🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

12 August 1827. Poet and artist, William Blake, died (aged 69). His poem, And did those feet in ancient time, later became the song, Jerusalem. In 2002, he was placed at No 38 in the BBC’s viewer poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

12 August 1848. Railway engineer, George Stephenson, died (aged 67). He was a key figure in the development of rail transport. His company built Locomotion No. 1, the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825.

12 August 1851. American inventor, Isaac Singer, was granted a patent for his Sewing Machine. Up to then, sewing machines had been industrial. Singer mass produced smaller machines for home use.

12 August 30 BC. Cleopatra (aged 39), the last active pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, committed suicide in Alexandria. After her death, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire. Her life was featured in Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra and the Hollywood film, Cleopatra.

12 August 1880. Author and poet, Radclyffe Hall, was born in Bournemouth. She’s best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature which was deemed “obscene” during a court case and banned from sale.

12 August 1952. 13 Jewish intellectuals, falsely accused of spying, were executed in Moscow, during what became known as the “Night of the Murdered Poets”.

12 August 1964. Ian Fleming died (aged 56). He’s the creator of the fictional spy James Bond. The first of his 11 Bond novels Casino Royale appeared in 1952. The novels have sold over 100 million copies and were adapted into the film series. He also wrote Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.

13 August 1860. Sharpshooter, Annie Oakley, was born in Darke County, Ohio, USA. She had a starring role in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Since her death, her story was told in stage musicals and films, including, Annie Get Your Gun, starring Betty Hutton.

13 August 1888. John Logie Baird was born in Helensburgh, Scotland. He was one of the key inventors of mechanical TV, demonstrating the first working TV system on 26 January 1926 and he was also the inventor of the first publicly demonstrated colour television system.

13 August 1910. Pioneering nurse, Florence Nightingale, died (aged 90). She came to prominence during the Crimean War, organising care for wounded soldiers and earning the title “The Lady with the Lamp”. She was also a key figure in the foundation of professional nursing.

13 August 1913. Stainless steel was produced for the first time, in a Sheffield steel factory, owned by local business owner, Harry Brearley. The invention brought affordable cutlery to the masses, and saw an expansion of Sheffield’s traditional cutlery trade.

13 August 1946. Novelist, Herbert George (“HG”) Wells died (aged 79). He’s best remembered for his innovative science fiction novels including: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon and The Shape of Things to Come.

13 August 1961. The communist East German government closed the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to stop its eastern inhabitants’ escaping to the West. The building of the infamous Berlin Wall was a consequence of this decision.

13 August 1969. The Apollo 11 astronauts (Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins), enjoyed a ticker tape parade through a crowded New York City.

13 August 1995. Alison Hargreaves (aged 33), the first British woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, without auxiliary oxygen, was killed, descending K2 Mountain. Rescuers concluded that she had been blown off the mountain during a storm.

14 August 1040. King Duncan (right ) of Scotland, was murdered by Macbeth (left), who then became King of Scotland and ruled for 17 years. Macbeth later became one of William Shakespeare’s most popular plays.

14 August 1919. Social Democrat, Friedrich Ebert, the provisional President of the German Reichstag, formally signed the Democratic German Weimar constitution into law. The election system was based on proportional representation, which led to a series of coalition governments.

14 August 1935. US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed the landmark Social Security Act which created unemployment insurance and old age pensions.

14 August 1945. Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies (effective on 15 August Japanese time). The actual surrender document wasn’t officially signed until 2 September 1945.

14 August 1980. Solidarity, the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union, led a strike at the Gdańsk shipyards in Poland. The protest was led by Lech Wałęsa, who later served as the first post 1945 democratically-elected President of Poland from 1990 to 1995.