| MARCH 19 - BIRTHS | |
| Mario Molina | |
(source) |
 Born 19
Mar 1943
Mexican-born American chemist who was jointly awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with chemists F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen, for research in the 1970s concerning the decomposition of the ozonosphere, which shields the Earth from dangerous solar radiation. The discoveries of Molina and Rowland, that some industrially manufactured gases deplete the ozone layer, led to an international movement in the late 20th century to limit the widespread use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. |
| Frédéric Joliot-Curie | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1900; died 14 Aug 1958.
French physical chemist, husband of Irène Joliot-Curie, who were jointly awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discovery of artificially prepared, radioactive isotopes of new elements. They were the son-in-law and daughter of Nobel Prize winners Pierre and Marie Curie. |
| Giuseppe Mario Bellanca | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1886; died 26 Dec 1960.
Italian-American aviation pioneer who designed and built airplanes, including the first U.S. monoplane with an enclosed cabin (1917). He had a flying school (1912-16) at Long Island, N.Y., where he built and learned to fly his first plane. In 1917, he designed the first enclosed-cabin monoplane, which he flew successfully in air races. The CF airliner he created in 1920 could carry four passengers in an enclosed cabin. It won three major performance contests in 1922. Although regarded as "the world's best airplane," he couldn't sell them, in a market glutted with surplus WW I airplanes. In 1931, Pangborn and Herdon flew a Bellanca plane on the first Japan-to-U.S. nonstop flight.«  Giuseppe
Bellanca's Golden age, the Golden Age of Aviation Series,
by A. and D.W. Abel. |
| Sir Norman Haworth | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1883; died 19 Mar 1950.
Walter Norman Haworth was a British chemist, cowinner, with the Swiss chemist Paul Karrer, of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in determining the chemical structures of various carbohydrates and the synthesis of vitamin C (1934), which was the first artificial preparation of any vitamin. |
| Evarts Graham | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1883; died 4 Mar 1957.
Evarts Ambrose Graham was an American surgeon who performed the first operation to remove a lung, on 5 Apr 1933*. At Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, he operated on a fellow physician with lung cancer. Until then, removal of a lobe of a lung was occasionally done to treat lung cancer, if the tumour was limited to one lobe. When exploration revealed this patient's cancer involved more than one lobe, he removed the entire lung. Seven ribs were removed to permit the soft tissues of the chest wall to fill the resulting cavity. The patient recovered and was cured of the disease. This was a triumph for the era that electrified the surgical world. Graham devoted many years to the study of lung cancer and its link to cigarette smoking. |
| Sir John Marshall | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1876; died 17 Aug 1958.
English archaeologist who was director general of the Indian Archaeological Survey (1902-31). His aim was to bring to life Indian culture in the past by uncovering all possible details of her cities, tools, ornaments, laws and customs. In the 1920's, Marshall he began a systematic program of excavations that revealed Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, the two largest cities of the previously unknown Indus Valley Civilization, which he firmly believed was comparable in every way with the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. He excavated Taxila, Vaisali, Nalanda, Rajagriha and Sarnath; enacted the Ancient Monuments Act (1904), built up a library, reorganised publications and recruited Indians to high positions in the Survey. |
| Herbert Thacker Herr | |
| Born 19
Mar 1876; died 19 Dec 1933.
U.S. mechanical engineer who advanced the design of steam turbines with simplifications, increased capacity and improved methods of manufacturing. Early in his career as a machinist and draftsman for a railroad, he invented a braking control for trains having several locomotives (1904) and a mechanism to regulate braking power according to the weight of the car. By 1908, he was vice president and general manager of the Westinghouse Machine Company. In developing steam turbines (1913), he brought together elements of the highly efficient Parsons system with elements of the lighter Curtis- Rateau impulse system. He also pioneered in propulsion of marine vessels, and remote-control to operate a ship's engine from the bridge (1916).«  |
|
| William Morton Wheeler | |
| Born 19
Mar 1865; died 19 Apr 1937.
American entomologist recognized as one of the world's foremost authorities on ants and other social insects (though he had trained as an insect embryologist). Two of his works, Ants: Their Structure, Development, and Behavior (1910) and Social Life Among the Insects (1923), long served as standard references on their subjects. Arguably the first important ethologist in North America, he popularized the term "ethology" in the English language with a 1902 paper in Science. He was interested in the evolution of social systems and a highly productive taxonomist. |
|
| Wilhelm von Biela | |
| Born 19
Mar 1782; died 18 Feb 1856.
