Moments in Time – Jan. 10, 2018

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• On Jan. 26, 1788, the first 736 convicts banished from England to Australia land in Botany Bay. With the American victory in the Revolutionary War, transgressors could no longer be shipped across the Atlantic. Over the next 60 years, some 50,000 criminals were sent to Australia.
• On Jan. 25, 1905, at the Premier Mine in South Africa, the largest diamond ever found is discovered. The 3,106-carat “Cullinan” weighed 1.33 pounds. Stonecutter Joseph Asscher studied the stone for six months before attempting the cut. Afterward, he fainted from nervous exhaustion.
• On Jan. 24, 1935, canned beer makes its debut as the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivers 2,000 cans of its beer. In 1933, after two years of research, American Can had developed a pressurized can that had a special coating to prevent the fizzy beer from chemically reacting with the tin.
• On Jan. 23, 1957, the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of aerodynamic plastic discs now known as Frisbees. The Frisbee began in Connecticut in 1871 when university students would toss empty Frisbie Pie Company tins to each other.
• On Jan. 27, 1967, a launch pad fire during tests at Cape Canaveral, Florida, kills astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee inside the Apollo 1 command module. They were the first Americans to die in a spacecraft.
• On Jan. 28, 1985, forty-five music stars begin laying down the chorus and solos for “We Are the World,” a record that would raise over $60 million for African famine relief. Producer Quincy Jones told the pop stars to “Check your egos at the door.”
• On Jan. 22, 1998, Theodore Kaczynski pleads guilty to 17 years of package bombings attributed to the “Unabomber.” He was identified when his brother recognized his anti-technology manifesto published in a newspaper.

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