Chief Blog

On July 2, 1850, the first self-contained gas mask was patented. Unfortunately, for the next hundred years, these lung-savers contained good ol’ asbestos. Was there anything that stuff couldn’t do back then?

47 years later, Guglielmo Marconi obtained the first patent for radio technology. Although his claim to this revolutionary advance was later disputed, the 1909 Nobel Laureate’s title was defended by his buddies in Mussolini’s Fascist regime. Earlier this year, he was (quite posthumously) inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Hmmm.

On this day in 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator made their last contact with civilization (probably using a radio) before making history as flying phantoms. “Y’all circumnavigatin’?” “Not quite like Magellan.” Image from the collection of Len Roe.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm and is filed under bastards, those bastards, fox broadcasting, friends helping friends, learn something, technology, too soon?, wtf?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.