A Brief History On April 20, 1862, French scientists Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard proved that Aristotle was wrong! Digging Deeper The state of science thousands of years ago was somewhat more primitive than today. Ancient people did not have microscopes, X-rays, CT Scans, gas chromatography, chemical tests, electron microscopes, centrifuges, and had not even developed the so called scientific method to test theories. People believed the Brandt Goose came from barnacles by that name, and a common belief was that maggots came from dead flesh. They did not understand microbes, DNA, or the Atomic Theory. Aristotle, the tutor of…
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A Brief History In a startling April Fools prank, the BBC program Panorama aired on April 1, 1957 and showed an astonished British audience farmers growing spaghetti on trees in Switzerland! Digging Deeper We all know people that just wait each year for April 1st to play their pranks on us, but a reputable and serious television show? Spaghetti was not in wide use in Britain in the 1950’s, so many British people were unaware of how spaghetti noodles are made, which of course is like all other noodles, with wheat flour, water and other ingredients. Seeing Swiss farmers seemingly…
A Brief History On March 17, 1968, the US Army proved just how dangerous it is to play with weapons of “maaaass” destruction! (Yes, we went there…) Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the Army operating Dugway Proving Ground in Utah starting in 1941, a top secret testing area for chemical and biological weapons. The terrible effect of various poison gas weapons in World War I by both sides caused nervousness during World War II that somebody would once again initiate their use, especially when desperate. The US supposedly contemplated using poison gas against Japanese dug in deeply in islands…
A Brief History On an unknown date, about the mid 2nd Millennium BC, the ancient world was rocked by one of the largest volcanic eruptions and explosions in Human history. Digging Deeper The Island of Thera, also known as Santorini was populated by people of the Minoan culture, located in the Aegean Sea north of Crete. The volcanic event was so large, that much of the island collapsed into the sea, killing virtually all inhabitants in that area and devastating nearby islands as well. This gigantic event was calculated in 1991 to have displaced over 39 cubic kilometers of dense…
A Brief History On November 30, 1954, an incredibly unlikely and rare instance of an object from space striking a living human in the United States occurred, perhaps the only verified occurrence in American history when a grapefruit sized meteorite slammed through the roof of an Alabama house and struck a woman sleeping on her couch. (What a wake up!) Digging Deeper Providing one of the best “It happened to me” stories of all time, the chondrite meteor weighing 5.56 kilograms (over 12 pounds) had created a giant fireball visible from 3 states as it hurtled through the Earth’s atmosphere…