Events

February 5, 1936: National Wildlife Federation was formed. Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist J.N. “Ding” Darling had persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to convene a meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss plight of our nation’s wildlife. At the meeting, Darling urged 2,000 conservationists including farmers, hunters, anglers, garden club members and other outdoor enthusiasts to unite into a block that could influence lawmakers. From that meeting, a new organization emerged as a voice for protecting our wild heritage: National Wildlife Federation.

February 5, 1873: Andrew Dalrymple & his wife died in nitroglycerin explosion at their home on Dennis Run, Pennsylvania. He was a “moonlighter” or illegal oil well shooter. Dalrymple torpedo accident revealed that nitroglycerine & other explosives were being stolen from various magazines throughout the country. Modern term “moonlighting” comes from practice of surreptitious avoidance of licensing fees imposed on the use of patented fracking techniques used to increase oilfield production.

February 5, 1872: Lafayette Benedict Mendel, American biochemist was born. His discoveries concerning value of vitamins & proteins helped establish modern concepts of nutrition. Collaborating with Thomas Osborne, they showed that rats developed xerophthalmia on diets in which lard supplied the fat. This condition was cured by substitution of butterfat. They discovered butterfat contained a growth- promoting factor necessary for development, soon known as fat-soluble vitamin A. Mendel also contributed to discovery of B complex vitamins & linked nutritive value of proteins to their amino acids.

February 5, 1783: Earthquake (7.5-8.0 magnitude) struck Southern Italy where 80,000 people died. Over 100 villages were literally wiped away with no survivors or standing structures remaining. Mile-long ravine (nearly 100 feet wide) was instantly created. According to a report, more than 100 goats fell into another crack in the earth. Witness claimed that “two mountains on the opposite sides of a valley walked from their original position until they met in the middle of the plain, and there joining together, they intercepted the course of a river.” Several hundred people that survived the initial quake, fled to a nearby beach for shelter. Many then drowned when a second tremor at midnight prompted a tsunami. Misery continued across Southern Italy & Sicily for remainder of the winter. With food supplies disrupted, survivors were at risk of starvation.

February 5, 1817: First American gas light company was incorporated in Baltimore, Maryland to manufacture & distribute coal gas “to provide for more effectually lighting in the streets, squares, lanes and alleys of the city of Baltimore.”

February 4, 1941: Roy Plunkett, American scientist, received patent for “Tetrafluoroethylene Polymers” now known by trade name, Teflon. His patent described polymer’s exceptional properties, including being “highly resistant to corrosive influences and to oxidation, and which can be molded and spun and put in to a wide variety of uses where its peculiar properties would be advantageous.” Teflon was discovered by accident, when Plunkett discovered a lining of the solid polymer had resulted when he examined the inside of containers that had stored tetrafluoroethylene gas under pressure.

February 4, 2011:  President of Philippines announced nationwide ban on logging after his country suffered from devastating floods & mudslides. Over seventy people died from floods exacerbated by too much logging.

February 4, 1998: Earthquake (6.1-magnitude) struck Afghanistan where 5,000 people died & 30,000 left homeless.

February 4, 1987: President Reagan’s veto of Clean Water Act overridden by Congress.

February 4, 1976, Earthquake (7.5-magnitude) struck Guatemala where 22,778 people died & one million left homeless.

February 4, 1936: First radioactive substance produced synthetically (radium E), by bombarding the element bismuth with neutrons. This was achieved by John Livingood at University of California at Berkeley.

February 4, 1915: Joseph Goldberger, American physician, began experiments to find cause of the disease, pellagra. More than 10,000 Americans had died of pellagra in 1915. Experiments were conducted upon dozen prison inmate volunteers in Jackson, Mississippi. By adjusting the food in their meals, it was eventually found that pellagra is caused by poor diet. Improving diet remedies the potentially fatal disease. Goldberg’s experiment is a medical classic. His studies alerted people to importance of essential nutrients found in diets. It began “biological age” in nutrition research during which connection was made between disease & lack of essential nutrients in the diet, which we call vitamins.

February 4, 1902: Charles Lindbergh, American aviator who flew first nonstop solo flight across Atlantic was born. In 1927, Lindbergh left New York for Paris, carrying only sandwiches & water. He decided against carrying parachute & radio in favor of more gasoline. He fought fog, icing & drowsiness. He landed 33-1/2 hours later, in Paris after a 3,600 mile flight.

February 4, 1887: Interstate Commerce Act authorized federal regulation of railroads. Note: this had a major impact on transportation of hazardous materials.

February 4, 1824: J. W. Goodrich introduced rubber galoshes to public.

February 4, 1797: Earthquake struck Ecuador where 41,000 people died.

February 4, 1783: Earthquake struck Italy where 50,000 people died.

February 3, 1853: Hudson Maxim, American inventor of explosives was born. He invented maximite, a high explosive bursting powder 50% more powerful than dynamite. When used in torpedoes, maximite resisted both shock of firing and greater shock of piercing armor plate without exploding until it was then set off by a delayed-action detonating fuse, another Maxim invention. Later, he perfected a new smokeless powder, called stabillite because of its high stability, & motorite, self-combustive substance to propel torpedoes.

