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On this day, 155 years ago, the first #stockticker was unveiled. Here's a 🧵on the stock ticker, the device, invented by #EdwardACalahan, that helps stock markets to function efficiently.
#onthisday #inventions @InventorsHOF 1/n Back in the day, brokers would get to know price movements through pageboys who would run to and fro between the #stockexchange and the offices of brokers. 2/n

#Onthisday in 1958, Russian poet and novelist, Boris Pasternak, won the @NobelPrize for Literature. The award, which proved to be a double-edged sword, had to be refused by the writer. Read on to find out why! (1/6) Following the Swedish Academy announcing him as 1958’s winner, Pasternak sent them the following telegram: “Immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.” But as luck would have it, he was forced to send them another telegram rejecting the honour just days later. (2/6)

#Onthisday 80 years ago, Edson Arantes do Nascimento was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Named after the American inventor Thomas Edison, he was nicknamed Dico by his family. But you might better know him as the greatest footballer of all time, Pelé! (1/11) The name Pelé, a mispronunciation of Bilé, his father’s teammate’s name, was originally used by classmates to taunt little Edson. As fate would have it, a nickname that he once insisted was rubbish, is now celebrated across the world by millions of fans. (2/11)

Very few can claim to be an entire generation’s heroine. And who better fits the bill than Carrie Fisher? Known to many around the world as Princess Leia, today we celebrate the American actor who was born #Onthisday in 1956. (1/13) With Hollywood bigwigs Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher for parents, some might say Fisher was destined for the showbiz. Check out this photo of young Carrie watching her mother perform! (2/13)

The makers of the #Madagascar series, consulted the paintings of artist #HenriRousseau for inspiration for the movie's sprawling jungles and leavy trees. Here is a #funwithfundas thread on this strange French painter who died #OnThisDay in 1910. (1/n) Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was born in 1844 in Laval, a market town in northwest France. His work is said to belong to the Naïve or Primitive style. The 1870s and 80s saw an #Impressionist wave in Europe. Rousseau's #art moves in a new brisk direction from impressionist roots.

Happy Independence Day! We are 73 years removed from August 15, 1947, and may not be familiar with the days leading up to that fateful day, and its aftermath. Here is a thread on the events of August 1947. #Freedom #India The date of August 15 marked two years to the day when Japan had surrendered, ending World War II. Lord Mountbatten, long known in the British Admiralty as the 'Master of Disaster', served as Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, at the time.

#OnThisDay in 1919 was born Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India's space programme. But Sarabhai was much more than just a scientist, living an extraordinarily full life. Read on to learn more about him! #VikramSarabhai #ISRO #India #history #funwithfundas (1/23) According to a popular (unconfirmed) story, Rabindranath Tagore, a part-time phrenologist, seeing the baby Sarabhai's large and unusually shaped forehead, pronounced that "this boy will achieve great things". #tagore (2/23)

Today is the 21st #KargilVijayDiwas, India's victory day in the Kargil War of 1999. We'll talk about a few names who will never be forgotten: Captain Saurabh Kalia, Captain Haneefuddin and Lt. Vijayant Thapar. (1/21) Captain Saurabh, 'Naughty' to his family, loved to cook.He wasn't exactly an early riser. His mother, afraid that her son would get hazed in the IMA, got him an alarm clock! (2/21)