Monarch butterflies
In 1975,
Kenneth C. Brugger discovered the long-unknown winter destination of the
monarch butterfly in the mountains of Mexico. From 1937, for 38 years, Canadian
zoologist Freud Urquhart patiently investigated to establish the route and
destination of the insects. Using tags on the wings of some butterflies, he
followed their migration trails to Mexican territory. Brugger, one of
Urquhart's helpers, after a long period of traveling in the center of Mexico,
found the first butterfly refuge. Within the
territory of only 200 square meters, there are around 20 million butterflies.
The area was cold and covered with oyamel trees and pine trees, a few
kilometers from rural towns.
In 1960, John
Reynolds set the age of solar system at 4,950,000,000 years.
In 1959, the
first lunar space shot to escape the Earth's gravitational pull was launched by the Soviet
Union. Originally named “Cosmic Rocket”, the unmanned mission was retroactively named Luna
1. Just over 8 hours later, instead of impacting the Moon as intended, due
to a guidance system error, it passed to within about 4,000 miles (6,400 km).
Instead, it became the first spacecraft to enter orbit around the Sun. The
spacecraft was equipped with instruments to measure cosmic radiation and also
the magnetic fields of the Earth and the Moon. It released a cloud of sodium
gas, which glowed due to the
Sun's radiation like an artificial comet, and made it visible from Earth.
Contact lasted 62 hours after the launch until the batteries were drained. Luna
2 was launched 12
Sep 1959.
.
In 1936, the
first electron tube to enable night vision was described, in St Louis, Mo.
In 1900, the
Chicago Canal opened.
In 1890, the
seals were broken on prototype meter No. 27 and prototype kilogram No. 20 in
the Cabinet room of the Executive Mansion by U.S. President Benjamin Harrison,
observed by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and invited
guests. Following the Metric Convention (20 May 1875), which the U.S. had
signed, prototype measures had been prepared of platinum-iridium alloy from the
international prototypes in France, and were ready for distribution on 26 Sep
1889. Two of each were furnished to the U.S.: kilograms Nos. 21 and 27, and
meters Nos. 4 and 20. Those on which the seals were broken were thereby adopted
as the U.S. national prototypes, which would thereafter be used to define all
measurements of length and weight in the U.S.
In 1870,
construction began on the Brooklyn Bridge to
cross the East River, New York City, USA, with a single span, a breadth of
1,600 feet navigable water. The 13 year project was started by John Roebling, and after
his death, completed by his son Washington Roebling. It was
opened on 24 May 1883. What was then regarded as the greatest engineering feat
still stands in service today, and remains the world's only stone-towered,
steel cabled bridge. Twice the size of the Niagara Suspension Bridge and four
times the longest non-extension spans then attempted, the total length of this
colossal structure is 6,927 ft. The road bed is 80 feet wide, at an elevation
of 186 feet above high water.
In 1842, the
first U.S. wire suspension vehicle bridge was opened to traffic at Fairmount,
Pennsylvania, for Calloway Sreet to cross the Schuylkill river. It was designed
and built by the engineer Charles Ellet to
replace the 1816 wooden “Colossus” bridge that burned in 1838. Ellet’s bridge
spanned 342 feet, and had a clear width of 25 feet. It was replaced in 1875 by
a truss bridge. From 1809 to 1816 there had been prior short-lived bridges at
the site, each of which collapsed under excessive loads. One used suspension
cables of long iron links (1809-1811), replaced by another suspension (fell 17
Jan 1816) and a third (opened Jun 1816, fell Winter 1816) was only 18 inches
wide, but was the first to use cables, made with six 3/8" wires by the
nearby wire mill of White and Hazard.
In 1839,
French pioneering photographer Louis Daguerre took the
first photograph of the moon. Unfortunately it was lost when on 8 Mar 1839, a
fire burned his laboratory to the ground, together with his records and early
experiment materials. The earliest surviving photograph of the moon, a
daguerreotype, was taken by John Adams Whipple (1851.
In 1813, a
special Commission opened at York, England to put on trial 66 persons for offenses connected
with Luddism. Within days, seventeen of them had been executed on the scaffold.
Taking their name from (perhaps mythical) Ned Ludd, Luddites vowed to
destroy the factory mechanization they blamed for their unemployment. Riots
began in 1812, and spread north from Nottingham where half of the population
were receiving parish relief. Falling prices for goods, bad harvest increasing
prices for food, wages at starvation level, costs of war and lost foreign
markets contributed to the economic distress of the working class. One thousand
looms were broken up in Nottingham, and a law was passed making destruction of
machinery a capital offence.
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