On May 24, 1686, self-taught physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born. He was also a self-taught engineer and, having once worked as a glass blower, became an innovative maker of scientific instruments. At the time, although thermometers were available for trade, no two ever…
On December 18, 1971, Capitol Reef National Park in the south-central Utah desert was signed into law. It is the home of several unusual geologic formations such as the Waterpocket Fold. In the Late Cretaceous approximately 70 to 50 million years ago, a monocline…
On December 17, 1908, American physical chemist Willard Frank Libby was born. He specialized in radiochemistry, the chemistry of radioactive materials. Radiochemistry includes the study of both natural and man-made radioisotopes. Isotopes are variants of a specific chemical element that differ from each other…
On November 14, 1792, geologist Charles Lyell was born. Although he trained as a lawyer, he had always been more interested in geology. Extensively travelled and a keen observer, he came to realize the marks of great prehistoric time were all around him. He…
On October 22, 1896, American biochemist and nutrition researcher Charles Glen King was born. For about 200 years, limes and lemons and a few certain other foods were known to be effective in preventing and treating scurvy, a nutritional deficiency disease that, untreated, leads…
On October 21, 1999, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison was designated a National Park in western Colorado. The long narrow canyon is a carving of about two million years of relentless river erosion through the soft as well as granite bedrock created by…
April 24, 2017 marked the official launch of a new partnership project between The Roberta Bondar Foundation and Science North that incorporates the 2017 photography-based Ontario150 Bondar Challenge.
On March 11, 1888, a great “Nor’easter” began to form on the NE coast of the U.S.A. Because of their unstable atmospheric pressures, regions of Earth in the mid-latitudes experience the widest range of weather formations. March can be a wild weather month there.…
On February 20, 1902, American photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams was born. As a youngster, he loved the outdoors and hiking through his home state, California. Adams joined the Sierra Club, spending summers in the glacial Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park in the…
On February 15, 1884, inventor and educator Alfred Carlton Gilbert was born. He paid for some of his university expenses by performing as a magician and launched a company to manufacture and sell magic kits. Upon graduating from Yale medical school, Gilbert chose to…