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TODAY'S BIRTHDAY: 
Blind Jack Metcalf (1717)
John Metcalf, popularly known as Blind Jack, was a civil engineer and the first professional road builder of the Industrial Revolution. He lost his sight to a smallpox infection at age six and earned a living in early adulthood as a fiddle player. Though he was unable to see, he swam, played cards, rode horses, and even hunted. In 1765, Parliament passed an act authorizing turnpike building, and he won a contract to build a new road.

Construction of the Panama Canal, Panama, 1912.

The idea of building a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific was first planned by the French civil engineer and builder of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps. The French began work in 1880, but 9 years later the difficulties posed by the terrain, disease and spiralling costs doomed the project to failure. The United States bought the land in 1904 for $40 million, and proceeded to complete the 80 kilometre long canal between 1904 and 1914. The building of the canal cost the lives of an estimated 25,000 workers due to accidents and tropical diseases.

And then "we" gave it away.

On 15 August 1955 Charles Townes, James Gordon and H. J. Zeiger published 'The Maser—New Type of Microwave Amplifier, Frequency Standard, and Spectrometermaser'.

Their device was the forerunner to the laser, using microwaves whereas lasers use visible light.

5 MB of data on 62,500 punch cards in 1955.

When I was in undergrad everything was punch cards.  You would have this stack of several hundred cards. pray you didn't make any typos and pray you didn't drop and scatter them before getting the the card reader.  On top of that you had limited Computer Time and if you used it all you had to pay for extra time.