February 3, 1998: U.S. military jet flying too low in Italian Alps severed ski-lift cable, sending a tram crashing to the ground where 20 people died. Plane was flying at only 360 feet above the ground, in spite of regulations that set minimum altitude for flight maneuvers at 2,000 feet.

February 3, 1954: Science writer Rachel Carson wrote to editor of “The New Yorker” magazine suggesting that he write an article about danger of pesticides. He demurred, but suggested that Carson write the article. It was genesis of her pioneering book, Silent Spring.

February 3, 1931: Earthquake (7.8-magnitude) & fire struck New Zealand where 256 people died.

February 2, 1923: Tetra-ethyl lead anti-knock gasoline first became available for sale at a Dayton, Ohio service station. High octane fuel was called Ethyl (after its new additive, tetraethyl lead) was colored a distinctive red. Thomas Midgely, at General Motors Research Laboratory, developed the anti-knock compound. In early internal combustion engines, “knocking” was name applied to the out-of-sequence detonation of gasoline-air mixture in a cylinder. This shock was called a ping or a knock and caused damage to the engine. In the 1950s, geochemist Clair Patterson discovered toxicity of tetra-ethyl lead. Phase out of its use in gasoline began in 1976. EPA Administrator Carol Browner in 1996 declared, “Elimination of lead from gas is one of the great environmental achievements of all time.”

February 2, 2004: White powder was found in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s office. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later confirmed that the powder was the poison ricin.

February 2, 1937: Ohio River floodwater reached 60.8 feet in Paducah, Kentucky.

February 2, 1935: Polygraph machine (“lie detector”) was used for first time to bring a conviction in court.

February 2, 1925: Diphtheria serum delivered by team of sled dogs during major epidemic in Nome, Alaska. Note: Iditarod race commemorates this historic achievement.

February 2, 1817: John Glover, English chemist was born. He developed “Glover Tower” to reclaim useful chemicals during manufacture of sulphuric acid. Previous Lead-Chamber Method used sulphur dioxide, a nitrate, air & water, but lost the nitrate in the form of nitric oxide to the atmosphere. This was expensive since replacement nitrate had to be imported from Chile. Glover introduced a mass transfer tower to recover some of this lost nitrate. In his tower, sulphuric acid (still containing nitrates) was trickled downward against upward flowing burner gases. Flowing gas absorbed some of the previously lost nitric oxide. These gases are recycled back into lead chamber where the nitric oxide can be re-used.

February 2, 1795: Prize of 12,000 francs was offered by the French government for a method of preserving food & transporting it to its armies. Winner was Nicholas Appert, a French chef who invented a way to can food. He developed method of heating food in airtight glass jars, not very different from the home-bottling method that now uses Mason jars.

February 1, 2003: Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated while re-entering earth’s atmosphere over Texas, 7 crew members died. Eighty seconds into its launch on January 16^th, piece of foam insulation had broken off from shuttle’s propellant tank & hit edge of shuttle’s left wing.

February 1, 2004: Stampede during pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, 251 people died.

February 1, 1944: American scientists, Avery, MacLeod & Maclyn, at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City discovered that heredity agents (genes) are made of DNA. This crucial discovery in molecular genetics – that genetic information is carried in the nucleotide sequence of DNA – arose while studying pneumococcus virus. In 1928, British physician Frederick Griffith had found that extracts of a pathogenic strain of that virus could transform a harmless strain into a pathogenic one.

February 1, 1905: Emilio Segrè, American physicist was born in Italy. He helped to discover antiproton, an antiparticle having same mass as a proton but opposite in electrical charge. He also created atoms of the man-made new element technetium & astatine. Technetium occupied a hitherto unfilled space in Periodic Table, & was first man-made element not found in nature. Astatine exists naturally in only small quantities because as a decay product of larger atoms, & having a half-life of only a few days, it quickly disappears by radioactively decay to become atoms of another element.

February 1, 1814: Volcano erupted in Philippines where 1,200 people died.

January 31, 1961: Chimpanzee named Ham was sent into space by United States. Successful test ensured that human beings could survive space flight, think clearly & perform useful functions outside Earth’s atmosphere. During 16.5 minute suborbital flight, Ham experienced 7 minutes of weightlessness, reached an altitude of 108 miles & speed of 13,000 mph. He was wired to medical sensors to monitor his vital signs. During flight, Ham performed some simple tasks such as pulling levers when a light came on for a reward of banana pellets. Ham was recovered safely 1,425 miles downrange. After Ham’s successful flight, NASA was ready to launch the first Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard, into sub-orbital flight three months later.

January 31, 1958: United States entered space age by launching its first successful orbiting satellite, Explorer-I, four months after Soviet launch of Sputnik. It measured cosmic radiation & led to discovery of Van Allen radiation belt. American satellite was 80” long, 6” in diameter & weighed 31-lbs.

