Browsing: Science & Technology

A Brief History On May 20, 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented blue jeans with copper rivets. Trousers have never been the same. Clearly an iconic American invention, a nice comfortable pair of jeans can well be a person’s best friends. At least that is the way some people treat them. There are several innovations in the world of clothing that seem hard to live without, and here we list 10 of them. Digging Deeper 10. Bikini Bathing Suit, 1946. Bestowed upon an adoring, mostly male, public in Paris in 1946 while the United States conducted nuclear weapons testing…

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A Brief History On May 15, 1718, Englishman James Puckle patented his machine gun, the world’s first! You may have thought the Gatling gun or the Maxim machine gun was the first machine gun, but depending on how you define “machine gun” James Puckle, Esq. (yes, he was a lawyer) got there first. Digging Deeper Puckle’s invention was a flintlock, the form of firearm ignition at the top of technology of the time. It consisted of a single barrel and a cylinder pre-loaded with 11 separate firing chambers of a musket ball and powder charge in each.  Puckle intended regular…

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A Brief History On May 14, 1973, the United States launched Skylab, America’s first space station. During the era of space exploration there have been significant milestones reached by the US, Russia, and other countries. We list 10 of those here, hopefully the most interesting ones if not the most important. So many milestones! The list to cover them all would be huge. Digging Deeper 10. First Dog in Space, First Animal to Orbit the Earth, Laika, 1957. If the Soviets were insensitive to killing millions of their own people, it is no surprise that they sent a dog into…

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A Brief History On May 14, 1796, English scientist Edward Jenner used pus scraped from a cowpox pustule to inoculate his gardener’s son, the first ever vaccine used. Cowpox is a disease similar to smallpox, but much more mild, similar to chicken pox. Digging Deeper Jenner and others observed the fact that milkmaids frequently got cowpox, but never seemed to get smallpox, and smallpox was a deadly disease that killed about 20 percent of Europe’s population (with about 60 percent of that population getting the disease). Purposely infecting the boy with cowpox and after the boy recovered exposing him to…

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A Brief History On May 13, 1958, George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer trademarked Velcro, and the company called Velcro is based in the United Kingdom. Did you think Velcro was American invented and made? Many products or inventions that “seem” as is they should be American are not necessarily so. Here is a list of 10 such items. Digging Deeper 10. Baseball and Football, circa 1344, 1400. Baseball is really a variant of Cricket, and forms of it have been played since 14th Century France. Football is a form of Rugby, which started around the beginning of the 15th…

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