1599– Jacob van Neck’s fleet leaves Bantam, Java in modern day Indonesia with 1 million pounds of pepper and cloves and a further half a ship full of nutmeg, mace and cinnamon. 1838– First public demonstration of telegraph message sent using dots & dashes at Speedwell Ironworks, Morristown, New Jersey by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. 1908– U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwesternArizona a national monument. 1922– Insulin first used on humans to treat diabetes, on Canadian Leonard Thompson, aged 14. 1935– Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most celebrated aviators, made the first successful solo flight from Hawaii to California, a distance longer than that from the United States to Europe. 1964– 1st government report warning by US Surgeon General Luther Terry that smoking may be hazardous. 2008– New Zealand mountain climber and explorer Sir Edmund Hillary—who, with the Tibetan mountaineerTenzing Norgay, was the first to summit Mount Everest—died. 2010 – Miep Gies, the last survivor of a small group of people who helped hide a Jewish girl, Anne Frank, and her family from the Nazis during World War II, dies at age 100 in the Netherlands.
Film: 1927– Louis B. Mayer head of film studio MGM announces creation of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
