excavations financed by Lord Carnarvon in the Valley of the Kings 1915 - 1922.

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On this day in history: BBC Television Service started broadcasting, 1936

The first television broadcast in Britain was made on 30th September 1929 using an electromechanical system pioneered by the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird. His Baird Television Development Company Ltd used the British Broadcasting Corporation's London transmitter to send images over the airwaves. The following year, with the introduction of the BBC's Brookmans Park twin transmitter, Baird was able to broadcast sound along with the pictures.

The BBC started their own experimental broadcasts in 1932, using Baird's thirty vertical line system. By 1936 Baird had improved his mechanical system to 240 lines; however, the BBC decided to alternate between it and Marconi-EMI's new completely electronic 405-line system for their regular broadcasts. So, on 2nd November 1936, the BBC television service started broadcasting for the first time from their new studios at Alexandra Palace using the Marconi-EMI system and the new VHF transmitter.

The 405-line broadcast was the first regular high-definition television service in the world. It proved so successful that after a few months of switching between the two systems on a weekly basis, the BBC stopped broadcasting using the Baird electromechanical system. While the official range of the broadcasts was twenty-five miles (40km), in practice they could be picked up much further away (on one occasion as far away as New York when RCA engineers were experimenting with a British TV-set).

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On this day in history: First commercial transistor radio announced, 1954

In December 1947, Walter Houser Brattain and H. R. Moore demonstrated a germanium transistor to colleagues at the Bell Labs by using it as an amplifier. This was the culmination of a collaboration between Brattain, John Bardeen and William Shockley, who jointly received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. Their development of the transistor owed much to the work of the Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld who had patented the field effect transistor in 1925, although his invention was not given a commercial application.

In the early 1950s, various companies started producing prototypes of all-transistor radios but their performance was not on a par with vacuum tube based models. Nevertheless, in May 1954, Texas Instruments (TI) developed a prototype transistor radio, which they hoped that established radio manufacturers would be interested in developing. TI Executive Vice President Pat Haggerty hoped that the radio would create a market for the company's transistors.

None of the major radio manufacturers showed any interest; however, the Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates (IDEA) of Indianapolis, Indiana showed interest. They decided to go into partnership with TI to develop the radio. The result was the Regency TR-1, which they announced on 18th October 1954.


The TR-1 went on sale the following month priced at $49.95 - quite a sum in those days, but enough for the venture to be profitable. The AM receiver was also expensive to run since it was powered by a 22.5v battery. Nevertheless, the novelty appeal of the TR-1 resulted in over 100,000 being sold.

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On this day in history: First day of Gregorian calendar, 1582

Throughout the medieval era concerns grew about problems with the Julian calendar. The vernal equinox occurred on later dates each year, which had a knock-effect for the calculation of the date of Easter and other movable feast days. After decades of discussion, on 24th February 1582, Pope Gregory XIII [pictured] issued the papal bull Inter gravissimas, which ordered the 'restoration' of the calendar. The Pope later received a manuscript called Compendiuem novae rationis restituendi kalendarium ("Compendium of the New Plan for the Restitution of the Calendar") from Antonio Lilius, brother to Aloysius, an Italian scholar and author of the treatise, who had died six years previously.

Lilius' plan, slightly modified by the German Jesuit scholar Christopher Clavius, required a reduction in the number leap-years. Centennial years (such as 1700 and 1900) would no longer have an extra day unless they were a multiple of 400 (e.g. 1600 and 2000). The reformation also required an adjustment by ten days.

The papal bull required the adoption of the new calendar in all Catholic countries. Consequently, in much of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Commonwealth of Polish-Lithuania Thursday 4th October 1582 was followed by Friday 15th October, the first day of what became known as the Gregorian calendar. Poor communications resulted in the Portuguese and Spanish colonies following suit later in the year, as did some Protestant nations.

Over the next two centuries the remaining Protestant nations in Western Europe adopted the reformed calendar, except the Swiss canton of Grisons which held out until 1811. In the twentieth-century the nations of eastern Europe followed suit by which time countries on the other continents had also adopted the Gregorian calendar.

The text of Inter gravissimas is available on the Blue Water Arts site.

