Science, Tech and Society (2022 – 2023)

January 2022

21. Dark side of the moon (Facebook)
22. Solar flare captured 20 January 2022 (Facebook)
23. Environmental regulation works (Facebook)
24. Jupiter, the fifth planet (Facebook)
25. Science as art
26. What is the color of water?
27. IBM and the Holocaust
28. Space shuttle Challenger explodes (Facebook)
29. Carl Benz (Facebook)
30. Doug Engelbart (Facebook)
31. Ham experiences low Earth orbit

February 2022

1. The OED: how we know the history of the word “vax”
2. The ice cream scoop is very old!
3. A woman pilots a space shuttle
4. The shoemaker’s cabinet and its modern corollary, the shoe shine stand
5. How the white collar was born
6. The woman who found the oldest evidence of human bipedalism
7. Venus is at its most brilliant this month
8. First trans-Atlantic TV broadcast
   
9. Weather forecasting was initially an Army undertaking
10. Man v machine: part one
11. Japan and China became space powers in 1970
12. Insulin treatments for diabetes are 100 years old
13. Almost 400 years ago, Galileo faced heresy charges
14. First solar system Family Portrait
15. YouTube is 17 years old
16. How 9-1-1 became America’s emergency number
17. Japanese researcher honored for chickenpox vaccine
18. Apple.com is 35 years old
19. The first warrant issued to search a computer storage device
20. John Glenn was the first American (but third man) to orbit the Earth
21. “Bubble Boy” dies after unsuccessful bone marrow transplant
22. Cloning, from Huxley to Dolly to Kurt
23. Mobile phones, TCP/IP and murder
24. An unintended consequence of war
25. About 20,000 years ago, ancient Africans started sticking closer to home
26. From military defense to daily necessity: radar
27. For much of America’s history, voting was a non-secret affair
28. Covid-19 vaccines: record speed

March 2022

1. In the beginning, Netscape
2. The Antarctic ozone hole, a global environmental success story (sorta)
3. Lincoln promoted science while fighting the Civil War
4. From agricultural research to an agent of war: nerve gas
5. When Arkansas turned a blind eye to forensic science and justice
6. Bayer Aspirin: patented on this day in 1899
7. Transformative communication technologies: the telephone
8. Failed WWII attempt to create rubber substitute yields Hall of Fame toy
9. How old is Reddi-wip?
10. When cost-cutting kills: the Boeing 737 Max 8
11. The “Spanish Flu” breaks out in Kansas in March 1918
12. The first fireside chat
13. The birth of the K-9 Corps
14. Pelican Island, the birth of the National Wildlife Refuge System
15. From mold and dirt to drugs, antibiotics have transformed medicine
16. Real gas prices are not at record levels; corporations are price gouging
17. St. Patrick’s Day reflects the power of storytelling. And writing.
18. It’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” 111th birthday
19. Lack of Internet access linked to Covid-19 deaths
20. The vernal equinox (this year, anyway)
21. Twitter turns 16
22. The Humvee’s torturous history
23. Health care, space, Covid-19 and WWII: 23 March has been history-making
24. Exxon Valdez oil spill effects still linger
25. Republicans challenge updated voting technologies, starting with Georgia
26. Vaccines would eradicate polio in the United States
27. Earthquake!
28. Three Mile Island: our brush with a nuclear plant disaster
29. Mobile phone video helped convict George Floyd’s murderer
30. The pencil with an eraser that could be sharpened
31. The 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote (30 March 1870)

April 2022

1. Gmail is old enough to vote!
2. The world’s first anthrax epidemic began 43 years ago
3. The first computer to fit under an airplane seat!
4. MLK assassinated
5. Fox Broadcasting is 35 years old
6. It’s the 30th anniversary of Microsoft Windows 3.1
7. AT&T demoed the first TV transmission over telephone lines
8. Milk bottles: a milestone on the journey to sanitary fresh milk
9. The Civil War ended 157 years ago
10. Scientists released the first photograph of a black hole three years ago
11. Sports broadcasting is 101 years old
12. Space shuttle Columbia makes its maiden voyage
13. Ukraine issues memorial stamp
14. John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln 157 years ago
15. 75 years ago, Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier
16. Contracts begin requiring that parts be interchangeable
17. The first West Coast Computer Faire featured the Apple II
18. Patent filed for the chemical aspartame; the brain knows it’s not sugar
19. Moore’s law is born
20. It was not a “spill”
21. The Seattle Space Needle is 60 years old
22. Mosaic 1.0 released on 22 April 1993
23. Trump suggested injecting bleach to treat Covid-19
24. Hubble Space Telescope launched
25. The plastic bag: from invention to pollutant
26. Congress debates creating a postal telegraph to ‘send mails by electricity’
27. One of the deadliest days in tornado history in the US
28. The iTunes Music Store proved consumers would pay for digital music
29. The first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences
30. The brightest star in the sky

