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History Today: When USS Nautilus became the first submarine to travel under the North Pole
the USS Nautilus became the first submarine to travel beneath the North Pole. Wikimedia Commons
It was on August 3, 1958, that the US nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN‑571), became the first vessel in history to cross the geographic North Pole entirely submerged. Operated by the United States Navy, the Nautilus was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine, and its journey under the Arctic ice proved both its endurance and strategic potential.
If you are a history geek who loves to learn about important events from the past, Firstpost Explainers' ongoing series, History Today, will be your one-stop destination to explore key events.
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On this day in 1492, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain's Palos de la Frontera on a voyage that would change the course of world history.
Here is all that happened on this day.
Nautilus submarine travels under the North Pole
On this day in 1958, the USS Nautilus became the first submarine to travel beneath the North Pole. Operated by the United States Navy, the Nautilus was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine, and its journey under the Arctic ice proved both its endurance and strategic potential.
Codenamed Operation Sunshine, the mission aimed to test the feasibility of navigating beneath the polar ice cap, something no vessel had ever attempted before. Departing from Pearl Harbour in July 1958, Nautilus and her crew travelled submerged for nearly 1,400 miles under the Arctic Ocean, completely hidden beneath the thick ice sheet above.
The USS Nautilus permanently docked at the US Submarine Force Museum and Library, Groton. Wikimedia Commons
On August 3, at 11:15 pm Eastern Daylight Time, the submarine passed directly under the geographic North Pole, transmitting the message, 'Nautilus 90 North'. It was a powerful symbolic and strategic message to the world, especially during the intense geopolitical rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union.
The success of the mission demonstrated that nuclear-powered submarines could travel silently and indefinitely underwater, without the need to surface or refuel. This had vast implications for global naval strategy, especially in a potential nuclear age.
Columbus set sail from Spain
On this day in 1492, Christopher Columbus embarked on his momentous first transatlantic voyage, setting sail from Spain's Palos de la Frontera. His expedition, which was financed by the Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, had a clear objective - to find a westward sea route to Asia, specifically the lucrative spice islands of the East Indies.
Commanding three ships namely the Niña, the Pinta, and the flagship Santa María, Columbus and his crew of about 90 men embarked on what was considered a bold and risky journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Most European navigators at the time believed the westward route to Asia was either impossible or far longer than Columbus estimated. He, however, believed that Asia could be reached quickly by sailing west, not realising that the Americas lay between Europe and his destination.
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A painting of Spanish explorer Christoper Columbus setting off on his first voyage. Wikimedia Commons
For weeks, the fleet sailed into uncharted waters. Morale waned, and at times the crew feared they would never see land again. But Columbus pressed on, driven by ambition and a strong belief in his calculations. Though he never reached Asia, on October 12, 1492, Columbus and his crew landed on what is now known as the Bahamas, marking the first known European contact with the Caribbean islands. Believing he had reached the outskirts of the East Indies, he referred to the indigenous people as 'Indians.'
The voyage of Columbus would lead to more expeditions and ultimately usher in centuries of European exploration and colonisation of the Americas.
This Day, That Year
The Republic of Niger gained its independence from France on this day in 1960.
In 1949, the National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed.
Lithuania was 'accepted' into the USSR following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states in 1940.