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On this day in history: Iron lung used for first time, 1928

In 1928, Philip Drinker and Dr. Louis Agassiz Shaw, of the Harvard School of Public Health, invented a machine to treat those suffering from coal gas poisoning. The device, called a negative pressure ventilator, was an air-tight container into which the patient was placed. By varying the air pressure within, the device enabled the patient to breathe and as a result the machine become known popularly as the iron lung.

At Boston Children's Hospital on 12th October 1928, an eight-year-old girl suffering from respiratory failure due to paralysis of the diaphragm brought about by polio became the first person to be treated using the iron lung. A local tinsmith had constructed the tank, and two vacuum cleaner pumps were used to vary the air pressure. The patient's head remained outside this early version of the iron lung, but despite it's basic construction the machine's effects were dramatic: within seconds the girl was breathing again.

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On this day in history: Paracelsus died, 1541

Born Phillip von Hohenheim at the Swiss village of Maria Einsiedeln sometime in 1493, he followed his father into a career in medicine. Following the completion of his doctorate at the University of Ferrara, he worked as an itinerant physician and occasionally as a miner across Europe from the Netherlands to Russia. He ended up at the University of Basel where he held the chair of medicine.

After a legal row he was forced to leave the city after less than a year that he spent upsetting his fellow academics with his new ideas and refusal to accept traditional Galenic medical practice. Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals in the treatment of ailments and is credited with naming the element zinc. While he rejected some medical orthodoxies, such as magical theories, he maintained the hermetic idea of maintaining harmony within the body and was himself a practising astrologer and alchemist.

After leaving Basel he travelled around Europe, Africa and Asia Minor as a seeker of occult knowledge, initially under the grand name of Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim and then simply as Paracelsus (meaning 'equal to Celsus' - an ancient Greek who wrote a famous tract on medicine). He continued to write on medical and occult subjects but often had problem finding publishers for his works. He died at the age of 48 (possibly under suspicious circumstances) on 24th September 1541. In the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth Paracelsus' works achieved a wider acceptance and helped shape modern medicine.

To learn more see the Zurich Paracelsus Project pages hosted by the University of Zurich Institute and Museum for the History of Medicine.

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On this day in history: Neptune discovered, 1846

In 1821, the French astronomer Alexis Bouvard published astronomical tables of the orbit of Uranus, calculated using Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. Subsequent observations of the planet revealed a deviation from the expected position. To explain this deviation, Bouvard hypothesised the existence of an eighth planet.

During the 1840s, two mathematician-astronomers started work independently on the problem of deducing the position of this eighth planet: an Englishman called John Couch Adams and the Frenchman, Urbain Le Verrier [pictured]. In 1845, Adams twice called on Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy to inform him of his solution. Since Airy was absent both times, Adams left a manuscript containing his calculations. Airy sent a letter to Adams requesting clarification on a number of points, but Airy did not reply.

In August 1846, Le Verrier announced to the Académie des sciences in Paris that he had calculated the position of the eighth planet. The following month he sent a letter to Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory predicting the position of the planet. On 23rd September 1836, Galle received the letter and that evening he and his fellow astronomer Heinrich d'Arrest used the Berlin Fraunhofer refractor to check Le Verrier's prediction. They found the planet within one degree of the calculated location.

Le Verrier strove the have the new planet named after himself, but this choice achieved little acceptance outside France. He had earlier proposed the name Neptune, after the Roman god of the sea. This name soon achieved widespread acceptance and has remained so to this day.

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On this day in history: Foundation of the Bombay Natural History Society, 1883

On 15th September, 1883, eight gentlemen with an interest in the natural world at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Bombay (now called Mumbai) to found the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). The eight included the Anglo-Indians Edward Hamilton Aitken, a customs official who became the first Honorary Secretary, and Colonel Charles Swinhoe, as well as two Indian naturalists: Dr Atmaram Pandurang and Dr Sakharam Arjun. The other four founding members were Dr G. A. Maconochie, Dr D. MacDonald, Mr J. C. Anderson, and Mr. J. Johnston.

They proposed that they should hold monthly meetings at the museum at which they would exchange notes and display specimens. The society soon had their own premises, care of the wine merchant Herbert Musgrave Phipson, who joined the society following his return from a trip to England and offered the society the use of an office in his shop at 18, Forbes Street. Phipson went on to succeed Aitken as Honorary Secretary in 1886, the same year that the BNHS published the first edition of its journal.

