A slightly twisted look at this week’s scientific events, featuring a lot of space related topics and it might all be just a hologram!
1900 – Dennis Gabor was born. Gabor was a Hungarian electrical engineer and physicist who invented holography. He is quoted as saying “The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”. Without him Quark’s bar would be a lot less interesting!
1930 – Pete Conrad was born. Everyone’s heard of Neil and Buzz; Pete not so much, despite being awarded a Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Conrad was the third astronaut to walk on the moon and commanded the first manned Skylab mission to repair launch damage to the station.
1931 – Bill Swan, aviation pioneer, made the first rocket-powered glider flight above Atlantic City, NJ. The glider was lifted into the air by balloon before being released and flown using the rockets. He was later turned down for a starring role in “The Jetsons”…
1932 – David Randolph Scott was born. Scott is an engineer, test pilot and astronaut who flew on the Apollo 15 mission and became the seventh person to walk on the moon. His brother starred in a lot of Westerns…
1965 – Astronaut Edward H. White became the first American to do a “walk in space” from the second manned Gemini mission. So it’s thanks to him that George Clooney is still floating around in space. White was also the first to control his movement using a hand-held maneuvering unit. (Which is kind of why Sandra isn’t still with George!).
1966 – Surveyor 1, became the first U.S. space probe to soft land on the Moon in the “Ocean Of storms” and send back photographs of the surface. It also provided vital information about the surface to help the future moon landings.
1970 – A team led by Biochemist Har Gobind Khorana announced that they had assembled the first artificial gene from synthetic chemical components. This led to the development of the BrundleFly in 1986…
1981 – The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced five men were suffering from a rare type of pneumonia. The disease was only found in patients with weakened immune systems and these were the first cases recognized as AIDS. A sad note to end on, but let’s be grateful for the developments in treating and controlling this disease since then.
