January 12, 1909 (Tuesday)
- Professor Hermann Minkowski, a mathematical genius and colleague of Albert Einstein and David Hilbert, died at the age of 44 of an infection from appendicitis. Less than four months earlier, Minkowski had presented the mathematical framework by which Einstein's theory could be explained, in what is now known as "Minkowski spacetime". Before he could extend his work, however, he became ill late in 1908 and developed peritonitis. Legend has it that on his deathbed at the hospital in Göttingen, he lamented, "What a pity that I have to die in the age of relativity's development."
- A mine explosion at Switchback, West Virginia killed at least 105 men and trapped another 100. The blast, which occurred at 8:30 in the morning, happened fifteen days after 51 men had been killed at the same mine (December 28, 1908).
Read more about this topic: January 1909
Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)