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| NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 31 | |
| Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page. | |
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| Quotations for Today | |
| (The five-ton IBM Mark I computer of 1943 sounded "...like a roomful of ladies knitting." - Jeremy Bernstein, American physicist and writer (born 1929) (On our difficulty in completely understanding the Maya) "It is, perhaps, as irrational to expect a satisfactory penetration of the mystic and emotional aura of the Maya philosophy of time by a creature of the twentieth-century Western culture as it is to hope for a balanced, sympathetic and understanding study of the ecstasy of St. Francis from the pen of a militant atheist of our materialistic age. Our outlooks are too far from those of the Maya and, on top of that terrible handicap, there are so many aspects of the problem which are imperfectly known or completely unknown to us. The atheistic student of St. Francis has at his disposal incomparably richer sources than we can ever dream of having." Sir Eric Thompson, English ethanographer (born 31 Dec 1898) "The road to medical knowledge is through the pathological museum and not through an apothecary's shop." - William Withey Gull, English physician (born 31 Dec 1816) | |
| QUIZ | |
| Births | |
| Robert Grant Aitken, born 31 Dec 1864, was an American astronomer who specialized in the study of certain stars, of which he discovered more than 3,000. He worked at the Lick Observatory from 1895 to 1935, becoming director from 1930. What type of stars did he systematically survey? | |
| A Flemish anatomist, born 31 Dec 1514, was a university teacher who insisted on conducting detailed dissections on human cadavers personally. His De humani corporis fabrica (On the structure of the human body) provided detailed information for anatomists. He was the teacher of Gabriel Fallopius, who in turn tutored Hieronymous Fabricius, who then taught William Harvey. This lineage made the most dramatic reassessment of the anatomy and function of the human body that had occurred for centuries, and thus can be said to have started the modern science of medicine. Can you name this anatomist? | |
| Deaths | |
| An English astronomer (1646-1719) established the Greenwich Observatory and was appointed the first Astronomer Royal (1675-1719). He was devoted to astronomical measurement, with the task of accurately providing the positions of stars for use in navigation. Can you name the first Astronomer Royal? | |
| Events | |
| On 31 Dec of a certain year, the "drunkometer," the first breath test for car drivers, invented by Dr Rolla N. Harger of Indiana University School of Medicine, was officially introduced in Indianapolis. It was the first successful machine for testing human blood alcohol content by breath analysis. In what decade was the drunkometer introduced? | |
| On 31 Dec 1911, a scientist received her second Nobel prize. Can you name this scientist? | |
| Answers | |
| When you have your answers ready to all the questions above, you'll find all the information to check them, and more, on the December 31 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. | |
| Fast answers for the previous newsletter for December 30: Coca-Cola®; Robert Boyle; blue moon; tungsten. | |
| Feedback | |
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