1869 Victoria, History: World’s largest alluvial gold nugget, the Welcome Stranger, was found by John Deason and Richard Oates (weighting 97.14kg) in Moliagul, Australia, that is in Western Victoria. See the size in the picture below. Another almost as large was found at Ballarat. We have been there.
1909 Brussels, Technology: Belgian Louis Baekeland demonstrated the first synthetic plastic at the American Chemical Society. It became known as Bakelite. Used many products made from Bakelite but not so much anymore.
1922 New York City, Literature: The first issue of Reader’s Digest was published. Its thirty articles offered breadth in a compact form, it claimed. It abridging books it also sanitised and censored them to shape its audience. In the Reader’s Digest version Hamlet and Claudius shake hands and go to the bar together in Act V.
1924 Great Britain, Technology: The first Greenwich Time signal of five short and one long pip was broadcast the BBC to mark the start of the hour.
1946 Missouri, Politics: Winston Church visiting Harry Truman gave a graduation address at Fulton College in which he described ‘an iron curtain’ in Eastern Europe and evoked ‘the special relationship’ between the USA and Great Britain. Both expressions defined the Cold War that had already begun.
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