Important people you should know about

[Sulkdodds]

I learned something, and I plan to learn more when I have time.

Make sure you got Darwin up there. He's wellard.

 

[Dan]

Nansen is probably the most obscure name up there. I put him in because he has such a great story, and you should all read it. He was a Norwegian explorer trying to get to the North Pole. When his ship got stuck, he started walking with the sled dogs and one other person. Eventually they got lost and were basically alone for over a year before they stumbled into another arctic expedition from England and they got back only a little bit later than the ship.

Nikola Tesla is also a very interesting character, but more well known.

 

[Avoidist]

If you have Tesla, you need to include Edison too.

 

[Dan]

Tesla and Edison didn't get along. The list's not big enough for the two of them .

 

[Ennui]

Joseph Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, George Patton, Erwin Rommel, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Leo Tolstoy, Jean-Paul Sartre, Timothy Leary, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Sophocles, Ernesto Guevara, Gandhi, Buddha, I could go on for hours

 

[Sulkdodds]

You could, but you'd sound like that Billy Joel song.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I think that Darkside should be added onto that list.

 

[delusional]

79/97

Not that bad I guess although a couple I only remember by name and know little of what they did

 

[Dan]

Joseph Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, George Patton, Erwin Rommel, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Leo Tolstoy, Jean-Paul Sartre, Timothy Leary, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Sophocles, Ernesto Guevara, Gandhi, Buddha, I could go on for hours

half of those are listed already

 

[Seppo]

obvious joke: chuck norris.

probably mentioned though

 

[CptStern]

Tesla and Edison didn't get along. The list's not big enough for the two of them .

Edison had a thing for eletrocuting animals to discredit Tesla

Edison had established direct current at the standard for electricity distribution and was living large off the patent royalties, royalties he was in no mood to lose when George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla showed up with alternating current.

Edison's aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting "Westinghoused"). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.

Edison got his big chance, though, when the Luna Park Zoo at Coney Island decided that Topsy, a cranky female elephant who had squashed three handlers in three years (including one idiot who tried feeding her a lighted cigarette), had to go.

Park officials originally considered hanging Topsy but the SPCA objected on humanitarian grounds, so someone suggesting having the pachyderm "ride the lightning," a practice that had been used in the American penal system since 1890 to dispatch the condemned. Edison was happy to oblige.

When the day came, Topsy was restrained using a ship's hawser fastened on one end to a donkey engine and on the other to a post. Wooden sandals with copper electrodes were attached to her feet and a copper wire run to Edison's electric light plant, where his technicians awaited the go-ahead.

In order to make sure that Topsy emerged from this spectacle more than just singed and angry, she was fed cyanide-laced carrots moments before a 6,600-volt AC charge slammed through her body. Officials needn't have worried. Topsy was killed instantly and Edison, in his mind anyway, had proved his point.

A crowd put at 1,500 witnessed Topsy's execution, which was filmed by Edison and released later that year as Electrocuting an Elephant.

In the end, though, all Edison had to show for his efforts was a string of dead animals, including the unfortunate Topsy, and a current that quickly fell out of favor as AC demonstrated its superiority in less lethal ways to become the standard.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104