16th May 1770 – 14-year old Marie Antoinette married 15-year-old Louis-Auguste who later became king of France. 1836 – Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia. 1920 – Pope Benedict XV canonized Joan of Arc as a saint. 1960 - The first working laser was demonstrated by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories. (But […]

13th May 1958 – The trade mark Velcro was registered. 1981 – Pope John Paul II survived an assasination attempt after emergency surgery. 1989 – Large groups of students occupied Tiananmen Square in China and began a hunger strike. 1995 – British mother of two, Alison Hargreaves, conquered Everest.

On physics: “The earth is gonna fall down one day. We have too many heavy things on it.” On space exploration: “Neil Armstrong, that spaceman, he went to the moon but he ain’t been back. It can’t have been that good.” On the film Gremlins: “What were those things in the film Gremlins called?” On […]