TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 25 MAY
On 25 May 1844, the first news communicated by telegraph in the U.S. was sent 80 miles to the Baltimore Patriot, Maryland, from Washington, D.C. The transmission gave information on the results of a motion that had just been voted in Congress. This was just one day after Samuel Morse had tapped out over the same wires his famous message, “What hath God wrought!” to inaugurate America’s first telegraph line. Decades later, John W. Kirk wrote an article in Scribner’s Magazine (1892) in which he described what was involved to set up this telegraph line. In Historic Moments: The First News Message By Telegraph you can read some interesting comments and even doubts expressed by eye witnesses at the time.
On 25 May 1967, C. B. Momsen died, the American inventor of methods to save crew from disabled submarines. Today's book pick is: The Terrible Hours: The Greatest Submarine Rescue in History, by Peter Maas, who relates the miraculous survival of 33 crew members of America's newest submarine, the Squalus, using a huge pear-shaped diving bell. Maas reconstructs the harrowing 39 hours between the disappearance of the submarine Squalus during a test dive off the New England coast and the eventual rescue of crew trapped in the vessel 250 feet beneath the sea. Under the worst possible circumstances, Momsen led a successful mission and helped change the future of undersea lifesaving. It's a white-knuckler of a read.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $8.14. Used from $0.79. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard. — Madame C.J. Walker, Black-American businessperson and inventor (died 25 May 1919).  |
 | Firm support has been found for the assertion that electricity occurs at thousands of points where we at most conjectured that it was present. Innumerable electrical particles oscillate in every flame and light source. We can in fact assume that every heat source is filled with electrons which will continue to oscillate ceaselessly and indefinitely. All these electrons leave their impression on the emitted rays. We can hope that experimental study of the radiation phenomena, which are exposed to various influences, but in particular to the effect of magnetism, will provide us with useful data concerning a new field, that of atomistic astronomy, as Lodge called it, populated with atoms and electrons instead of planets and worlds. — Pieter Zeeman, Dutch physicist (born 25 May 1865). |
| no image | The recent ruling by the Supreme Court restricting obscenity in books, magazines and movies, requires that we re-examine our own journals for lewd contents. The recent chemical literature provides many examples of words and concepts whose double meaning and thinly veiled overtones are an affront to all clean chemists. What must a layman think of ‘coupling constants’, ‘tickling techniques’, or indeed ‘increased overlap’? The bounds of propriety are surely exceeded when heterocyclic chemists discuss homoenolization. — Hans Wynberg, Dutch chemist (died 25 May 2011). |
| 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 | |
 | Jack Steinberger, a German-born American physicist, born on 25 May 1921, along with Leon M. Lederman and Melvin Schwartz, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988 for their joint discoveries concerning a certain nuclear particle. Can you name this particle? |
 | On 25 May 1889, an American pioneer in aircraft design was born in Russia. He is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. Can you name this engineer? |
 | On 25 May 1860, Daniel Barringer was born, who used his skills as a mining engineer and geologist to examine what he declared to be a feature caused by a meteor strike, and not as previously assumed, an extinct volcano. Is now known as the Great Barringer Meteor Crater. The Great Barringer Meteor Crater is in which U.S. state? |
| Deaths | |
 | Sir Frank Dyson (1868-1939) was a British astronomer who in 1919 organized observations of stars near the Sun, which provided evidence supporting the earlier prediction of another scientist of the bending of light in a gravitational field. Can you name the other scientist who predicted this bending of light? |
| Events | |
 | On 25 May 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy formally announced that "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out..." Can you complete his sentence? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for May 24: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit • Nicolaus Copernicus • Westminster Bridge • Brooklyn Bridge • the decade including the year 1960.
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