May 2022

1. Rethinking the salt we eat
2. From involuntary sterilization to abortion
3. West Virginia establishes the first sales tax
4. WWII food rationing coupon book issued
5. The first American in space
6. The Hindenburg tragedy, 06 May 1937
7. In 1847, doctors launched the American Medical Association
8. From patent medicine to global conglomerate
9. FDA approved the birth-control pill in 1960
10. American book bans focus on race and gender identity
11. From human computers to computerized spreadsheets
12. Origin myths: QWERTY and Dvorak
13. Don’t call it VELCRO®!
14. The first vaccine: smallpox
15. 15 May 2022: a melange
16. Watergate hearings begin
17. Mount St. Helens blows
18. A patent for keeping severed heads alive
19. Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart fly across the Atlantic
20. Daylight Saving Time begins in the UK
21. Robert Metcalfe visualizes a networked world
22. New York Public Library dedicated
23. Let there be light!
24. Milk carton kids: appropriate awareness or exaggerated stranger-danger?
25. We’ll do nothing about gun violence until we accept that the Second Amendment was about slavery
26. Iconic skyline a triumph during the Great Depression
27. The first cloned horse was born in Italy 19 years ago
28. A day to celebrate women race car drivers
29. A day for awareness, not just remembrance
30. 101 years ago, the Tulsa Race Massacre began
31. Ted Turner launches CNN

June 2022

1. Velveeta, the recover-and-reuse, then reformulate, American … something
2. Long-distance electricity comes to Portland, Oregon
3. Congress passes the 19th Amendment; it moves on to the states
4. When Apple shifted to the Intel chip
5. Bobby Kennedy dies in California
6. Alan Turing, 41, died in London
7. When Israel attacked the USS Liberty
8. 1973: Secretariat wins the Triple Crown
9. The window envelope is 120 years old
10. Gas prices at the pump have increased faster than crude in the barrel
11. Science supports law: race is a social construct
12. Microsoft announces vaporware
13. Happy birthday, UNIVAC!
14. We all scream for ice cream!
15. First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova
16. Evolution of Federal Register comments and Speak out to end corruption (The Moderate Voice)
17. Image shows rings around a black hole
18. The tireless effort to create a national religion
19. The White House and solar energy
20. Columbia Records introduces the long playing vinyl record
21. The G.I. Bill demonstrated the power of public investment in people
22. “Global warming has begun”
23. Professors injured by mail bombs on each coast, part of a “string of bombings” that began in 1978
24. June 25th deceptions: broken treaties, broken oaths
25. The bar code is born
26. One year ago: the Pacific Northwest was gripped by historic heat wave
27. “As We May Think“
28. The first iPhone goes on sale
29. The Corvette is 69 years old
30. GWTW hits the bookstores

July 2022

1. The television era begins
2. Seattle is home to the world’s longest floating bridges
3. Mechanization comes to newspapers
4. The first round-the-world telegram foreshadowed a shift in global news
5. Elvis records ‘That’s All Right (Mamma)’
6. The first African American tennis champion was a woman
7. The Carters celebrate 76 years of marriage
8. A myth is born
9. Pan Am Flight 759, the second deadliest crash that killed 153
10. The Scopes trial begins
11. The rise and fall of the slide rule
12. Webb’s First Deep Field reveals thousands of galaxies
13. The Global Jukebox straddles the Atlantic
14. From Mars to the origins of the universe
15. Twitter turns (sweet?) 16
16. The United States starts the nuclear age
17. Wrong-Way Corrigan joins Lindbergh, Earhart
18. In 1876, the British government launched an industrial air pollution investigation
19. Seneca Falls hosts the first American women’s rights convention
20. In 1925, Darrow questions Bryan on ‘his view of the literal truth of the Bible’
21. From Mercury to Atlantis: 50 years of manned space travel ended on 21 July 2011
22. Around the world in (about) eight days
23. William A. Burt patents the first working model of a typewriter
24. Apollo 11 splashes down in the Pacific
25. First “test tube” baby
26. Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic Party presidential nominee
27. Technology, a tool with no agency
28. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
29. On the eve of the 20th century, 26 nations grappled with tactics and weapons of war
30. “In God We Trust”
31. The last British TV ad for cigarettes (until 2014, that is)

