Friday, May 11, 2007

Spotlight
We don't know who invented the wheel, but it has been reinvented over and over again. First evidence of the item was in diagrams on ancient clay tablets: there were pictures of a potter's wheel that was used in Ur in Mesopotamia, c. 3,500 BCE. It is thought that the Mesopotamians first used it for transportation, on their chariots, sometime around 3,200 BCE. Wheels developed in Europe around 2,000 years later. The B.F. Goodrich Company reinvented the wheel on this date in 1947, when they announced the development of the tubeless tire.

Quote
"Imagination is a very precise thing, you know — it is not fantasy; the man who invented the wheel while he was observing another man walking — that is imagination!" — Jacques Lipchitz

Today's News

• Tony Blair: British PM bids bye-bye; Gordon Brown is next in line (story)
• milk: tastes better if dairy section is dim (story)
• Great Wall of China: early, northern section located (story)
• Botox: another use is found for the trendy toxin — to treat hyperhidrosis (story)

Today's History

• Minnesota: became the 32nd US state; its name is Sioux for "cloudy water" (1858)
• Israel: was admitted to the United Nations (1949)
• euro: first coin was struck in a French mint (1998)

Today's Birthdays

• Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874): conjoined twins who gave birth to the term "Siamese twins"
• Salvador Dali (1904-1989): surrealist painter
• Jonathan Jackson (25): Lucky on General Hospital