(Baron) Austrian astronomer, known for his measurement (1826) of a previously known comet as having an orbital period of 6.6 years. Subsequently, known as Biela's Comet, it was observed to break in two (1846), and in 1852 the fragments returned as widely separated twin comets that were not seen again. However, in 1872 and 1885, bright meteor showers (known as Andromedids, or Bielids) were observed when the Earth crossed the path of the comet's known orbit. This observation provided the first concrete evidence for the idea that some meteors are composed of fragments of disintegrated comets. |
|
| William Rutter Dawes | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1799; died 15 Feb 1868.
English amateur astronomer who set up a private observatory and made extensive measurements of binary stars and on 25 Nov 1850 discovered Saturn's inner Crepe Ring (independently of American William Bond). In 1864, he was the first to make an accurate map of Mars. He was called "Eagle-eyed Dawes" for the keenness of his sight with a telescope (though otherwise, he was very near-sighted). He devised a useful empirical formula by which the resolving power of a telescope - known as the Dawes limit - could be quickly determined. For a given telescope with an aperture of d cm, a double star of separation 11/d arcseconds or more can be resolved, that is, be visually recognized as two stars rather than one.« |
| Johann Peter Frank | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1745; died 24 Apr 1821.
German physician, hospital administrator and public health pioneer who wrote many medical works, including System einer vollständigen medicinischen Polizey (1779-1825, six volumes, "System of a Complete Medical Police") which detailed hygiene throughout a person's life. His vision of systematic medical care resembled a modern welfare state, covering both preventative and curative medical services, which he extended by proposing international regulation of health. In his treatment of mental patients, he regarded insanity as an illness. He founded (with R. Vetter) the pathological-anatomical museum of the Vienna General Hospital. He was Beethoven's doctor (1800-1809).« |
| Ferdinand Berthoud | |
(source) |
Born 19
Mar 1727; died 20 Jun 1807.
Outstanding Swiss horologist and author of extensive treatises on timekeeping who became involved in the attempt to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea. His major achievement was his further development of an accurate and practical marine clock, or chronometer. (Such an instrument had previously been constructed in expensive and delicate prototypes by Pierre Leroy of France and John Harrison of England.) He made his first chronometer in 1754, which was sent for trial in 1761. Berthoud's improvements to the chronometer have been largely retained in present-day designs. |
|
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| MARCH 19 - DEATHS | |
| Louis-Victor de Broglie | |
(source) |
 Died
19 Mar 1987 (born 15 Aug 1892)
Louis Victor Pierre Raymond duc de Broglie was a French physicist best known for his research on quantum theory and for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons. De Broglie was of the French aristocracy - hence the title "duc" (Prince). In 1923, as part of his Ph.D. thesis, he argued that since light could be seen to behave under some conditions as particles (photoelectric effect) and other times as waves (diffraction), we should consider that matter has the same ambiguity of possessing both particle and wave properties. For this, he was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physics. |
