Wednesday’s History: January 27

Today, January 27, in history includes the foundation of National Geographic Society, soldier awarded the Medal of Honor, and the first TV is demonstrated ... according to history.com.

In 1888, National Geographic Society was founded by 33 men. The group included geographers, teachers, lawyers, explorers, military officers, cartographers and financiers with interests in scientific and geographical knowledge.

Gardiner Greene Hubbard was elected as the first president for the society. The first magazine issue was published months later. In 1899, new editor Gilbert H. Grosvenor changed the format and copies grew to 2 million. National Geographic magazine was the first to print photos of all aspects of the planet in natural color.

Magazine revenues have supported more than 1,400 expedition grants. The circulation is now about 9 million.

A medic from California, Specialist Four Donald Evans, 23, was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest award for bravery, in 1967.

Evans ran into battle to treat wounded men and carried soldiers out of the line of fire. Even as he was hit by grenade fragments he continued. Enemy fire killed Evans as he was going to treat another.

Thank you to all who served and are serving.

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated his "televisor," a "pictorial-tranmission machine," in London for the first time in 1926. A cable transmitted light and dark images made from the mechanical discs that rotated as they scanned electronic pulses.

Away from the audience, he put two ventriloquist dummies in front of a camera. Baird also made the first broadcast overseas in 1928.

Baird followed the work from the patent by German Scientist Paul Nipkow in 1884.