Newsletter for Friday 6 November.

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TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY

NEWSLETTER • 6 NOVEMBER

Feature for Today

Book of the Day

Quotations for Today

	The limitations of archaeology are galling. It collects phenomena, but hardly ever can isolate them so as to interpret scientifically; it can frame any number of hypotheses, but rarely, if ever, scientifically prove. — David George Hogarth, English archaeologist (died 6 Nov 1927).
	Paleontology is not geology, it is zoology; it succeeds only in so far as it is pursued in the zoological and biological spirit. — Henry Fairfield Osborn, American paleontologist and museum director (died 6 Nov 1935).
	The discovery of the telephone has made us acquainted with many strange phenomena. It has enabled us, amongst other things, to establish beyond a doubt the fact that electric currents actually traverse the earth's crust. The theory that the earth acts as a great reservoir for electricity may be placed in the physicist's waste-paper basket, with phlogiston, the materiality of light, and other old-time hypotheses. — Sir William Henry Preece, Welsh electrical engineer (died 6 Nov 1913).

Quiz

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.
Births
	Alois Senefelder, born 6 Nov 1771, was a German inventor. To publish his own work, he needed a less expensive and more efficient printing alternative to relief printed hand set type or etched plates. His invention was the biggest revolution in the printing industry since Gutenberg's movable type. Today it is used to print magazines and books. What is the printing method he invented?
	On 6 Nov of a certain year, Adolphe Sax was born, a Belgian-French designer of musical instruments, including the saxophone. He invented and patented it within the same decade. In which decade was the saxophone invented/patented?
Deaths
	David Marine (1888-1976) was an American pathologist whose substantial research on the treatment of goiter. He ran a trial during 1917-22 to show that the incidence of the disease could be dramatically reduced with a certain dietary supplement. Its success led him promote a solution that is now present on kitchen shelves around the world. What substance is now added to which grocery item because of his research?
	Claude Louis Berthollet (1748-1822) was a chemist who was the first to note that the completeness of chemical reactions depends in part upon the masses of the reacting substances (1803); he thus came close to formulating the law of mass action. Though he incorrectly concluded that elements unite in all proportions, his resulting controversy with the chemist Joseph-Louis Proust led to the establishment of the law of definite proportions. What was his nationality?
Events
	On 6 Nov 1981, a black-footed animal was found again in Wyoming, after being regarded as extinct. Its habitat was North America’s arid, shortgrass prairies, where it lived primarily with, and on, prairie dogs. Wide-scale poisoning programs to eradicate prairie dogs (because of their destruction of the grasslands) had also killed off this animal, although it was not a direct target. Can you name this animal?
	On 6 Nov 2012, there were 4,000 write-in votes for a scientist, cast as a protest in the re-election of an unopposed Republican U.S. House Representative from Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. The incumbent was an outspoken anti-science fundamentalist, so contemptuous of the Big Bang Theory that he called it “lies straight from the pit of hell,” and yet he sat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. A campaign had promoted which scientist's name for the protest write-in votes (although deceased and unelectable)?

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 November 6 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers.

Fast answers for the previous newsletter for November 5: “dirty snowball” • the Coca-Cola bottle • rare earth elements (samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium and holmium) • James Clerk Maxwell • decade containing the year 1895 • Marie Curie.

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