On this day - Lt Gen Raj Kadyan

Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are often messed up.

On this day, 23 Oct...

1814 - First plastic surgery is performed (England). {Treatments for the plastic repair of a broken nose are first mentioned in a transcription of an Ancient Egyptian medical text, some of the oldest known surgical treatise, dated to the Old Kingdom from 3000 to 2500 BC. Reconstructive surgery techniques were being carried out in India by 800 BC. Sushruta was a physician that made important contributions to the field of plastic and cataract surgery in 6th century BC. The medical works of both Sushruta and Charak originally in Sanskrit were translated into the Arabic language in 750 AD. The Arabic translations made their way into Europe via intermediaries. In Italy the Branca famil of Sicily and Gaspare Tagliacozzi (Bologna) became familiar with the techniques of Sushruta. British physicians travelled to India to see rhinoplasties being performed by native methods. Reports on Indian rhinoplasty performed by a Kumhar vaidya were published in the Gentleman's Magazine by 1794. Joseph Constantine Carpue spent 20 years in India studying local plastic surgery methods. Carpue was able to perform the first major surgery in the Western world by 1815}.

1824 - First steam locomotive is introduced.  (The history of the steam engine stretches back as far as the 1st century AD. The conversion of steam pressure into mechanical movement was known in Roman Egypt in the 1st century. Hero also devised a machine that used air heated in an altar fire to displace a quantity of water from a closed vessel. The weight of the water was made to pull a hidden rope to operate temple doors. Among the papers of Leonardo da Vinci dating to the late 15th century is the design for a steam-powered cannon called the Architonnerre which works by the sudden influx of hot water into a sealed red hot cannon. But it was not until 1712 that a commercially successful steam engine was finally developed.  During the industrial revolution, steam engines became the dominant source of power and remained so into the early decades of the 20th century when advances in the design of the electric motor and the internal combustion engine resulted in the rapid replacement of the steam engine by these technologies).

1910 - Blanche Scott became first woman solo a public airplane flight. (Also known as Betty Scott. In 1910 she became the second woman, after Alice Huyler Ramsey, to drive an automobile across the US. The publicity surrounding automobile journey brought her to the attention of Jerome Fanciulli and Glenn Curtiss who agreed to provide her with flying lessons. Curtiss fitted a limiter on the throttle of Scott's airplane to prevent it gaining enough speed to become airborne while she practised taxiing on her own.  On September 6 either the limiter moved or a gust of wind lifted the biplane and she flew to an altitude of forty feet before executing a gentle landing. Her flight was short and possibly unintentional but Scott is credited by the Early Birds of Aviation as the first woman to pilot and solo in an airplane in the US, although Bessica Medlar Raiche's flight on September 16 was accredited as first by the Aeronautical Society of America at the time).

1943 - Burma railway opens.

1959 - Chinese military confrontation with India in Aksai Chin killed 17 Indian soldiers in a clash on the Kashmir border.

2001 - Apple releases the iPod.

Good morning. Have nice day.

Lt Gen Raj Kadyan