August 16 is he birthday of Jacob Bernoulli. He was a Dutch-Swiss mathematician. He discovered the mathematical constant e=2.7182818..., which is almost as famous as pi; it is used to calculate compound interest, and shows you how bankers can squeeze an extra penny out of you!
Besides that, he also discovered the law of large numbers (that says, for example, that if you toss a coin many times, the proportion of heads will approach 1/2).
He also discovered what is called the Bernoulli Principle; this lets you calculate the lift generated by the wings of an airplane, and helps calculate the speed needed for takeoff; this is part of a larger set of discoveries described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
A crater on the northwest corner of the moon is named after him.
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