Creating, collecting, and sharing thoughts and ideas. And learning along the way.
Updated October 3, 2012, 2:28 pm
On Oct. 4, 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit.
On Oct. 4, 1895, Buster Keaton, the American comic actor of silent films, was born. Following his death on Feb. 1, 1966, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On This Date
By The Associated Press
1822 Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, was born in Delaware, Ohio. 1895 The first U.S. Open golf tournament was held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. 1923 Actor Charlton Heston was born John Charles Carter in Evanston, Ill. 1931 The comic strip “Dick Tracy” by Chester Gould made its debut. 1957 Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters Union. 1957 “Leave It to Beaver” premiered on CBS. 1970 Rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, was found dead of an accidental heroin overdose. 1990 German lawmakers held the first meeting of the reunified country’s parliament in the Reichstag in Berlin. 1993 Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. 2001 Authorities said a man in Boca Raton, Fla., had contracted the inhaled form of anthrax; he died the following day. 2002 John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban,” was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va. 2002 Richard Reid pleaded guilty in a federal court to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. 2010 The Supreme Court began a new era with three women serving together for the first time as Elena Kagan took her place at the end of the bench. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
Actress Susan Sarandon turns 66 years old today.
AP Photo/Peter Kramer
Music producer Russell Simmons turns 55 years old today.
AP Photo/Evan Agostini
1934 Sam Huff, Football Hall of Famer, turns 78 1935 Eddie Applegate, Actor (“The Patty Duke Show”), turns 77 1937 Jackie Collins, Author, turns 75 1941 Roy Blount Jr., Author, turns 71 1941 Anne Rice, Author, turns 71 1945 Clifton Davis, Actor, turns 67 1946 Chuck Hagel, Former U.S. senator, R-Neb., turns 66 1946 Mike Mullen, Former joint chiefs of staff chairman, turns 66 1949 Lee Blessing, Playwright, turns 63 1949 Armand Assante, Actor, turns 63 1956 Christoph Waltz, Actor, turns 56 1961 David W. Harper, Actor (“The Waltons”), turns 51 1961 Jon Secada, Singer, turns 51 1967 Liev Schreiber, Actor, turns 45 1976 Alicia Silverstone, Actress (“Clueless”), turns 36 1979 Rachael Leigh Cook, Actress, turns 33 1982 Jered Weaver, Baseball player, turns 30
Historic Birthdays
Buster Keaton 10/4/1895 – 2/1/1966 American actor.Go to obituary »
26 Louis X 10/4/1289 – 6/5/1316
King of Navarre (1305-14) and king of France (1314-16)61 Charles IX 10/4/1550 – 10/30/1611
King of Sweden (1604-11)85 Lord Richard Cromwell 10/4/1626 – 7/12/1712
English lord protector (1658-9)60 Jean Francois Millet 10/4/1814 – 1/20/1875
French painter70 Rutherford Birchard Hayes 10/4/1822 – 1/17/1893
19th president of the United States (1877-81)48 Frederic Remington 10/4/1861 – 12/26/1909
American artist; specialized in western themes67 Edward L. Stratemeyer 10/4/1862 – 5/10/1930
American writer62 Damon Runyon 10/4/1884 – 12/10/1946
American writer69 John Kelly 10/4/1890 – 6/20/1960
American oarsman
Awesome sound w/ folksy bluegrass roots. Recently caught an interview on NPR with the lead singer and mandolin player, Chris Thiele, who is also part of the group Nicklecreek, and has been awarded a MacArthur fellowship this year! I love their sound!
Updated October 2, 2012, 2:28 pm
On Oct. 3, 1990, West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a new unified country.
On Oct. 3, 1873, Emily Post, the American authority on proper etiquette, was born. Following her death on Sept. 25, 1960, her obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On This Date
By The Associated Press
1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day. 1929 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. 1925 Author Gore Vidal was born in West Point, N.Y. 1941 Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.” 1951 Bobby Thomson hit the “shot heard ’round the world” – a three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of a playoff game at the Polo Grounds – to send the New York Giants into the World Series. 1955 “Captain Kangaroo” premiered on CBS and “The Mickey Mouse Club” premiered on ABC. 1960 “The Andy Griffith Show” premiered on CBS. 1961 “The Dick Van Dyke Show” premiered on CBS. 1974 The Cleveland Indians hired Frank Robinson as major league baseball’s first black manager. 1981 Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives. 1990 West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a new unified country. 1992 Barack Obama married Michelle Robinson at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. 1995 A jury found ex-football player O.J. Simpson innocent of murder in the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. 2002 Five people were killed in random shootings in the Washington, D.C., area within a 14-hour period. Authorities began to search for the “Beltway Sniper.” 2003 A tiger attacked magician Roy Horn of the duo “Siegfried & Roy” during a performance in Las Vegas, leaving him partially paralyzed. 2005 President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. (Miers withdrew three weeks later.) 2009 Maine voters voted to repeal a state law that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry. 2011 An Italian appeals court freed Amanda Knox of Seattle after four years in prison, tossing murder convictions against Knox and an ex-boyfriend in the stabbing of their British roommate. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
Rock singer Gwen Stefani (No Doubt) turns 43 years old today.
AP Photo/Evan Agostini
Rock singer Chubby Checker turns 71 years old today.
AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
1926 Marques Haynes, Basketball Hall of Famer, turns 86 1938 David Obey, U.S. congressman, D-Wis., turns 74 1943 Jeff Bingaman, U.S. senator, D-N.M., turns 69 1944 Roy, Magician (Siegfried & Roy), turns 68 1949 Lindsey Buckingham, Rock musician (Fleetwood Mac), turns 63 1951 Keb’ Mo’, Blues singer, turns 61 1951 Dave Winfield, Baseball Hall of Famer, turns 61 1954 Dennis Eckersley, Baseball Hall of Famer, turns 58 1954 Al Sharpton, Civil rights activist, turns 58 1959 Jack Wagner, Actor, turns 53 1962 Tommy Lee, Rock musician (Motley Crue), turns 50 1964 Clive Owen, Actor, turns 48 1969 Janel Moloney, Actress (“The West Wing”), turns 43 1973 Neve Campbell, Actress, turns 39 1975 India.Arie, R&B singer, turns 37 1976 Seann William Scott, Actor, turns 36 1984 Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, Singer, actress, turns 28
Historic Birthdays
Emily Post 10/3/1873 – 9/25/1960 American writer.Go to obituary »
75 John Ross 10/3/1790 – 8/1/1866
American Cherokee leader90 George Bancroft 10/3/1800 – 1/17/1891
American historian77 Sir Patrick Manson 10/3/1844 – 4/9/1922
Scottish physician65 William Crawford Gorgas 10/3/1854 – 7/3/1920
American physician65 Eleonora Duse 10/3/1858 – 4/21/1924
Italian actress79 Pierre Bonnard 10/3/1867 – 1/23/1947
French painter37 Thomas Clayton Wolfe 10/3/1900 – 9/15/1938
American novelist
Fantastic interactive photo gallery, courtesy PBS.
Photo Gallery
Explore The Story of India through this interactive photo gallery that weaves together a series of interrelated themes, events, and individuals that helped shape India’s history.
Choose a photo below or use the number navigation above:
1 Kerala
2 Language
3 Indus Valley
4 Ganges River
5 Tamil Nadu
6 Edicts of Ashoka
7 Agriculture
8 Trade
9 Varanasi
10 Literature
11 Peshawar
12 Fine Arts
13 Allahabad
14 Religion
15 Fatehpur Sikri
16 Science & Medicine
17 Delhi
18 Amritsar
19 Performing Arts
20 Taj Mahal
21 Colonization
22 Festivals
23 Non-Violence
24 Partition & Independence
How it works:
Click the yellow Explore the Topic bar (1) to reveal information about the photo’s topic. Click the Show Hotspots button (2) to display hotspots (3) on the photo.
A California startup is transforming the familiar computer mouse into a health monitor by inserting devices like blood pressure monitors and blood glucose monitors in it.
CalHealth Inc., based in Irvine, is getting ready to launch the MD Mouse by the end of the year. The product will be able to measure blood pressure by having a person’s finger slide inside a cuff that folds out from the middle section of the mouse. The mouse also comes with a personal health record such that the reading is automatically entered into it. The device also has the potential to connect the data to a provider in preparation for a day when physicians and other healthcare providers can receive and share information from patients easily.
“We got the patent from the U.S. patent office in 10 months, which I understand is a record,” said Terrance Molloy, chief operating officer, for CalHealth, in a recent phone interview. “The patent gives us the right to put any monitor so long as it fits in part or in whole inside the mouse.”
The first product launching by the end of the year will be the mouse containing a blood pressure monitor. Other devices are also planned – a mouse with a blood glucose meter, a pulse oximeter and a camera. It’s possible that future devices, will combine two products inside one mouse. So, a camera and a blood glucose meter, could come with the same device.
The Food and Drug Administration cleared the Class II blood pressure monitoring mouse three years ago, but it has taken a long time to get the product ready for market. That’s because MD Mouse is a blood pressure monitor tied to a PHR that can transmit data to care providers, unlike at home monitors intended for personal use. Previously, the FDA was none too concerned about the accuracy of these devices largely meant to be used at home, Molloy said.
“Now that companies like ours and others are connecting these devices to PHRs and EHRs and collecting the data and sending it to a healthcare provider, the FDA is saying that if you are going to be using those devices in those settings we are going to be concerned about their accuracy because now medical decisions will be based on these readings,” Molloy said.
He expects that in the future, FDA will either pull these devices off the market or create a two tiered system whereby those that don’t meet a certain accuracy threshold will be relegated for home use and unable to participate in any kind of electronic data transmission from patients to their providers.
For blood pressure monitors, the devices need to be “within plus/minus 5 millibars of mercury” compared to the “gold standard” which is the mercury-based sphygmomanometer, Molloy said.
The MD Mouse falls within those parameters now but it took some time and effort to get there, Molloy said. Future devices will contain pulse oximeters and glucose monitors already available and within set accuracy parameters, so CalHealth will not need to build one from scratch.
Currently, the startup having three full-time employees, has a manufacturing partner in Taiwan to make the MD Mouse. Molloy also plans to raise about $1 million in addition to the $1 million the company already raised to commercialize the product.
But the focus is now on striking deals deals with pharmacies to sell the product for about $59 in retail.
“Most blood pressure monitors, glucose monitors and pulse oximeters are sold in pharmacies. So that’s a big market for us and we hope to sell these at CVS, Walmart, RiteAid,” Molloy said.
However, with the rise of smartphones and tablets, the question is, is this a viable market? That is a familiar question for Molloy.
“We run into people who say that mice are going the way of the horse and buggy (and) what is your point,” Molloy said “The demographics we are looking at are really not the smartphone and tablet crowd. These are people who are a little bit older, a little bit sedentary than they need to be. These are not 80-year-old chronically ill people.”
Overseas, especially, in places like China and India, smartphone and tablet penetration is negligible.
“When you look at markets outside the U.S., the mouse market is still a pretty healthy markets,” Molloy said “It’s still growing and still viable market for the next 10 to 15 years.