The journal established the reputation of the Society, which soon attracted a large membership and built up a number of collections of specimens. Today, the BNHS also takes an active role in the conservation of natural habitats and species. To learn more about the society, visit the BNHS website.

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On this day in history: First man-made object to reach the Moon, 1959

After their successes in putting the first man-made object into space the scientists of the Soviet space programme set their sights on a more remote target. Between September 1958 and June 1959 the Soviet Union launched a series of rockets carrying probes that they hoped would reach the Moon. All of the first three attempts failed to leave the Earth's atmosphere and while fourth probe, Luna 1, was successfully launched it missed the Moon by about 6,000km and became the first man-made object to enter orbit around the Sun. During the fifth attempt, the guidance systems of the R-7 rocket failed and the mission was aborted.

Early in the morning on 12th September 1959, a R-7 Semyorka rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying the lunar probe. This probe, called Luna 2, successfully separated from the third stage of the rocket and both headed off towards the Moon. Along the way it confirmed the presence of the solar wind, which was first detected by Luna 1. The next day Luna 2 expelled a bright cloud of sodium gas to aid the scientists in tracking its progress and so that they could observe the behaviour of gases in space.

At a little after 10pm UTC, on 14th September the scientists stopped receiving transmissions from Luna 2 indicating that it had impacted with the Moon. The probe landed somewhere in the Palus Putredinus ('Marsh of Decay'). Before crashing instruments on Luna 2 demonstrated that, unlike the Earth, the Moon had no radiation belts nor a significant magnetic field.

The Luna programme continued until 1976 by which time NASA had successfully made manned missions to the Moon, something the Soviets never achieved. To read more visit the Zarya site, which includes web-pages dedicated to the Luna missions.

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On this day in history: Foundation stone of Royal Greenwich Observatory laid, 1675

On 4th March 1675, King Charles II issued a royal warrant appointing John Flamsteed as his 'astronomical observator' - a position later known as Astronomer Royal. The warrant detailed his dual role to further scientific knowledge by 'rectifieing the Tables of the motions of the Heavens, and the places of the fixed stars' and to improve British trade by working 'out the so much desired Longitude of places for the perfecting the Art of Navigation' for which Flamsteed received an annual salary of one-hundred pounds. To aid him in these tasks, the king issued another royal warrant in July of that year commissioning an observatory to be built.



The site chosen for this, the first purpose built scientific building in England, was on a hill in the royal park at Greenwich, then a town outside London. Robert Hooke started work on a design for the observatory, possibly consulting Christopher Wren with whom he collaborated on several projects (and who is identified as the designer of the observatory in some accounts). On 10th August 1675, work was ready to begin and Flamsteed laid the foundation stone for the observatory.



Successive, royal astronomers used this building, later known as Flamsteed House, as the point from which they measured the longitude (distance east or west in degrees) of various places. In the nineteenth-century, an international convention agreed that the building should mark the Prime Meridian, that is zero degrees longitude. The Royal Observatory also became the 'home' of Greenwich Mean Time, initially the standard time for all British naval ships, and later the standard by which all clocks were set with variations according to time-zone.



The Royal Observatory is now a World Heritage Site administered by the National Maritime Museum.



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On this day in history: First rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, 1950

At the end of the Second World War, the United States government prioritised the extraction of key German scientists and the technology they worked on. Key to this operation - codenamed 'Paperclip' - were the brains behind the V-2 rockets, especially the project leader, Dr. Vernher von Braun. Von Braun and his team were relocated to the U.S. along with three-hundred train loads of V-2 rocket parts.

In 1946 the U.S. army began testing the reassembled rockets at White Sands in New Mexico. Over the next few the operation grew, bringing in experts from all three armed services, universities and the aeronautics industry. The development of ballistic missiles, particularly as a delivery system for nuclear warheads, required a new purpose built test-site.

In October 1949, President Harry S. Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Grounds at the chosen location: Cape Canaveral in Florida. Nine months later, on 24th July 1950, the army launched a modified V-2 rocket called Bumper 8. The rocket reached an altitude of around 10 miles.

