A Brief History On September 27, 1962, the book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson was published. The book dealt with environmental science and focused on the widespread use of pesticides and the disinformation provided by the manufacturers of those chemicals. Digging Deeper Carson made a case that the indiscriminate use of these chemicals was poisoning the environment and killing off many beneficial insects along with the pests. Additionally, many birds suffered ill effects from the pesticides, and Carson projected that one day the birds would be gone, hence the title of the book. You might have thought a cataclysmic environmental…
Browsing: Health/Medicine
A Brief History On September 19, 1991, the mummified body of a man that lived around 3350 to 3105 BC was discovered in the Ötztal Alps between Austria and Italy. The name of the mountains was used to name the mummy “Otzi,” and the long dead “iceman” became a celebrity. Digging Deeper Preserved by the snow and ice on the mountain, this Copper Age man was found to probably have been murdered, an arrowhead found in his shoulder and other wounds implying so. Otzi was found by tourists from Germany at a height of 10,530 feet. Believing the body to…
A Brief History On September 13, 1987, two thieves took advantage of a guard being absent from an abandoned Brazilian hospital site to help themselves to whatever they could scavenge. The men made the blunder of taking a 3.3-ounce capsule of caesium chloride, a highly radioactive substance used in radiation therapy. Digging Deeper The same night of the theft, the thieves exhibited signs of radiation poisoning. Visiting a local clinic, they were diagnosed with radiation sickness. About three days after the theft, the thieves opened the capsule and picked out some of the glowing blue substance inside. The thieves sold…
A Brief History Hello, everyone, I am Dr. Zar from the YouTube channel History and Headlines! Today, I would like to bring to your attention a fundraiser on behalf of one of my friends and colleagues, historian Daniel N. Gullotta of Ashland University. At just five days old, Daniel’s son, Colby Jackson (aka “Jack”) was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). Digging Deeper Per the official fundraiser, this disease, which affects one in 11,000 births in the United States, robs people of their physical strength, significantly impacting an individual’s ability to walk, swallow, or breathe. Given Jack’s type of SMA,…
A Brief History On August 30, 1974, the third World Population Conference was held in Bucharest, Romania. The first such conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland in 1927, the idea of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, under the aegis of the League of Nations. Experts in health, food supply, fertility and other relevant subjects met to examine how many humans the Earth could sustainably host. Subsequent conferences have been arranged by the United Nations starting in 1954. Digging Deeper The conference spawned the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, a subject fraught with religious, moral, and ethnic considerations. …
