Category Archives: History

Sixty Nine Years Ago Today …

GATT was created. Originally signed by 23 nations in Geneva on October 30, 1947, it was the foundation for global trade until January 1, 1995 when the WTO was formally established (after being agreed to by 123 nations in Marrakesh on April 14, 1994). GATT was important not just because it created critical multi-lateral agreements, but because it offered a substantial reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers for its member countries, with average tariff levels for major GATT participants of only 22%. This might sound high as a tax rate, but when you consider some acts can see tariffs as high as 100% or 200% (to prevent market flooding with foreign goods), this is very advantageous. And these levels dropped over time. By 1967, average tariff levels were 15%, and by 1993, two years before the creation of the WTO, average tariff levels were 5%.

Any comments, LOLCat?

One Hundred and Twenty Eight Years Ago Today …

While Constantinople may have fell 563 years ago, it was remembered 128 years ago today in the The Convention of Constantinople which guaranteed free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace. Connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez, it provides seagoing vessels with a short route between the North Atlantic and North Indian oceans, reducing the journey (which used to go through the South Atlantic and South Indian oceans) by 7,000 kms. Without this treaty, global logistics could have been brought to a halt with canal blockage.

And LOLCats everywhere rejoiced!

Happy One Hundred and Thirty Second Birthday, Prime Meridian

Without you, we’d never know where zero longitude was, and that could make geolocation very difficult without a reference point.

… and the eastern border of the Texas panhandle with Oklahama would not be so easy to find … (look it up).

Historical fact, it took a whole International Meridian Conference, at the request of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, to select this!

Sixty Years Ago Today

Sixty years ago today, Fortran, possibly the first modern computer language, is shared with the coding community for the first time. Originally developed by IBM, Fortran is a general-purpose, imperative programming language that was designed for numeric computation and scientific computing that dominated science and engineering program for decades.

Updated significantly in FORTRAN II (procedural programming), FORTRAN III (inline assembly), FORTRAN IV (logical data types and statements), FORTRAN 66 (ANSI standard), FORTRAN 77 (structured programming and character-based data), Fortran 90 (array and modular programming), Fortran 95 (high performance), Fortran 2003 (object oriented programming), and Fortran 2008 (concurrent programming), this ancient language is still in use today. In fact, due to the continued widespread use in the scientific community, the next version of Fortran (currently dubbed Fortran 2015) is intended to be completed mid-2018.

What do you think, LOLCat?

Really? Why?

One Hundred and Eighty Seven Years Ago Today

Stephenson’s The Rocket wins The Rainhill Trials. An important competition in the early days of steam locomotive railways for the nearly completed Liverpool and Manchester Railway, The Rocket was the only locomotive to complete the trials and became the template for the railway.

The Rocket, which brought together several innovations to produce the most advanced locomotive of its day, was so revolutionary at the time it is now on display in the Science Museum of London. While not the first steam locomotive, it was the foundation for the steam locomotives that would become a major means of transport in the UK in the nineteenth century and should not be lost to the annals of history.