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A cat is in a sealed box. It is both alive and dead, at least until you open the the sealed chamber also sits a vial of vial could be triggered to break by a tiny amount of radioactive material that may (or may not) release energy and change form over time. Until you look, the cat exists in a strange twilight: both alive and is absurd, morbid, and yet -- utterly central to one of the most important debates in the box, Erwin Schrodinger was not looking for a pet rescue mission but making a point: in the strange realm of quantum mechanics, reality itself may be undecided until you was no cruel animal experiment in a lab. And Schrodinger never trapped a real cat. 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Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, Ed. Herzen, Th. De Donder, E. Schrdinger, E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin, Row 2: P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr, Row 3: I. Langmuir, M. Planck, M. Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, w:Charles-Eugne Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson He entered the University of Vienna in 1906, studying under the likes of Friedrich Hasenohrl, and earned his doctorate in 1910 (Maths History), before the world plunged into chaos with World War served in the Austrian army as an artillery officer in the war. Even on the front lines, he carried notebooks filled with equations. The war ended with Austria's empire in ruins, and Vienna became a place of scarcity but also intellectual BREAKTHROUGH THAT WON HIM THE NOBELBy the mid-1920s, quantum mechanics was in its chaotic infancy. 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Schrodinger's Nobel Prize Diploma (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) advertisementPOLITICS, IDEOLOGY, AND EXILESchrodinger's life was tangled up with the politics of his time. The cat came later, in a world shadowed by Nazi politics were complex -- pacifist, humanist, and deeply opposed to totalitarianism. In 1933, as Hitler consolidated power, he resigned from his post in Berlin and left Germany, rejecting Nazi brief academic posts in England and Austria, he eventually took up a role at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, helping shape it into a hub for theoretical he introduced the cat in a paper in 1935, Europe was already edging towards another catastrophic THE CAT, A QUANTUM PARADOXBy that time, Schrodinger was struggling with a puzzling idea in quantum mechanics: under Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, a particle existed in a 'superposition' or multiple states at once until someone observed it. Particles chose the state when we looked at show how bizarre that sounded when applied to normal life, he cooked up his most famous mental image:Imagine a cat locked in a boxInside the box is a device containing a single unstable atom -- the kind that can randomly 'decay,' or change into something else, at an unpredictable momentIf the atom decays, it triggers a chain reaction: a detector notices the change, releases a hammer, breaks open a vial of poison, and the cat diesIf the atom does not decay, the cat livesQuantum physics says that until we actually open the box, that atom is in a sort of limbo -- both decayed and not if the atom is in both states, then the cat is, too: both dead and alive at the same time. Schrodinger's point wasn't that this scenario could actually happen to cats, but that the logic of quantum rules turns absurd when pulled out of the subatomic world and applied to everyday famous thought experiment was not meant to be solved; it was meant to unsettle. It was a challenge to scientists to question the Copenhagen interpretation, to probe its assumptions, and to think harder about what 'reality' really cat-in-a-box theory exposed the philosophical rift in quantum theory: Was reality determined only when observed, as the Copenhagen interpretation claimed, or was there some deeper, hidden truth?Schrodinger leaned towards the latter, uncomfortable with the idea that the universe only 'became real' when someone looked.A MIND THAT RANGED FAR BEYOND PHYSICSBeyond physics, Schrodinger strayed boldly into biology while in Ireland. His 1944 book What Is Life? suggested that the instructions for life or genetic information might be stored in a molecular 'code-script'.At the time, this was a leap of imagination, but it lit a spark in young scientists like James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, who went on to reveal DNA's double helix, proving Schrodinger's hunch had been startlingly curiosity didn't stop with science. Schrodinger, though an atheist, immersed himself in Eastern philosophy, reading deeply in Vedanta and Buddhist thought. He was drawn to their ideas of unity and interconnectedness -- that the boundaries between observer and observed are an saw in these ideas parallels with quantum theory, and they quietly coloured his interpretation of quantum mechanics and his writings on the nature of reality. He also wrote on colour theory, and unified field theory. Shrodinger's signature (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) Even Schrodinger's personal life reflected his unconventional mind: while married, he also lived with a second partner -- a situation that baffled polite society but was tolerated in the academic circles he moved to Vienna in 1956 after years abroad, he continued working until his death in 1961. He was buried in the small Austrian village of Alpbach. On his tombstone, instead of a cat, there's an engraving of the wave equation that changed physics his name echoes not only in physics textbooks but in quantum computer labs, philosophical debates, and the pages of science that paradoxical cat -- imagined, never harmed -- still prowls the world's imagination, a reminder that reality may be stranger than we think, and never fully revealed until we observe.- Ends
