Browsing: Lifestyle

A Brief History On June 3, 1844, the last known pair of Great Auks was killed on a small island off Iceland, a magnificent species of flightless bird resembling but not related to Penguins, 30 to 33 inches tall but with tiny six-inch wings. Digging Deeper Long a staple food and source of feathers and skins for Native American people, the soft down of the Great Auk made it a target for European hunters that decimated the populations of the aquatic birds. Changing climate and geography naturally eliminates some species of plants and animals, but humans have greatly accelerated the…

A Brief History On May 14, 1900, the athletic competition known as “the World Amateur championship” opened at the Paris Exposition Universelle, a World’s Fair held in Paris from April to November of 1900, one of several French hosted Expositions Universelle over the years. Digging Deeper The events variously known as “world’s fair,” “global exposition,” or “universal exposition,” are major events often hosted by a major city or a country to celebrate all the latest in technology and innovations, a phenomenon first hosted by Bohemia in Prague back in 1791. There have been at least 37 general expositions that could…

A Brief History On April 15, 1923, the hormone insulin became widely available for the treatment of diabetes.  Prior to the discovery of insulin and its adaptation for medical use, diabetes was an often-fatal disease of the inability of the body to process glucose. Digging Deeper Even today, diabetes claims millions of lives per year, as well as causing a variety of related maladies such as kidney failure, blindness, and nerve damage.  Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas, and was discovered in 1921 by Frederick Banting of Canada, a Nobel Prize winning discovery. By 1923, insulin became available…

A Brief History On April 4, 1991, US Senator from Pennsylvania John Heinz along with six other people died when a helicopter suffered a mid-air collision with the small airplane carrying Heinz over Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania.  Sadly, two of the seven fatalities were children on the ground. Digging Deeper Heinz is only one of many politicians that met an early demise in aircraft crashes, such as the following examples. In 1928, Congressman Thaddeus Sweet of New York became the first US politician to die in an air wreck. In 1947 and again in 1962, State Governors died in air…

A Brief History On February 9, 1996, the synthetic element, Copernicium, was discovered by a research team at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, named after the famous Polish astronomer and polymath, Nicolaus Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernik in Polish), 10 days after the discovery, on the 537th anniversary of Copernicus’s birth. Digging Deeper Some of the other elements named after people include Curium, Fermium, Mendelevium, Nobelium, Einsteinium, Bohrium, Roentgenium, Lawrencium, and others.  Perhaps you recognize some or most of these names as major historical scientists. You might not appreciate a disease or disorder being named after you,…