On July 2, 1982, Larry Walters attached 43 weather balloons to his lawn chair, filled them with helium, put on a parachute, and strapped himself into the chair.

Later, when a reporter asked what made him decide to take a patio chair aloft, Walters explained:

"A man can't just sit around."

larrywalterstribute.page

#OnThisDay #history #LawnchairLarry #LarryWalters #AManCantJustSitAround

#OnThisDay, 18 May 1953, Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman pilot to break the sound barrier.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AviationHistory #Histodons

17 May is Día das Letras Galegas (Galician Literature Day).

#OnThisDay, 17 May 1863, María Rosalía Rita de Castro's poetry is published. It’s the first publication by a single author in Galician for 400 years. The public holiday was introduced to celebrate the centenary of Rosalia de Castro's work.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Galicia #LiteraryWomen #FlashbackFriday

Very early #OnThisDay, 6 May 1944, Marguerite 'Peggy' Knight parachutes into occupied France to be a courier for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French resistance.

Knight fought her way out of an attempted capture, and returned to the UK in September 1944.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons

#OnThisDay, 19 Apr 1967, Katherine Switzer becomes the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon as a registered runner, despite the organiser physically trying to stop her.

She ran it again in 2017, 50 years later.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AmericanHistory

#OnThisDay, 7 Jan 1939, French physicist Marguerite Perey discovers element 87, which she later names francium. It was the last element to be discovered naturally.

Perey was a student of Marie Curie, and was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize but never received it.

#WomenInHistory #WomenInSTEM #ScienceHistory #History #Histodons

December 18th, 256 BCE—#OTD #OnThisDay the foremen of a group of stonecutters write to the architect Kleon, complaining that the quarry supervisor is wearing away their tools by assigning them all the hard stone while he assigns his own men all the soft stone.

papyri.info/ddbdp/sb;18;13881

Today in 1994, 29 years ago: WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, launches the world's first internet radio broadcast.

#OnThisDay

Today in 1983, 40 years ago: The ARPANET officially changes to using TCP/IP, the Internet Protocol, effectively creating the Internet.

#OnThisDay