Following the establishment of NASA in 1948, Cape Canaveral became the launch centre for historic missions into space including the launch of the first American satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958; the 1961 Freedom 7 mission that carried Alan Shepherd on a suborbital flight for NASA's first manned space mission; and, John Glenn's orbital flight the next year. The Apollo and Space Shuttle programmes launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the nearby Merritt Island. Nevertheless, the launch site at the Cape continued to be used for the Viking missions to Mars and the Voyager programme, and is still used today for the launch of unmanned missions.

The NASA web site includes the text of The Kennedy Space Center Story, chapter one of which details the early flights from the Cape.

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On this day in history: The Antarctic Treaty came into force, 1961

On the 15th October 1959 representatives of the twelve countries met in Washington D.C. to negotiate a treaty regarding the future of Antarctica. The twelve nations - Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States - were those that had undertaken scientific activity on the frozen continent during the International Geophysical Year, which lasted from July 1957 to December 1958. Poland requested to join the negotiations, having sent some scientists to the Russian Antarctic station, but this request was denied since they could sign the proposed treaty at a later date.

In the fifteen months prior to the conference, working groups had met to do much of the groundwork in a climate of cooperation that was uncommon during the Cold War. The spirit of compromise extended into the treaty negotiations. On 30th November the representatives announced that they had reached agreement on all fourteen articles of the treaty. These articles, which applied to all land and ice shelves below 60 degrees south latitude, included a ban on weapons tests on the continent, an undertaking to share scientific information, a guarantee of free movement in the area, and the empowerment of the International Court of Justice to settle and disputes.

On 1st December 1959, the treaty was opened for signatures. The governments of the twelve original nations each ratified the treaty. Chile was the last to do so, signing the treaty on the day that it came into force, 23rd June 1961. Since then representatives of thirty-four other nations have also signed the treaty.

The website of the Office of Polar Programs at the U.S. National Science Foundation includes the complete text of the 1959 treaty.

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On this day in history: First woman in space, 1963

Immediately after the Soviet Union's success in putting the first man into space in 1961, the head of cosmonaut training on the Russian space programme, Nikolai Kamanin, suggested to his superiors that it was their patriotic duty to again beat the Americans by being the first to put a woman into space. Chief Designer Korolev agreed and in October 1961 the search began for likeable woman who was an avowed Communist with experience of parachuting - piloting skills were not required as the Vostok spacecraft flew automatically. Five women received the call to train as cosmonauts, including Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, a textile worker and daughter of a war hero.

The five women began the exhaustive period of training and testing: centrifuge rides; isolation tests; rocket theory; parachute jumps; piloting jet fighters, physical exercise; and, weightless flights. In spite of being the least qualified - the other four had received higher education, and included engineers and test pilots - Tereshkova faired better in front of the Communist selection board than the other finalist, Valentina Ponomareva, who had excelled in all the other tests. Since the flight was essentially a propaganda exercise, Korolev nominated Tereshkova, and Premier Krushchev - who had the final say - agreed.

On the morning of 16th June 1963, Vostok 6 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the call sign "Seagull". While in space Tereshkova kept a log and took photographs, while the ground staff monitored her physical condition. Controversy surrounds the flight: some reports claimed that she became emotionally distraught, and she certainly vomited during the flight; however, the flight lasted longer than initially intended leaving her nothing to do with no support from the ground staff; she claimed that rather than the weightlessness it was the poor food she had been given that made her sick; and - as was later confirmed - she noticed that there had been an error in the automatic orientation of the capsule, which the ground crew confirmed and corrected.

Tereshkova's ordeal did not end until she safely returned to earth. After ejecting out of the capsule during its final descent (as all cosmonauts did) she noticed that she was parachuting towards lake that was to large for her to swim to the edge of in her state of exhaustion. Fortunately the wind blew her back over dry land. Nevertheless, from a propaganda point of view the mission was a complete success. Tereshkova's flight had a longer duration than all the American space-flights, thus far, put together. She was also significantly younger than all the NASA astronauts. The Soviet hierarchy quashed any attempts to discredit her, whether based in fact or chauvinism.

After the flight, Tereshkova married another cosmonaut, Andrian Nikolayev (an event which was again used for propaganda purposes leading some to think it had been contrived by the Soviet leadership), graduated as a engineer, and became a prominent politician and international representative of the USSR.

