• 1504 - Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his
fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten
hostile natives into providing food for his crew.
• 1904 - President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a seven-member
commission to facilitate completion of the Panama Canal.
• 1968 - The discovery of the first pulsar, a star which emits
regular radio waves, was announced by Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell at Cambridge,
England.
• 1840 - John Philip Holland 2/29/1840 - 8/12/1914 Irish-bn.
American "father of the modern submarine".