A Brief History On August 7, 1962, a reviewer from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, was recognized by President John F. Kennedy with the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. Digging Deeper Kelsey had previously denied the use of the drug, Thalidomide, for use in the US after it had been used in West Germany since 1957 for a wide range of symptoms, including morning sickness in pregnant women. Dissatisfied with the safety research and record to date, Kelsey turned down the drug for the US, ultimately saving untold hundreds or even thousands of…
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A Brief History On August 5, 2015, Colorado found out the hard way that the Federal Government is capable of massive blunders even when they are trying to “help,” when the EPA managed to spill three million gallons of wastewater and heavy metal tailings from the Gold King Mine into the Animas River. Digging Deeper Tasked with keeping our air, water and land safe, the Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970. In the Gold King Mine disaster, the EPA was working with a private company, Environmental Restoration LLC, to minimize environmental damage from toxic waste created by the closed…
A Brief History On July 23, 1982, the set for the film, Twilight Zone: The Movie, became a real-life killing ground when actor Vic Morrow and two child actors were killed when a helicopter crashed into the actors. Despite revised safety rules after the incident, movies and TV remain a dangerous enterprise. Digging Deeper A recent example in 2021 is the set of Rust, a Western being made by Alec Baldwin, who accidently shot and killed a cinematographer with a real bullet when only blanks were supposed to be on the set. The Wrap quotes the AP as saying 43…
A Brief History On July 10, 2007, Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç, almost 46 years old at the time, set off on what may be the greatest feat of human endurance and physical performance in history, the solo, only human powered circumnavigation of the Earth. As if this feat was not daunting enough, he threw in making it a point to climb the tallest mountain on each continent as part of his trip! For financial reasons, he ended up journeying on a route that did not include all of the tallest mountains on each continent. Digging Deeper Eruç accomplished this feat…
A Brief History On May 25, 2001, American mountain climber, adventurer, author, and speaker, Erik Weihenmayer, became the first blind person to reach the top of Mt. Everest in Nepal. A year later, he added to his collection of fantastic feats by becoming the 150th person to scale each of the “Seven Summits,” the tallest mountain on each of the continents. Digging Deeper Weihenmayer suffered from a degenerative eye disease as a child, resulting in his vision loss by his teen years. A high school wrestler, he also began rock climbing, graduated from Boston College, and became a teacher while…