Interesting tidbits:

1820 – An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex, a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick is in part inspired by this story. Tidbits has posted about this event several times in the past. Three small boats had been launched before the whale destroyed the Essex. One of the boats was lost, but some of the crews in the other two boats survived the ordeal. A few individuals made it to an extremely small island and were eventually rescued, but some of the rest died of starvation while others were reduced to cannibalism. Almost all of the survivors eventually returned to the sea.

1866 - Pierre Lalemont patents rotary crank bicycle.

1888 - Willard Bundy patents timecard clock.

1917 - First successful tank use in battle (Britain breaks through German lines) at Battle of Cambrai WWI.

1923 – Rentenmark replaces the Papiermark as the official currency of Germany at the exchange rate of one Rentenmark to One Trillion (One Billion on the long scale) Papiermark.

1947 – Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, who becomes the Duke of Edinburgh, at Westminster Abbey in London.

1980 – Lake Peigneur drained into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole. The resulting whirlpool sucked the drilling platform, several barges, houses and trees thousands of feet down to the bottom of the dissolving salt deposit.

1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released.

1992 – In England, a fire brokes out in Windsor Castle, badly damaging it and causing over £50 million worth of damage.

1998 – The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, was launched.

Today's birthday crew:

1889 – Edwin Hubble, American astronomer who played a crucial role in establishing the field of extragalactic astronomy and is generally regarded as one of the most important observational cosmologists of the 20th century. 

1900 – Chester Gould, American cartoonist (Dick Tracy).

1908 – Alistair Cooke, English-American journalist.

1924 – Benoît Mandelbrot, Polish-French mathematician (Fractals).

1925 – Robert F. Kennedy, American politician.

1926 – John Gardner, English author (James Bond continuation novels).

1930 – Bernard Horsfall, English actor. Horsfall made several guest appearances in Doctor Who. His first was as Lemuel Gulliver in The Mind Robber (1968). His other appearances were as a Time Lord in The War Games (1969), Taron in Planet of the Daleks (1973), and Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin (1976). All four of these serials were directed by David Maloney. In 2003 he appeared in Davros — a Doctor Who audio drama produced by Big Finish Productions.

1939 – Dick Smothers, American actor, comedien, and singer.

1942 – Norman Greenbaum, American singer-songwriter (Dr. West).

1951 – Rodger Bumpass, American actor (Squidward Tentacles).

1958 – Rickson Gracie, Brazilian mixed martial artist.

1966 – Jill Thompson, American comic book writer and illustrator who has also worked for stage, film, and television. Well known for her work on Neil Gaiman's The Sandman characters and her own Scary Godmother series, she has also worked on The Invisibles, Swamp Thing, and Wonder Woman.

1970 – Joe Zaso, American actor (b-movie regular in low budget science fiction and horror since 1990. Zaso, an avid bodybuilder, is usually cast as husky villains).

Happy birthday guys!