January 31, 1953: Sudden ‘surge’, or wall of water, caused by fierce storm & high spring tide, burst through dikes & over banks of low-lying coastal areas in eastern England, northern Belgium, & southern Netherlands. North Sea flood destroyed 1 million acres of farmland, wiped out 50,000 buildings, 1500 people died, & 300,000 were left homeless.

January 31, 1950: President Truman publicly announced his decision to support development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon hundreds of times more powerful than atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. Three years later, Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. With both superpowers in possession of hydrogen bombs, our world started living under threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.

January 31, 1906: Earthquake (8.6-magnitude) struck Colombia in South America.

January 31, 1851: Gail Borden announced invention of evaporated milk.

January 31, 1769: André-Jacques Garnerin, French aeronaut was born. He was first person to use a parachute regularly & successfully. In 1797, Garnerin jumped from a hot-air balloon at 3000 feet. His parachute resembled an umbrella. Descent was a success, except that he shook back & forth violently while falling. Physicist Lalande, who attended the event, suggested improving air flow with a small opening at top of the canopy.

January 31, 1747: First clinic specializing in treatment of venereal diseases was opened at London Dock Hospital.

January 30, 1815: Sir William Bart Jenner, English physician who distinguished between typhus & typhoid was born. He recognized that under the name of “continued fever” doctors had confused the two different diseases. His reputation as a pathologist principally rests on making this distinction.

January 30, 2003: British-born “shoe bomber” Richard Reid sentenced to life in prison after he tried to blow up transatlantic flight from Paris to Miami.

January 30, 1950: President Truman ordered development of hydrogen fusion bomb (H-bomb).

January 30, 1899: Max Theiler, American microbiologist was born. He discovered that mice are susceptible to yellow fever. This facilitated research & eventual development of a vaccine against the disease in humans.

January 30, 1894: Charles King in Detroit, Michigan received a patent for the pneumatic hammer. Inside his hammer, a piston in a cylinder was driven by air pressure to hit a striker & tool. Air was routed internally through ports alternately covered & uncovered by the piston at opposite ends of its oscillating travel.

January 29, 1969: Santa Barbara oil spill (200,000 gallons of crude oil) created when drilling platform six miles off coast of Southern California suffered a blowout. Well was capped after leaking for 12 days. Oil slick (800 square miles) impacted 35 miles of ecologically sensitive coastline.

January 29, 1996: France announced that it would no longer test nuclear weapons.

January 29, 1978: Sweden became first nation to curb aerosol sprays to halt destruction of the ozone layer.

January 29, 1958: Boston Herald printed a letter from Olga Huckins attacking DDT pesticide as dangerous. Huckins was a friend of Rachel Carson, who encouraged writing of Carson’s book Silent Spring, an early call for modern environmentalism. Carson concluded that organo-pesticide built up in crops, transferred to birds & other animals was responsible for the poisoning of the surrounding fauna. Silent Spring asked important questions about balancing industrial and agricultural needs, progress, protection of the environment and the quality of life. Carson’s skilled writing awakened the conscience of America.

January 29, 1927: Lewis Urry, Canadian-American chemical engineer was born. He invented ubiquitous alkaline batteries & lithium batteries. Working for company that made Eveready batteries, he sought to develop new battery with better life-span than carbon-zinc type of that time. He succeeded by using manganese dioxide, an alkaline electrolyte & powdered zinc (which he realized had greater surface area than solid zinc). Alkaline batteries are estimated to be 80% of all dry cell batteries now sold in the world.

January 29, 1922: Washington DC theater roof overloaded by weight of accumulated snow collapsed, 108 people died & 133 hospitalized. Subsequent investigation blamed poor construction materials for the collapse.

January 29, 1886: First successful gasoline-driven car patented, by Karl Benz. Mercedes-Benz “Motorwagen” had three wheels & was powered by internal combustion engine very similar what modern-day autos use today.

January 28, 1986: Seventy three seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Challenger Space Shuttle’s liquid hydrogen tank exploded. There were no survivors (7 astronauts died). Explosion was caused by failure of “O-ring” seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. Elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of cold temperature at launch time, which began chain of events that resulted in massive explosion.

January 28, 1958: Construction began on first private thorium-uranium nuclear reactor.

January 28, 1915: Coast Guard created by act of U.S. Congress to fight contraband trade & aid distressed vessels at sea.

January 28, 1827: Jean Antoine Villemin, French physician who proved tuberculosis to be infectious disease, transmitted by specific microorganism from humans & cows to rabbits. As an army doctor he observed that healthy young men from the country developed tuberculosis while living in the close quarters of the barracks. He inoculated a rabbit with tuberculosis material from deceased human patient, tuberculosis lesions were found in the rabbit three months later. Before Villemin, many scientists believed that TB was hereditary. In fact, some stubbornly held on to this belief even after Villemin published his results, until Mycobacterium tuberculosis was identified by Robert Koch (1882).