Today is the birthday, in 1901, of Enrico Fermi. He was an Italian and naturalized American. He is renowned for being the creator of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project. He has been called the “architect of the nuclear age” and the “architect of the atomic bomb”. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government.
Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States. Fermi led the team at the University of Chicago that designed and built Chicago Pile-1, which went critical on 2 December 1942, demonstrating the first human-created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
Great for Vikings!
Nominative Determinism…
Combo business…
On this day in 1979, The Police had their first UK No.1 single with ‘Message In A Bottle’ the group’s third Top 20 hit. The song was released as the first single from Reggatta de Blanc and also topped the charts in Ireland and reached No.5 in Australia. Despite its popularity in the UK, the single only reached No.74 in the United States. Another of their songs did quite well here, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs
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