ON THIS DAY

On this date in 1886, a gasoline-powered vehicle was patented for the first time.

In 1904, the University of Chicago football team became the first athletes to receive letters.

In 1924, the first ice cream cone rolling machine was invented.

On this date in 1963 The Football Hall Of Fame opens in Canton, Ohio.

Sexy Heather Graham turns 40 today. That's 80 in Hollywood actress years.

Diver/Swimmer Gregory Louganis turns 50, Oprah Winfrey celebrates her 56th and Tom Selleck turns 65 today.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

• Taking advantage of Toyota's misfortune, GM is offering $1,000 to any Toyota owner who switches to one of their cars.
• J.D. Salinger, the author of "The Catcher in the Rye," has died. He was 91.
• The final two Harry Potter movies will both be released in 3-D.
• President Obama's proposed budget includes scrapping NASA's plans to return to the moon in 2020.
• Charlie Sheen's wife, Brooke, is recuperating at a North Carolina wellness center.
• Brittany Murphy's husband says Warner Brothers is to blame for his wife's death, so he's going to sue them.
• Ozzy Osbourne says in his new biography he regrets how he treated his first wife, Thelma.
• The 4th season will be the last for "Ugly Betty." ABC has canceled it.
• Just hours after performing "Freebird" on stage with Conan O'Brien on his final Tonight Show, Will Ferrell's wife, Viveca, gave birth to their third son.
• This week's winner of the Celebrity DUI award: Heroes star Adrian Pasdar.
• "Bachelor" contestant Jason Mesnick will get married to Molly Malaney in a two-hour special on ABC March 8.
• How dumb is British rocker Pete Doherty? He's been fined for bringing heroin into court with him.
• She was the quirky little lady in "Poltergeist." Zelda Rubinstein has died at age 76.
• Michael Douglas' son, Cameron, has pleaded guilty to possession of meth charges. He had enough on him that he could be facing a 10-year prison sentence.

"It's obvious that Apple didn't have any women around when coming up with that name!" was a common thread on Facebook Wednesday, hours after Apple announced the launch of the iPad, revealing the name for the first time. Jokes referencing sanitary napkins were rampant. CNN reports some of the jokes made at the expense of the iPad name:

• Yes, the iPad is small, lightweight and slim. But can you swim with it?
• Some took to calling it the "iTampon."
• Will women send their husbands to the Apple store to buy iPads?

There's nothing more frustrating for new parents than not knowing why their infant is crying and what they can do to help. But a technological breakthrough promises to interpret a child's cries so moms and dads will know just what to do. The Cry Translator is a new application available on Apple iPhones that promises to "quickly identify an infant's cry, based on one of five physiological states: hunger, fatigue, annoyance, stress or boredom," say creators Pedro Barrera and Luis Meca. By holding the phone up to your baby and pressing the start button, the program will inform you in 10 seconds or less what your newborn needs, from a diaper change to a cuddle to a bottle. The company, Biloop Technologic in Barcelona, Spain, says all babies' cries are universal, regardless of culture or language. The app uses new sound analysis technology to give you a list of hints to follow for calming the baby down. Clinical trials at a hospital in Spain says the suggestions worked 96 percent of the time. (Sun)

There's a silver lining in these harsh economic times the divorce rate is dropping. A new study shows that whether it's due to money challenges or to the strengthening of marital bonds during tough financial times, fewer couples are splitting. The divorce rate fell by 4 percent during 2008, marking the first annual dip in five years, according to a report co-authored by the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values. "Tough times foster real family solidarity and encourage many couples to stick together," says researcher W. Bradford Wilcox. "Marriage is more than an emotional relationship it's an economic partnership and social safety net. Thus, the one piece of good news emerging from the last two years is that marriage stability is up." (National Examiner)

Scientists have created software that can translate scans of your brain into pictures of your thoughts, revealing them to anyone who cares to look. Worried experts describe the breakthrough as a giant step toward the day when you will no longer be able to keep your ideas secret. Professor Jack Gallant and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley used a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner to record the brain waves of two volunteers watching videos. They then ran copies of the scans through their program, which analyzed the brain wave activity and turned it into moving digital images. In one case, the video showed actor Steve Martin wearing a white shirt. The computer screen revealed a male torso in white shirt, but it couldn't display Martin's facial features. Another video showed an airplane flying across a city skyline. The software captured the skyline, but omitted the plane. Once perfect, the software will be a boon to law enforcement by, for example, reproducing exactly what a witness to a crime saw down to the smallest detail, Gallant says. But critics warn that in the wrong hands the technology could rob innocent citizens like you of their privacy. (Sun)

Political correctness takes a back seat to the preservation of car fenders in China, where women drivers have gotten their own parking lot with bigger spaces. Nothing that the "fairer sex" has "special needs" and a "different sense of distance," the Wanxiang Tiancheng shopping center in the city of Shijiazhuang designed a parking lot especially for women. The lot features spaces that re three feet wider than normal and painted in a dainty pink and light purple decor to appeal to a female's "strong sense of color." And to make sure that the women divers still don't scrape their fenders attendants help to guide them into the space. Says mall official Wang Zheng: "the spaces are wider and there are signs and security monitoring equipment that correspond more to a woman's needs." (National Examiner)