History fun facts October 21st

HISTORICAL FUN FACTS for OCTOBER 21st

On This Day in 1879, Thomas Edison invented the first commercially practical incandescent light bulb.

 

The incandescent light bulb is an electric light with a filament heated to a high temperature by passing an electric current through it. This results in visible light.

 

Did You Know: Thomas Edison had a thing for experimenting on trains.

 

When Edison was 12-years-old, started to lose his hearing. He didn't go completely deaf, but he wasn't far off. He did say, he preferred not being able to hear, as it made it easier to concentrate on his experiments.

 

But it was one of his experiments when he was 12 that resulted in his hearing problems.

 

Legend has it, Edison was smacked in his ears by a train conductor after he started a fire in a boxcar after one of his experiments went wrong.

 

Edison saved a young boy from a being killed by a runaway train.

 

Edison was 14-years-old at the time. He saved a three-year-old called Jimmie Mackenzie from a runaway boxcar. So grateful was the young boy's father, that he taught Edison how to operate a telegraph machine.

 

Edison then went on to become a telegraph operator for Western Union. This job didn't last long. Edison, took the night shift so he could concentrate on his experiments. And again, they would go wrong.

 

Edison accidentally spilled sulphuric acid after messing around with it on a battery. The acid seeped through the floorboards and onto his boss' desk in the room below.

 

Once his boss discovered this the following morning, Edison was promptly sacked.

 

On This Day In History in 1966, a colliery spoil tip collapsed above the village of Aberfan, Wales, causing 1.4 million cubic feet of slurry and debris to slid down the mountain.

 

The slurry engulfed a farm, several houses and a junior school full of children.

 

The pupils at Pantglas Junior School had only just began their first lesson of the day when the mud slide poured onto their school and into their classrooms.

 

Although some children escaped, 116 were killed, as well as 28 adults. In a little under five minutes, an entire generation was wiped out.