On November 29, 1803, mathematician Christian Andreas Doppler was born in Austria. Although primarily a teacher of mathematics, he also studied astronomy and eventually became the Director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Vienna. The years in between were filled with…
On September 9, 1953, Canadian military officer Major Deanna (Dee) Marie Brasseur was born. Brasseur and corps colleague Captain Jane Foster were the first two female fighter pilots in the Canadian Armed Forces. This also made them the first two female fighter pilots in…
On April 18, 1906, the most destructive earthquake in US history devastated much of San Francisco. This event, approximately 8.0 on the yet-to-be-invented Richter scale, occurred along the San Andreas Fault, a tectonic plate boundary from which the Earth’s crust spreads horizontally as the…
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,…
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,…
On February 1, 1811, Bell Rock Lighthouse shone its first mirrored light. On this first night, its light could be seen for over 24 km (15 mi). This is remarkable to imagine since the light originated from a single argand oil lamp with a…
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 December 16, 1811, the first of the series of New Madrid earthquakes occurred in a pair in northeast Arkansas. [The second principal shock, in Missouri, January 23, 1812; the third, along the Reelfoot fault in Missouri and Tennessee, February 7, 1812]. Each had…
On December 13, 1805, Johann von Lamont [John Lamont] was born in Scotland. From his twelfth year, he was educated in Bavaria where he was schooled in maths and sciences. Lamont spent vacations assisting at the Royal Observatory at Bogenhausen (Munich). These interests led…
On December 3, 1842, environmental chemist Ellen Swallow Richards was born. Attracted to chemistry at Vassar, she applied for job as a professional chemist but was persuaded to apply to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she became the first woman accepted at this…