Science
History of Infinity Day: August 8
HISTORY OF INFINITY DAY: AUGUST 8 Infinity Day is also known as Universal & International Infinity Day. It is a commemoration held on the 8th day of the 8th month of each year to celebrate and promote Philosophy and Philosophizing for the ordinary person. Why 8 is significant: 8 planets in the Solar System…
Read MoreHistory of the 1st Moon Landing – Apollo 11: 52 Years Ago
HISTORY OF THE 1ST MOON LANDING: APOLLO 11 Fifty-two years ago today, at 3:17 Eastern Time, July 20, 1969, the first human stepped out of the Apollo 11 lunar module onto the moon. With the immortal words of the 38-year-old Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” …the…
Read MoreScience of the Summer Solstice
SCIENCE OF THE SUMMER SOLSTICE The word Solstice comes from the Latin solstitium, meaning “Sun, standing-still.” This year the Summer Solstice occurs on June 20 at 21:44 UTC, Coordinated Universal Time, or Zulu Time, or roughly Greenwich Mean Time. Greenwich, England, is the prime meridian — the zero point for longitude lines. Why is UTC the…
Read MoreHistory of Star Wars
HISTORY OF STAR WARS The original Star Wars movie premiered on May 25, 1977. In November of 1976, I picked up a new science fiction novel called “Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker” by George Lucas. I did not know at the time that it was ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster, a popular…
Read MoreHistory of Earth Day
HISTORY OF EARTH DAY April 22 is called Earth Day because it both commemorates and celebrates the observance of the anniversary of our discovery of planet Earth. At this time, by all accounts, there is general agreement that Earth is far superior to the planet from which we came, as we shall recount below. Meanwhile,…
Read MoreHistory of World Backup Day
HISTORY OF WORLD BACKUP DAY There isn’t much history, as the first celebration of this geek holiday was in 2011. World Backup Day is only a decade old. But the need is real, now more than ever before. Especially in light of this salient fact: April Fools’ Day. March 31, the day before, is an…
Read MoreHistory of The Spring: What is the Vernal Equinox?
HISTORY OF THE SPRING In Colorado we have a saying, we begin the first day of Spring in the same way we began the Fall: with snow. This symmetry is relevant as both the beginning of Spring and Fall coincide with the Equinox. This word is made up of two Latin root words aequus and…
Read MoreHistory of Pi Day: 3.14
HISTORY OF PI DAY This holiday is often overlooked by those who do not speak Greek or those who do not speak Geek… but for the science major, this is a special celebration. Though it is an irregular constant number, regularly and annually on March 14, or 3/14, or 3.14 — we have the first…
Read MoreHistory of Daylight Saving Time: Why do we Spring forward?
HISTORY OF DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME It seems like only yesterday that we discussed the end of Daylight Saving Time, or DST, a brilliant campaign to convince people that we’re getting more daylight each day when in reality, they’ve simply changed their clocks and then forgotten about it within two weeks. Actually, it was only back…
Read MoreHistory of the 1st Year of Coronavirus: It Ain’t Over Yet
HISTORY OF THE 1st YEAR OF CORONAVIRUS: IT AIN’T OVER YET One year ago today, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the rapidly spreading Coronavirus a global pandemic. It had noted in early January last year a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. Soon thereafter, it reported in their Disease…
Read MoreHistory of Coronavirus: How Will It End?
HISTORY OF CORONAVIRUS: HOW WILL IT END? On December 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization to the first COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S., making the Pfizer-BioNTech injection the first to be administered. Yesterday, the FDA also approved the second candidate from Moderna-BioNTech. While having a vaccine is a necessary…
Read MoreHistory of How Pandemics End: Implications for Today’s COVID-19
HISTORY OF HOW PANDEMICS END: IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY’S COVID-19 With the COVID-19 pandemic on everyone’s mind, the natural question is: How have pandemics ended in the past… and what can we learn from these historical lessons? As a follow-up to the article I wrote at the beginning of the COVID “lockdown” back in March,…
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