To read a biography of Valentina Tereshkova see the Encyclopedia Astronautica site.

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On this day in history: Montgolfier Brothers first public balloon flight, 1783

Before the pioneering balloon flights of Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne, the Montgolfier family of Vidalon, near Annanoy in south-eastern France, were best known as owners of a successful paper making business. The twelfth of fifteen children, Joseph was a dreamer and the first to consider constructing flying machines. His youngest brother Étienne provided the technical knowledge and skill to make Joseph's dreams a reality.

In November 1782, while living in Avignon, Joseph started experimenting with small models made of wood and taffeta under which he lit a small fire. When the model rose, Joseph concluded that the smoke from the fire contained 'Montgolfier Gas' that had a special property he called 'levity'. This phenomenon had been known since 1709 when a Brazilian priest, Bartolomeu de Gusmão, made a ball rise to the ceiling of the hall of the Casa da India, Lisbon, in the presence of King John V of Portugal. Despite being made a professor at the University of Coimbra, de Gusmão never developed a large scale lighter-than-air-ship.

Encouraged by his initial results, Joseph Montgolfier sent for Étienne, who had trained in Paris as an architect and thus had the ability to take Joseph's experiments forward. Indeed, within a month of the initial experiment, the brothers had constructed a device with twenty-seven times the volume of the original model which flew with such force that they could not maintain control of it. They eventually found their experiment around two kilometres away.

On 4th June 1783, the brothers were ready for their first public demonstration. They readied their balloon in the marketplace at Annanoy. The balloon was made from sackcloth, lined on the inside with layers of paper and had a volume of 28,000 cubic feet. The enormous device drew a sizeable crowd, including local dignitaries, who watched the ten minute flight. The brothers became famous overnight.

Étienne went to Paris to conduct further demonstrations in collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Réveillon, the famous wallpaper manufacturer. The result was the Aerostat Réveillon, which flew in September 1783 carrying a sheep, a rooster and a duck aloft watched by King Louis XVI, his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and a very large crowd gathered at Versailles. Two months later, following successful test flights with human passengers in tethered balloons, Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes became the first humans to make an untethered balloon flight from Château de la Muette, Paris.

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Balloonmania reached the United States: 9th January 1793
First Zeppelin flight: 2nd July 1900
First successful powered aeroplane flight: 17h December 1903

On this day in history: HMS Beagle launched, 1820

On 11th May 1820, at Woolwich dockyard in London, one of the most famous ships in history was launched. Costing £7,803, the ten-gun Cherokee-class brig-sloop carried the name HMS Beagle and entered service with the Royal Navy as a military vessel. In July of that year she took part in in the naval review to celebrate the coronation of King George IV, having the honour of being the first ship to sail fully-rigged under the new London Bridge. Surplus to requirement the Beagle was put in reserve: moored afloat but with no masks and rigging.

Five years later the Royal Navy found a use for the HMS Beagle. She returned to Woolwich where the shipwrights refitted her as a survey barque to explore the southern oceans. With four cannon removed and an extra mast added for added manoeuvrability she set off on the first voyage of discovery to South America captained by Commander Pringle Stokes on 22nd May 1826.

The Beagle returned in October 1830 with a new captain, Lieutenant Robert FitzRoy; her former captain having committed suicide due to depression two years earlier. FitzRoy commanded the second expedition, inviting a young naturalist called Charles Darwin to accompany him - an act which fixed the name HMS Beagle in history. Again the ship and crew set off to explore South America, leaving in December 1831 and returning in October 1836. In a grizzly repetition of history, FitzRoy also committed suicide following a bout of depression in 1865.

The final survey voyage of the Beagle took the ship to Australia. Under the captaincy of Commander John Clements Wickham, the mission lasted from 1837 to 1843 after which the Coast Guard took possession of the Beagle. In 1870 she was sold for scrap and probably broken up. Although in 2004 marine archaeologists found evidence of the final fate of the Beagle. You can read about what they discovered in Robin McKie's article from the Guardian newspaper.

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First European landing on New Zealand: 18th December 1642
First Europeans sight Tahiti: 18th June 1767
First expedition reaches the North Magnetic Pole: 1st June 1831
Ecuador annexed the Galápagos Islands: 12th February 1832