| 2901/
Cheese will continue to ripen, no matter how carefully it
is stored. Hard cheeses will generally keep for several months,
whereas softer cheeses will keep from one to three weeks after
opening, if stored in an air-tight container.
2902/ One of the first
scientists to experiment with thunderstorm electricity (even
before Ben Franklin) was killed by Ball Lightning. In 1752,
Georg Wilhelm Reichmann attempted to reproduce one of Franklin's
thought-experiments. Lightning struck his metal mast, and
witnesses said that a ball of fire flew out and struck him
on the forehead, killing him instantly.
2903/ In May 2001 an
unidentified skull was found in Rodopi Mountain, Bulgaria.
It has the size of a baby's head and it weights about 250
grams. A disk-shaped smooth metal object was found nearby
the skull too. Some people think that the alloy it was made
of cannot be composed on the Earth. Scientists explored the
skull and no one was unable to identify it.
2904/ Galileo was born
in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. His father, Vincenzo
Galilei, was a musician. Galileo's mother was Giulia degli
Ammannati. Galileo was the first of six (though some people
believe seven) children.
2905/ If you live near
the equator, day and night are nearly the same length (12
hours). But elsewhere on Earth, there is much more daylight
in the Summer than in the Winter. The closer you live to the
North or South pole, the longer the summers. Thus, Daylight
Saving Time (Summer Time) is not helpful in the tropics, and
countries near the equator do not usually change their clocks.
2906/ In 1901 divers
working off the isle of Antikythera found the remains of a
clocklike mechanism 2,000 years old. The mechanism now appears
to have been a device for calculating the motions of stars
and planets.
2907/ The brilliant Greek
scientist Archimedes was born in Syracuse, Sicily in 287 B.C.
His best-known invention was a machine for raising water,
called Archimedes' screw. He is also famous for his work on
buoyancy, or floating bodies, which led him to develop Archimedes'
principle.
2908/ Our concept of
a year is based on the earth's motion around the sun. The
time from one fixed point, such as a solstice or equinox,
to the next is called a tropical year. Its length is currently
365.242190 days, but it varies. Around 1900 its length was
365.242196 days, and around 2100 it will be 365.242184 days.
2909/ Luigi Galvani was
born in Bologna in 1737 and died in 1798. He studied medicine
and philosophy at the University of Bologna and then became
a professor of medicine there. In the 1770's he became interested
in physiology and was soon studying the electrical stimulation
of nerves and muscles. This work led to Galvani's discovery
of "animal electricity," which Galvani thought of
as a subtle fluid in the body.
2910/ The Babylonians
lived in Mesopotamia, a fertile plain between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers. They developed an abstract form of writing
based on cuneiform (wedge-shaped) symbols. Their symbols were
written on wet clay tablets which were baked in the sun; many
thousands of these tablets have survived to this day.
2911/ The Chinese have
a very long history of astronomical observations reaching
back to the 13th century B.C. They noted solar eclipses as
well as supernova events (exploding stars). The most impressive
of these events was the observation on 1054 A.D. of such a
supernova event which lasted for 2 years, after that the star
dimmed and disappeared from view. The astronomical observations
were sufficiently precise for later astronomers to determine
that the location of that exploding star is now occupied by
the crab nebula.
2912/ It was known to
the ancient Greeks as long ago as 600 B.C. that amber, rubbed
with wool, acquired the property of attracting light objects.
2913/ Around 300BC Euclid
in his Optica, noted that light travels in straight
lines and described the law of reflection. He believed that
vision involves rays going from the eyes to the object seen
and he studied the relationship between the apparent sizes
of objects and the angles that they subtend at the eye.
2914/ Salt, called sodium
chloride by chemists, has been such an important element of
life that it has been the subject of many stories, fables
and folktales (such as "Salt on a Magpie's Tail"
from Sweden) and is frequently referenced in fairy tales.
Charles Dickens penned a Victorian era Ghost Story "To
Be Taken With A Grain of Salt."
2915/ The first modern
suspension bridge was the 1801 chain bridge designed by Judge
James Finley (1756-1828) across Jacob’s Creek in Western
Pennsylvania.
2916/ On March 16th 1802,
The United States Military Academy (West Point) was established
by Congress and officially opened on July 4. Its programs
emphasized education of officers for engineering and related
activities.
2917/ It was not until
1802 that Harvard College required knowledge of arithmetic
for admission.
2918/ The New England
Journal of Medicine and Surgery began publication in 1812.
2919/ In 1819 the American
Savannah made the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by
a steamboat. During 87 percent of the voyage, however, the
ship moved under sail.
2920/ Samuel Colt (1814-1862)
patented the revolver named for him in 1836.
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