A Brief History On October 21, 1983, the standard metric unit of length, the meter, was redefined as “the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.” The meter had been defined originally in 1791 by the French National Assembly as one 10 millionth the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. Digging Deeper This calculation means the circumference of the Earth via the polar route was exactly 40,000 kilometers. Other units of length were based on a decimal system of the meter, such as “millimeter” or 1/1000 of a meter or a “kilometer,” or 1000…
Browsing: Science & Technology
Read More
A Brief History On October 16, 2010, a graduate student at Auburn University named a new species of fish Lepidocephalichthys zeppelini, because he thought a marking on the fish looked like a double necked guitar used by Led Zeppelin member Jimmy Page. Digging Deeper Obviously, it would be fun to be able to give a new species the name of your choice, and here are a few goofy sounding ones already taken: Gorilla gorilla gorilla, the Western Lowland Gorilla. If only they could all be so easy! Mini mum, Mini scule and Mini ature, three of the tiniest species of…
A Brief History On October 15, 1930, Herbert Dow, founder of Dow Chemical Company died. A graduate of Cleveland’s Case School of Applied Science, the brilliant chemist and inventor turned his company into an international chemical powerhouse. Digging Deeper This iconic “American” scientist and businessman was born in Canada back in 1866. Many other famous people considered “American” were also born in Canada, including: Senator Ted Cruz, actors Jim Carrey, Pamela Anderson, Michael J. Fox, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Phil Hartman, Martin Short, Eliot Page, Seth Rogan, Howie Mandel, Christopher Plummer, Ryan Gosling, Michael Cera, Donald Sutherland and…
A Brief History On October 11, 2018, the Russian manned space mission, Soyuz MS-10, suffered a booster failure shortly after liftoff, necessitating an emergency abort. Incredibly, both crew members survived the successful abort and reentry to safely land in Kazakhstan. Digging Deeper The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft reached an altitude of 58 miles, not quite reaching outer space, and landed about 12 miles from the launch site. An error in assembly was blamed for the mishap, and the next flight, MS-11, went off successfully on December 3, 2018. Another example of a successful abort procedure took place on September 26, 1983,…
A Brief History On October 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael hit Florida hard, a category 5 hurricane that caused 57 American deaths and $25.1 billion of damage. Rating the worst hurricanes can be done by dollar amounts in either contemporaneous values or proportioned to today/s value, or by deaths. Obviously, estimates also vary, but we will attempt to rank some of the worst of these big Atlantic storms. Digging Deeper The worst hurricane by fatalities was the Great Hurricane of 1780, with around 22,000 people killed, 9000 on Martinique alone as it ravaged the Caribbean. The deadliest hurricane in US history…