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…
On June 10, 1834, naturalist Charles Darwin passed through the “East and West Furies”, the Tower Rocks, to reach the open waters of the Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Beagle. HMS Beagle was, to its time, as modern and science-packed as any space station. Its…
On May 13, 1857, Dr. Ronald Ross was born into an age when many suspected that putrid air was the culprit that killed hundreds of thousands of people and who called this killer disease malaria from the Italian mal’aria [“bad air”]. Toward the end…
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 January 4, 1809, inventor and educator Louis Braille was born near Paris. He played and “helped’ his father who made harnesses and other leather goods in his workshop. On one fateful day, playing with an awl, a sharp, pointed tool for piercing leather,…
On December 30, 1863, American physician and bacteriologist William Hallock Park was born. He specialized in nose and throat diseases in New York City and soon became interested in the new science of bacteriology. In NYC, a lengthy epidemic of diphtheria had become the…
On December 26, 1791, English mathematician and pioneer computer scientist Charles Babbage was born. He spent much of his life trying to plan and build a machine that would make as many calculations as possible. Error free, of course. He had read about the…