Mount St. Helens
On May 18, 1980, in Washington state, Mount St. Helens volcano exploded leaving 57 people dead or missing. This was a Plinian eruption. It validated Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness description, often regarded as exaggeration, of the Vesuvius explosion that buried Pompeii and Heraculaneum. Mount…
Extreme Eco-nauts
On January 28, 1884, Belgian physicist, inventor, and extremes explorer Auguste Piccard was born in Switzerland… a few minutes after his physicist-chemist brother Jean-Felix. Auguste conducted atmospheric research using balloon flight and was well into the public eye when the University of Brussels offered…
Father of Chinese Ornithology
On November 18, 1906, Chinese ornithologist Tso-hsin Cheng [Zheng Zuoxin] was born. As a boy, he learned to identify the birds in the Fujian forests by their calls. Travelling to the United States, Cheng completed doctoral studies at University of Michigan before taking a…
Bone Warrior
On October 29, 1831, American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh was born. As a professor of paleontology at Yale, Marsh led student expeditions to the West aboard the recently completed Union Pacific Railway to find fossils. Full of energy and passion for his subject, Marsh…
Great Basin National Park
On October 27, 1986, Nevada’s Great Basin National Park was established, incorporating the Lehman Caves National Monument. Rather than being one actual great basin, the area is a collection of many small basins. The park, with its deserts, mountains, and caves, ranges in elevation…
Paleo-Mud
On July 16, 1981, Yoho National Park’s Burgess Shale became Canada’s fifth World Heritage Site of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Within Yoho National Park of Canada, the Burgess Shale holds the deposit of one of world’s most ancient marine…
Canada Day
On July 1, 1867, Canada became a country. Originally called the Dominion of Canada, it started with four provinces – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the former Province of Canada split into Quebec and Ontario. This confederation had taken some years to achieve for…
Elisabeth Mann Borgese and World Oceans Day
Each year, IOI Canada organizes the annual Elisabeth Mann Borgese Ocean Lecture as part of a series of events to mark World Oceans Day. 2019 poster: Elisabeth Mann Borgese Ocean Lecture Mann Borgese was an outstanding leader committed to encouraging a global system of…
The GRACE Twins
On March 17, 2002, NASA launched the GRACE twins, two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites. They flew about 220 km ( 137 mi ) apart in a polar orbit at 485 km (300 mi) above Earth, measuring regional areas of its gravity field,…
No Grass Grew Under These Feet!
On February 23, 1879, British botanist Agnes Arber was born. From her mid-teens through early career, she was able to spend time assisting plant morphologist Ethel Sargant from whom she acquired her research interest and style of investigation. Arber taught at University College, London,…