January 24, 1909 (Sunday)
- Robert H. Goddard first realized the potential for explosives to raise a rocket, as he described it, "without employing the air". His insight, recorded in a daily journal, was that "if an explosive... is burned in tubes in such a way that all its energy is converted into kinetic energy of the particles expelled and the body propelled, it is, theoretically, possible to obtain propulsion". Goddard's discovery paved the way for space exploration.
- Born: Martin Lings, British Islamic scholar, in Manchester; (d. 2005)
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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)