Today in History: Crusading for the MP3

Lincecum and his San Francisco Giants
teammates celebrating his no-hitter

I have to congratulate Big Time Timmy Jim on his no-hitter on July 13th, 2013! Though it was a 148 pitch effort, you can add a "no-hitter" to your list of magnificent achievements! In other baseball news, Braves Hall of Famers, Hank Aaron, also hit his milestone 500th home run today in 1968.

Knights from the First Crusade 

Today's "Today in History" can be dated back to 1099, when Jerusalem is captured in the First Crusade. The crusades were religious conflicts in the Middle Ages between Catholics in Europe and Muslims and other minor religions. Jerusalem began to see many Christians persecuted by the Islamic rulers in the 11th century, sparking rage in Europe. Pope Urband II called for a crusade in 1095. The first crusaders who marched to Constantinople (who later were annihilated by Turks) were French and German peasants. The main crusading force actually included over 25,000 with as many as 4,000 mcalvary. The crusaders sieged Antioch in 1098 then took a six moth rest until setting off to their goal: Jerusalem. The once large army was nearly cut down over half its forces to about 1,200 mounted knights and 12,000 on foot. Finally obtaining Jerusalem on July 14th, 1099, the crusaders soon found that they faced Egyptians who challenged their actions.



The Egyptians defatted the Christians in August, temporarily ending the Muslim resistance.

A Drawing of 38th US President, Gerald Ford

On this day in 1913, Leslie Lynch King Jr. is born in Omaha Nebraska. You don't know who Leslie Lynch King Jr. is? Even though, Leslie may seem like a girl's name, this is really 38th United States President, Gerald Ford! Gerald Ford was really born Leslie Lynch King Jr., but legally changed his name on December 3rd, 1935, named after his step father, Gerald Rudolff Ford. 

Large audio files could suddenly be
compressed easily
with the ".mp3" extention

Today, many people use a special thing called a "smartphone" not only to call others, but to text, surf the web, and listen to music, but on this day in 1995, a revolutionary new technology called the "MP3" changed the way we all listening music. Engineers found a way to make one's favorite audio into a small, compressed file. This was known as the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, released to the public with the famous file extension, ".mp3." This was important for compressing data, allowing a 32MB file to be stored in only 2-3MB. It was magic at the time, but now, it seems like a way of life for technology today.