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Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) was an American engineer, inventor, science administrator, policymaker and public intellectual. He is best known for his work on
analog computers , for founding
Raytheon , and for the
memex , an adjustable
microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of the
World Wide Web . He became Vice President of
MIT and Dean of the
MIT School of Engineering in 1932, and president of the
Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1938. He was chairman of the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and of the
National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). During
World War II he was director of the
Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), coordinating the defense activities of some 6,000 leading American scientists. As head of NDRC and OSRD, he initiated the
Manhattan Project , and ensured that it received top priority from the highest levels of government. In 1945, he published
As We May Think in which he predicted that "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them". This influenced generations of computer scientists, who drew inspiration from his vision. (
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March 11 :
Independence Day in
Lithuania (
1990 )
222 – Disgusted with
Roman emperor
Elagabalus 's disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual
taboos , the
Praetorian Guard assassinated him and his mother
Julia Soaemias , mutilated their bodies, and threw them in the
Tiber River .
1864 – A crack in the
Dale Dyke Dam in
Sheffield , England, caused it to fail, and
the resulting flood killed 238 people and damaged more than 600 homes.
1879 –
Shō Tai , the last king of the
Ryūkyū Kingdom , abdicated when the kingdom was
annexed by Japan and became
Okinawa Prefecture .
1945 –
World War II : The
Empire of Japan established the
Empire of Vietnam , a short-lived
puppet state , with
Bảo Đại as its ruler.
2006 –
Michelle Bachelet (pictured) was inaugurated as the first female
President of Chile .
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