August 2022

1. The Navy recalls retired Commander Grace Hopper
2. Does anybody really know what time it is?
3. The USS Nautilus crosses the North Pole beneath the Arctic ice cap
4. The day the Fairness Doctrine died
5. The saga of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable
6. The United States drops a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan
7. ‘The first large-scale general-purpose automatic digital computer’
8. Nixon resigns
9. First email from space
10. An establishment for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge”
11. Hedy Lamarr, beauty and inventor
12. The personal computer era gets a kick start
13. The best blues singer you may not know
14. Enter the Wiffle Ball, an alternative baseball with holes
15. Did Earth receive a big “Hello” 45 years ago?
16. Punch cards enter business vernacular
17. Recorded music goes digital
18. Tennessee ratifies the 19th Amendment
19. First U.S. Cold War coup
20. Voyager 2 lifts off from Cape Canaveral
21. Drumbeats on the horizon: the first Lincoln-Douglas debate
22. The car that saved de Gaulle’s life
23. In Sweden, a bank robbery begins
24. Deconstructing history: the eruption of Mount Vesuvius
25. A hoax goes viral in 1835
26. This August, it’s 1-in-1,000 rain events (instead of hurricanes)
27. The giant battery in Alaska
28. Rufus Porter starts Scientific American
29. 1957 filibuster would illustrate growing influence of political blogs 45 years later
30. Meat inspection begins, for exports
31. The first simultaneous, multi-organ transplant takes place in Houston

September 2022

1. The Doomsday Clock, launched in 1947, edges forward in 1953
2. Automation and banking
3. The most photographed man of the 1800s
4. The first coast-to-coast television broadcast
5. The first ‘Labor Day’ took place 140 years ago in New York City
6. Genentech develops synthetic insulin
7. The U.S. begins the process of transferring control of the Panama Canal
8. Star Trek or Star Wars?
9. Radio begins transition from islands to networks
10. Swanson introduces its frozen turkey dinner
11. An infamous speech promoted U.S. isolation during WWII
12. Kennedy calls for “freedom and peace” in space, not “weapons of mass destruction”
13. Frederic Tudor created the market for ice
14. North America’s first lighthouse begins operating in Boston
15. Dose, as well as form, makes the poison
16. Hollywood introduces CinemaScope
17. From IBM and the seven dwarfs to Linux + Bonus: The Who and the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
18. The second radio network launches
19. New Zealand first nation to grant women voting rights
20. Fortran debuts as alternative to machine language
21. The nation’s first daily newspaper was in Philadelphia
22. The telegraph and railroads become partners
23. The story of WD-40
24. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: the most popular Black poet of her time
25. From the telegraph to the telephone, but no closer to world peace
26. Kennedy and Nixon debate on national TV for the first time
27. Cracking the Rosetta Stone
28. Ted Williams, one of the best hitters in baseball
29. Sometimes, the quotation is real
30. A study in contrasts: OTD, September 30th

October 2022

1. The Yosemite Act of 1890 protects 1,500 square miles in California
2. Gatorade is born as synthetic sweat
3. “This machine kills fascists”
4. Sputnik 1 ushers in the space age
5. The first televised address from the White House, 05 October 1947
6. The first train robbery
7. Soviet spacecraft photographs the dark side of the moon
8. US stamp commemorates ENIAC
9. First woman to pilot an airplane across the U.S.
10. The “Great National Project” is eclipsed by the railroads
11. Documenting the Great Depression
12. The NeXT computer is born
13. When did you start using a cellphone?
14. First supersonic flight in rocket-powered research plane
15. British aviator sets land speed record
16. There’s a fish named for Led Zeppelin
17. From the first “test tube” baby to the first US birth from a frozen egg
18. The BBC launches as a private company, 100 years ago
19. Blockbuster opens its first store
20. The Saturday Night Massacre: 49 years ago
21. Word of the day: portability
22. 225 years ago, a Frenchman fell 3,200 feet from the sky
23. The iPod “changed everything”
24. The day the Pony Express died
25. OTD: John Carpenter’s Halloween lands in theaters
26. The Donora smog killed 20 and brought national attention to air pollution
27. NYT political analysis highlights newsroom innumeracy
28. October 28: ‘thou shall not’ day
29. It was a shocker!
30. The most (in)famous radio broadcast
31. The first ISS crew launches from Russia

November 2022

1. The Library of Congress opens its doors
2. The Spruce Goose is 75 years old
3. SOS becomes an official international distress call in 1906
4. The first presidential election with a computer predicting the winner
5. Marie Curie delivers her inaugural lecture at Sorbonne University
6. IBM and Microsoft go beyond a handshake
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