What happened on August 29
All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1831 to 1958, with the story behind each photograph.
Reveal the full answer key
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Michael Jackson is born
Born in Gary, Indiana, Jackson would go on to become the best-selling music artist of all time. (This photo is from a 1984 White House visit with President Reagan, not his birth, obviously.)
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Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic induction
Faraday showed that a changing magnetic field could generate an electric current in a nearby wire - the principle behind every electric generator and transformer built since. This 1892 textbook illustration depicts his ring-coil apparatus.
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Daimler and Maybach ride the first motorcycle
Gottlieb Daimler's "Reitwagen" paired a wooden bicycle-like frame with the first compact internal-combustion engine. His son Paul rode it several miles near Stuttgart. (The original burned in a fire; this is a 1971 reconstruction.)
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The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction
A design flaw in the steel chords caused the nearly finished cantilever bridge over the St. Lawrence River to fall in under a minute, killing 75 workers - still the worst bridge-construction disaster in history.
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The Treaty of Nanking ends the First Opium War
Signed aboard the British warship HMS Cornwallis, the treaty forced China to open five ports to British trade and cede Hong Kong - the first of the "unequal treaties" that shaped a century of Chinese foreign relations.