On May 27, 1907, Rachel Louise Carson was born. She spent her entire life loving the natural world, particularly the ocean. She studied English and marine biology and wrote copy for weekly education broadcasts for U.S. Bureau of Fisheries [later named the U.S. Fish…
On May 22, 1993, the United Nations sanctioned this date as the International Day for Biological Diversity to increase awareness of biodiversity issues worldwide. Building a Shared Future for All Life is this year’s theme on International Day for Biological Diversity. Biodiversity, the variety of life on our…
On May 10, 1946, primatologist Biruté M. F. Galdikas was born. As scientist, conservationist, and educator, she has made uninterrupted study of and invaluable contributions to the scientific understanding of Indonesia’s biodiversity. The orangutan was a species barely known to science before Galdikas initiated…
April 22, Earth Day, is celebrated around the world as tens of millions of people make time to attend their environment. The United Nations calls this International Mother Earth Day because “Mother Earth” is a multi-national common expression used in most cultural references to…
On April 21, 1838, John Muir was born. Muir was a naturalist who championed the creation of the first National Forests in the United States of America and co-founded the Sierra Club. As an explorer and writer, he inspired President Theodore Roosevelt’s innovative wildlife…
On April 14, 1912, sightings of large icebergs were radioed ship-to-ship in the North Atlantic. Little was generally known about icebergs except that they could damage a ship and the navigational strategy of the day was to avoid them. Moved by ocean current and…
On April 10, 1865, Canadian naturalist, Jack Miner was born. At 39, he established the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary for the conservation of migrating Canada geese and ducks on an Ontario peninsula between Lake Erie to the south and Lake Saint Clair to the…
On April 7, 1795, France introduced the metric system of measurement with the original units for length, area, volumes and mass. The main feature of the metric system is the standardized set of interrelated base units that include a standard set of prefixes in…
On March 27, 1905, aeronautical engineer Elizabeth Muriel Gregory “Elsie” MacGill was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Attracted first to the red-hot field of radio, she became the first woman electrical engineering graduate from the University of Toronto. Working her first job at the…
On March 23, 1950, the World Meteorological Organization was created as a specialized agency of the United Nations. The WMO speaks on the state of Earth’s atmosphere and reports its interaction with oceans, the climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources.…