A holiday developed by a Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga, a black militant, Marxist, and convicted felon. Just five years after this, he was convicted of torturing two black women to death. Observed from December 26 to January 1, Kwanzaa is based on a mixture of East African harvest rituals, called first fruits by Karenga and 1960's radicalism. This is in spite of the fact most slaves came from West Africa. Viewed as an alternative to Christmas, it, nonetheless, is based on race, and not in faith.
Josephine Garis Cochran was the first person to build a practical dish-washing machine, succeeding where some had tried and failed. And it was the chore of washing dishes by hand and trying to save her good china from breaking that caused her to proceed with an idea to invent a unique machine.
While the Spaniard first patented a steam-operated machine for use in mining, an Englishman is usually credited with inventing the first steam engine. In 1698, Thomas Savery, an engineer and inventor, patented a machine that could effectively draw water from flooded mines using steam pressure. Savery used principles set forth by Denis Papin, a French-born British physicist who invented the pressure cooker. Papin's ideas surrounding a cylinder and piston steam engine had not previously been used to build a working engine, but by 1705, Savery had turned Papin's ideas into a useful invention.