Check out this calculation a young human computer did, and the OceanGate Titan disaster

On this Day, June 18

1815 Former French emperor Napoleon loses the Battle of Waterloo to the Duke of Wellington’s allied forces, marking his final defeat and freeing Europe from his ambition.

1940 Winston Churchill delivers his ‘this was their finest hour’ speech, urging perseverance in the face of adversity as Nazi Germany threatens an invasion of Britain.

1942 Eric Nessler of France stays aloft in a glider for 38 hours and 21 minutes.

1959 Louisiana Governor Earl Long is committed to a state mental hospital, but has the hospital director fired and is declared sane.

1977 The Space Shuttle test model ‘Enterprise’ carries a crew aloft for first time, it was attached to a modified Boeing 747.

1980 Indian “human computer” Shakuntala Devi sets a world record by mentally multiplying two random 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds. She correctly answered that 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 equalled 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730.

1981 Aids epidemic is formally recognised.

1995 All Black Jonah Lomu scores the try of the Rugby World Cup in South Africa, running over South African-born fullback Mike Catt in New Zealand’s 45-29 defeat of England.

2019 Two 14 year-old Irish boys are convicted of murder when found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of a 14 year-old girl in Dublin.

2022 Flooding in Bangladesh and nearby Indian states leave four million stranded and without electricity, with 41 dead as monsoon floods become more frequent and extreme.

2023 OceanGate’s Titan – an experimental, five‑seat submersible built with carbon‑fiber and titanium – drops into the North Atlantic on an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic, but implodes, killing 5 occupants. Bits of it are found four days later. The incident underscores the lethal consequences of cutting corners in high-risk environments – especially when peer review and certification are bypassed.

2024 Nvidia, which makes AI infrastructure, overtakes Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company (worth $3.34 trillion).

2024 Rema’s Calm Down, already the most successful African song, becomes the first Afrobeats single to earn more than 1 billion on-demand streams in the US.

DAILY NEWS