August 12: patent for sewing machine, 4.5 minutes late and IBM PC

August 12, 1851, the American Isaac Merritt Singer received a patent for a sewing machine, which was equipped with a foot pedal.

1865 - English surgeon Joseph Lister used for the first time in medical practice carbolic acid (phenol) for the disinfection of instruments and hands.

1915 - published by Somerset Maugham's novel The Burden of Passions of Men. In the 1960s, the author significantly shortened the novel and republished it under the title "Burden of Passion" to distinguish it from the original version.

1933 - in Kharkov at the stadium "Dynamo" in the presence of 20 000 spectators the first international match of the Ukrainian football team took place - in a friendly match the national team of the Ukrainian SSR beat the Turkish team with a score of 3: 2. All three goals were scored by Dynamo Kiev Konstantin Schegocki.

1949 - in London because of the starlings, located on the minute hand of the clock, Big Ben began to beat time with a delay of four and a half minutes.

1952 - thirteen convicts in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, among which there were several prominent Jewish poets (L. Kvitko, P. Markish, D. Bergelson, D. Gofshtein), were executed in the USSR, and this execution is also known as "The Night of the Executed poets ".

1959 - the first launch of an American missile for submarines Polaris A-1, which could carry a nuclear warhead with a capacity of 1 megaton.

1961 - the Vostok-4 spacecraft, piloted by the first Ukrainian, was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome by the Vostok carrier rocket - Pavel Popovich.

1981 - went on sale personal computer IBM PC at the price of $ 1,565 - processor 4.77 MHz, memory 16 kilobytes (with the possibility of expansion to 256), the operating system - DOS 1.0.

1988 - In the US and Canada, Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" premiered with Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel and David Bowie in the lead roles. The film touched upon difficult topics for the church and brought upon itself mass criticism from religious organizations and believers of various Christianity trends.

1994 - The "Woodstock-94" rock festival was opened, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of its famous predecessor.

1998 - during the launch from Cape Canaveral, the Lockheed Martin Titan 4A rocket exploded, costing $ 300,000,000, which led to the destruction of a spy satellite worth $ 1,035,000,000,000.