| Karl Dussik | |
(source) |
Died
19 Mar 1968; born 1908.
Karl (Theodore) Dussik was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who has been called the "Father of Ultrasonic Diagnosis". In 1942, he published the first transmission ultrasound investigation of the brain Hyperphonography of the Brain, which he used to image a cerebral ventrical. He placing a patient's head between an ultrasound emitter and a receiver. In this way, he tried to visualize the cerebral ventricles by measuring the ultrasound beam modification through the head. However, the bone of the skull absorbed much of the ultrasound energy, and the image created by different bone thickness obscured any reliable image of the brain alone. However, his work with transmitted ultrasound stimulated the use of reflection techniques.« |
| Sir Norman Haworth | |
| Died
19 Mar 1950 (born 19 Mar 1883)
British chemist, died on his birthday. See above. |
|
| Clinton Hart Merriam | |
| Died
19 Mar 1942 (born 5 Dec 1855)
American biologist and ethnologist, who helped found the National Geographic Society (1888) and what is now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. During his tenure at the latter, Merriam greatly influenced the manner in which the government studied and responded to wildlife. His seven "life zones" concept, detailing the relationship between animal and plant distribution and temperature patterns is still taught today. However, in steering the Division away from agricultural studies on the economics and control of noxious and predatory animals, Merriam caused difficulties for the very agency he headed. Most of all, his surveys and research studies on food habits of various animal and bird species remain lasting contributions to the wildlife management field. |
|
| Antoine-Thomson d'Abbadie | |
(source) |
Died 19 Mar1897 (born 3 Jan 1810)
French geographer, born with his brother Arnaud-Michel d'Abbadie (1815-93) in Ireland, who were notable for their extensive travels in Ethiopia where they studied its geology, natural history and archaeology. Antoine d'Abbadie was the first scientific explorer to travel throughout eastern Africa for 12 years. He returned to France with numerous astronomic, geodaesical, geophysical, geographical and meteorological observations. He contributed to increasing the knowledge on the emplacement of the sources of the blue and white Nile rivers. He had the magnificent castle of Abbadia built in Hendaye, and he continued with his astronomical observations for some time. He left his estate to the Academie des Sciences. [Image right: (source)] |
| MARCH 19 - EVENTS | |
| Planetarium | |
(source) |
In 1958, Britain's first planetarium, the London Planetarium, opened in
the west wing of Madame Tussaud's. It is one of the world's largest. The
site used was that of the former Cinema and Restaurant added in 1929, that
had been destroyed by a German bomb in 1940.« |
| Rocket sled | |
(source) |
In 1954, a sled powered by six rockets with a human rider reached 421 mph,
running 3,550-ft on heavy rails mounted in concrete at rails at Holloman
Air Force Base, Alamogordo, NM. It was the effects of braking from such
speed that was being studied. Known as the "abrupt deceleration vehicle,"
it was built by the Northrup Aircraft, Inc., to simulate the effects on
pilots bailing out of airplanes travelling at supersonic speeds. It was
braked rapidly by water scooped in vents in the bottom of the sled from
a trough five feet wide and 18 inches deep. Riding on the sled to test
the effect of sudden deceleration was Lt. Col. John
Paul Stapp, chief of the Aero Medical Field Laboratory at the base.
By year's end, tests increased speed to 632 mph.*«
[Image
right: Sonic Wind I sled(source)] |
| Atomic Energy Museum | |
|
In 1949, The American Museum of Atomic Energy, the first U.S. museum devoted
exclusively to the history of atomic energy opened to the public in a building
that was an old wartime cafeteria in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. During WW II,
this city had been the site for processing uranium-235 for the atomic bombs
dropped on Japan. Guided tours through the museum
showed visitors the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The present facility,
opened in 1975, continues
to provide the general public with energy information. The name of the
museum was changed to the American Museum of Science and Energy in 1978.« |
|
| Sydney Harbour Bridge | |
 |
In 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Australia, was opened. |
| Shoe manufacturing | |
|
In 1883, Jan Matzeliger invented the first machine to manufacture entire
shoes. |
|
| Sewing machine | |
(source) |
In 1861, the Elias Howe sewing machine
patent was reissued (re. #1,154). |
| Early Darwin | |
(source) |
In 1827, Charles Darwin made
his earliest scientific discovery, at age 18. He dissected some specimens
of a baranacle-like marine organism, the polyzoan Flustra. Thus
he began what became a lifelong interest in natural history. 
 From
So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, by
Charles Darwin, Edward O. Wilson. |
| Electric eels | |
(source) |
In 1800, electric eels
were captured
by Alexander von Humoldt with Aimé
Bonpland. They were on a five-year expedition in the jungles of South America,
on the way to the Orinoco river, where at Calabozo they discovered swamps
crowded with electric eels, Electrophorus electricus. During their
scientific investigation of the behaviour of the eels, the scientists received
massive electric shocks. Humboldt reported
a severe lack of feeling in his joints for the better part of a day after
standing directly on an electric eel. They learned
that horses had been killed by them. Humboldt published an article Observation
on the Electric Eel of the New World in 1808.« |
| First patent law | |
|
In 1474, the Venetian Patent Law, the first of its kind in the world, declared
that "each person who will make in this city any new and ingenious contrivance,
not made heretofore in our dominion, as soon as it is reduced to perfection...
It being forbidden to any other in any territory and place of ours to make
any other contrivance in the form and resemblance thereof, without the
consent and licence of the author up to ten years." The law was intended
to attract inventors and investors to Venice and stimulate new economic
activities.« |
|
