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| NEWSLETTER - JANUARY 17 | |
| 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 | |
| "It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent" (1787) - Benjamin Franklin (born 17 Jan 1706 ) "Science can never be a closed book. It is like a tree, ever growing, ever reaching new heights. Occasionally, the lower branches, no longer giving nourishment to the tree, slough off. We should not be ashamed to change our methods; rather, we should be ashamed not to do so." - Charles V. Chapin, pioneer epidemiologist who directed the first American municipal health laboratory (born 17 Jan 1856) "There is no doubt a natural tendency to base experiments upon certain preconceived ideas; but it is one thing to be guided solely by such phenomena as may at the moment appear of especial importance, and another to base operations upon the completed outline of a theory upon the principal data bearing upon the question. I have myself more than once abandoned a line of research undertaking in connection with the problem of heredity, because I felt that to proceed without the guidance of a theory more or less complete in itself, and developed on a basis of ascertained facts, would be little better than groping in the dark." - August Weismann, German biologist, a founder of the science of genetics who established a "germ plasm" theory which was the forerunner of DNA theory (born 17 Jan 1834) (source) | |
| QUIZ | |
| Births | |
| An American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat was born 17 Jan 1706. He become widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical experiments and theories. He invented a stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth than open fireplaces. The lightning rod, and in 1784 a device to improve his aging eyesight also were his ideas. What was Franklin's invention to improve his aging eyesight? | |
| Deaths | |
| Clyde W. Tombaugh (1906-1997) was an American astronomer who in 1930 made the only discovery of its kind in the twentieth century. Tombaugh was 24 years of age when he made this discovery at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. What was Tombaugh's most famous discovery? | |
| Richard Lower (1631-1691) was an English physician and physiologist who made the first direct transfusion of blood from one animal to the veins of another (1665). This idea of injecting blood into a living animal, and of doing this not by syringe or bladder, but from one animal to another, was first mentioned by Lower in a letter to Robert Boyle of Jun 1664. What animals did he use in his blood transfusion investigation? | |
| Events | |
| On 17 Jan of a certain year, for the first time, full energy was released by the first synchrotron which was installed at the Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. It was invented by Edwin Mattison of the same university, and would accelerate electrons by virtue of their negative charges, using a betatron-type magnet that weighed about 8 tons. In which decade did this synchroton first operate at full energy? | |
| On 17 Jan 1871, a U.S. patent was issued for an "endless wire rope way " subsequently used for the the first cable car public transport in the world powered using moving cables under the street. In which city did Hallidie build the first such public transport? | |
| 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 January 17 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. | |
| Fast answers for the previous newsletter for January 16: Rwanda; Robert Jemison Van de Graaff; the decade including the year 1969; Sally Ride; fish. | |
| Feedback | |
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