This Day in Geek History: February 2
1046
Monks record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that “no man alive…could remember so severe a winter.” It is the first historical record of the beginning of the two hundred year period of exceptionally cold weather conditions which will follow, constituting a period which will later be dubbed the “Little Ice Age.”
1709
Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk is rescued from the desert island on which he has been shipwrecked. His story will later inspire the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
1880
The world’s first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.
1893
The first close-up, a shot of a man sneezing, is filmed at Edison studio, in West Orange, New Jersey.
1931
A rocket is used to deliver mail for the first time by Friedrich Schmiedl in Austria. The rocket is a 880cm V7 able to carry one hundred letters from Schoeckel bei Graz to Sankt Radegund, over a distance of about two kilometers, before descending by parachute.
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Thomas Jennings is convicted of killing Clarence B. Hiller by the Criminal Court of Cook County using fingerprint evidence for the first time in the US. On December 21, the Illionis Supreme Court will uphold the admissibility of the evidence. On February 16, 1912 Jennings will be executed.