On 4
January 1958, the first artificial
earth satellite, the Russian Sputnik(companion) 1, fell out of orbit and burned up on
re-entering earth's atmosphere.
Sputnik
1 was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October
1957 as part of the Soviet space program.
Independence Day is a national holiday observed annually in Myanmar every 4 January. The date celebrates Myanmar's Declaration of Independence from British rule on 4 January 1948.
Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi, who passed
away on 4 January 1907, was a towering figure in Gujarati literature, such
that most Gujarati writers claim to have been influenced by him. The
period of 1885-1915 was known as the ‘Pandit/Govardhan Yug’ of writing. It can
be said that the modern Indian novel and the creation of the ‘national’ were in
no small way influenced by his work.
Tripathi is the author of the classic novel quartet, Sarasvatichandra (1887-1901), known as the first Indian social novel. His other books include Snehmudra (1889) and The Classical Poets of Gujarat and Their Influence on Society and Morals (1894). Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali debuted in television in 2013 with a serial based on the Sarasvatichandra.
Rahul Dev Burman,
who passed away on 4 January 1994, was an Indian music director and actor, who
is considered to be one of the greatest and most successful music directors of
the Hindi Film Music Industry. From the 1960s to the 1990s, Burman composed
musical scores for 331 films, bringing a new level of music ensemble with his
compositions. Burman did his major work with legendary singers Lata Mangeshkar,
Asha Bhosle, and Kishore Kumar. He also worked extensively with lyricist
Gulzar, with whom he has some of the most memorable numbers in his career. Nicknamed Pancham,
he was the only son of the composer Sachin Dev Burman. R.D. Burman is regarded
as the Father of Bollywood (Hindi) Film Music Revolution.
He was mainly active in the
Hindi film industry as a composer, and also provided vocals for a few
compositions. He served as an influence to the next generation of Indian music
directors, and his songs continue to be popular in India and overseas.
T.S. Eliot who passed away on 4 January 1965, was an American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor, a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry, in such works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in the century. His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones. The publication of Four Quartets led to his recognition as the greatest living English poet and man of letters, and in 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Isaac Newton, born on 4 January 1643, was a English physicist and mathematician who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated the phenomena of colours into the science of light and laid the foundation for modern physical optics. In mechanics, his three laws of motion, the basic principles of modern physics, resulted in the formulation of the law of universal gravitation. In mathematics, he was the original discoverer of the infinitesimal calculus. Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosopy, 1687) was one of the most important single works in the history of modern science.
Louis
Braille is
the inventor of the braille code. He was born on January 4, 1809, in Coupvray,
France. At the age of 3, while playing in his father's shop, Louis injured his
eye on a sharp tool. Despite the best care available at the time, infection set
in and soon spread to the other eye, leaving him completely blind.
Barely
16, Braille, then a student at the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris
in 1825, spent every waking moment outside class poking holes in paper, trying
to come up with a more efficient way to represent print letters and numbers
tactually. Until then, he and his fellow blind students read by tracing raised
print letters with their fingers. It was painfully slow and few blind students
mastered the technique. Writing required memorization of the shapes of letters
and then an attempt to reproduce them on paper, without being able to see or
read the results.
Louis
got his inspiration to use embossed dots to represent letters after he watched
Charles Barbier, a retired artillery officer in Napoleon's army, demonstrate a
note-taking system he invented of embossed dots to represent sounds (most of
the soldiers were illiterate) that would allow notes to be passed among the
ranks without striking a light, which might alert the enemy to their position.
The army was not impressed, so Barbier brought his system to the school for the
blind. Louis immediately recognized its merits and spent the next three years
improving upon Barbier's idea.
By
1824, Louis had in place the code that bears his name and is used today in
almost every country in the world, adapted to almost every known language from
Albanian to Zulu. Louis Braille died on January 6, 1852 at the age of 43,
having lived a successful life as teacher, musician, researcher, and inventor.
In 2009, the world celebrated Braille's Bicentennial.
World Braille Day
In remembrance of the birth
of Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille, January 4 is marked as World Braille
Day. The day also recognizes that people with visual impairments should have
the same access to human rights as everyone else.
The UN General Assembly proclaimed January 4 to be World Braille Day in November 2018. The following year, the first-ever World Braille Day was commemorated and recognized as a global holiday.
The UN mentions: "In November 2018 (Resolution A/RES/73/161), the General Assembly decided to proclaim 4 January as World Braille Day, recognizing that the full realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms relies on an inclusive written promotion."
Interesting Facts on Braille
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, born on 19 November 1917, was an Indian politician, stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Co...
