A Brief History On February 5, 1909, New Yorker Leo Baekeland presented his invention of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, to the American Chemical Society. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the Belgian-born Baekeland trying to invent a replacement for shellac, a product made by processing lac insects. Shellac was used for many diverse purposes, such as dye for clothing, make-up and a variety of coatings such as varnish and lacquer paint. Of the several different lac insect species, thousands and thousands were required to harvest enough of the lac resin to produce even a small amount of shellac, making…
Browsing: Science & Technology
A Brief History On February 1, 2003, the United States suffered the second loss of a space shuttle, this time the Columbia. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find Columbia at the completion of its 28th mission and ready to start reentry into Earth’s atmosphere at about 8:10 am for an estimated 9:16 am landing in Florida. Speeding around the Earth at over 20 times the speed of sound, Columbia was doomed, and the crew did not know it. On take off, a piece of foam insulation had broken off of a large external fuel tank and had struck the left wing,…
A Brief History On January 31, 1747, the London Lock Hospital opened as the first clinic specifically for the treatment of venereal diseases! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find many diseases today are identified as “venereal” or sexually transmitted by a variety of bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. Back in the days when science had not yet discovered the microscopic causes of disease, Europeans thought mainly of syphilis when addressing the subject of venereal disease. Although it is not proven beyond a doubt, many scientists think that syphilis was unknown in Europe until infected sailors among the crews of Christopher Columbus’s ships…
A Brief History On January 28, 1986, the U.S. space shuttle Challenger took off right on schedule, only to explode 74 seconds later, killing all seven crew members on board in front of a horrified live television audience. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find Challenger, having made 9 previous successful flights and having traveled over 25 million miles in its career prior to the tragedy. The crew, who had planned to study Halley’s Comet as part of their mission, also included a civilian, Mrs. Sharon Christa McAuliffe. Mrs. McAuliffe, who was from New Hampshire, had won a contest to become…
A Brief history On January 12, 1998, 19 European nations agreed to prohibit the cloning of humans. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find those 19 nations disappointed and dismayed that the two most powerful European countries, Germany and the United Kingdom, refused to sign the agreement! Does this refusal mean we shall soon see human clones? Not from Germany. They claimed their national laws were more restrictive than the agreement and they therefore did not need to sign. It seems they have some national angst as a result the genetic experiments of the Nazi era. (See the History and Headlines article on…
