From Castles to America » Donald Edward Blank (1922-2002)

Day of marriage December 5, 1942

• The temperature on December 5, 1942 was between -2.7 °C and 6.4 °C and averaged 2.1 °C. There was 9.2 mm of rain during 5.0 hours. There was -0.1 hours of sunshine (0%). The average windspeed was 5 Bft (very strong wind) and was prevailing from the south-southwest. Source: KNMI
• Koningin Wilhelmina (Huis van Oranje-Nassau) was from 1890 till 1948 sovereign of the Netherlands (also known as Koninkrijk der Nederlanden)
• In The Netherlands , there was from July 27, 1941 to February 23, 1945 the cabinet Gerbrandy II, with Prof. dr. P.S. Gerbrandy (ARP) as prime minister.
• In the year 1942: Source: Wikipedia
  • The Netherlands had about 9.0 million citizens.
  • February 1 » World War II: Josef Terboven, Reichskommissar of German-occupied Norway, appoints Vidkun Quisling the Minister President of the National Government.
  • February 9 » Year-round Daylight saving time (aka War Time) is re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.
  • May 8 » World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea comes to an end with Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attacking and sinking the United States Navy aircraft carrier USSLexington.
  • June 20 » The Holocaust: Kazimierz Piechowski and three others, dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, steal an SS staff car and escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp.
  • August 11 » Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.
  • December 2 » World War II: During the Manhattan Project, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

Day of death September 16, 2002

• The temperature on September 16, 2002 was between 6.8 °C and 19.9 °C and averaged 13.4 °C. There was -0.1 mm of rain. There was 3.9 hours of sunshine (31%). The partly clouded was. The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the north-northwest. Source: KNMI
• Koningin Beatrix (Huis van Oranje-Nassau) was from April 30, 1980 till April 30, 2013 sovereign of the Netherlands (also known as Koninkrijk der Nederlanden)
• In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, August 3, 1998 to Monday, July 22, 2002 the cabinet Kok II, with W. Kok (PvdA) as prime minister.
• In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, July 22, 2002 to Tuesday, May 27, 2003 the cabinet Balkenende I, with Mr.dr. J.P. Balkenende (CDA) as prime minister.
• In the year 2002: Source: Wikipedia
  • The Netherlands had about 16.1 million citizens.
  • January 17 » Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.
  • February 19 » NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
  • February 28 » During the religious violence in Gujarat, the 97 people killed in the Naroda Patiya massacre and 69 in Gulbarg Society massacre.
  • April 11 » The Ghriba synagogue bombing by al-Qaeda kills 21 in Tunisia.
  • May 20 » The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).
  • October 16 » The Bibliotheca Alexandrina opens in Egypt, commemorating the ancient library of Alexandria.

Source: Wikipedia

• 2001 » Samuel Z. Arkoff, American producer (b. 1918)
• 2002 » James Gregory, American actor (b. 1911)
• 2003 » Sheb Wooley, American singer-songwriter (b. 1921)
• 2004 » Michael Donaghy, American-English poet and author (b. 1954)
• 2005 » Gordon Gould, American physicist and academic, invented the laser (b. 1920)
• 2005 » Harry Freedman, Canadian horn player, composer, and educator (b. 1922)