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Historic Heat Records Broken
CNN) — The mainland United States, which was largely recovering Monday from a near-nationwide heat wave, has experienced the warmest 12 months since record-keeping began in 1895, a top government science and weather agency announced Monday. The report from the National Climatic Data Center, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, does not take into account blistering heat from this month, with 2,116 high temperature marks either broken or tied between July 2 and July 8 in communities nationwide. But it does incorporate the warmest March recorded as well as extreme heat in June, which also helped make the first six months of 2012 the warmest recorded…
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Friday the 13th
2012 is an interesting year for Friday the 13th occurances. There are three of them this year and they are 13 weeks a part. The folks suffering from the phobia of this supposedly unlucky combination of week day and date of month are called paraskevidekatriaphobics. One famous person who had this fear was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Thomas Fernsler, a University of Delaware mathematician studing the number 13, noted that the president refused to take a train trip on that unlucky day. Learn more at USA Today
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Scope Monkey Trials
How it All Happened The basis for the Scopes trial was laid when the Tennessee State Legislature passed the Butler Act – which took effect on March 21st, 1925. The essence of the Act was that it made it illegal for anyone:”… to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals”in any state-funded educational institution. (For the full wording of the Butler Act seeThe Butler Did It)The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) were already aware that the Act was likely to become law because it had…
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First American Flag
Five myths about the American flag By Marc Leepson, Published: June 10, 2011 1. Betsy Ross made the first American flag. The Betsy Ross story is the most tenacious piece of fiction involving the flag. There simply is no credible historical evidence — letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, bills of sale — that Ross (then known as Elizabeth Claypoole) either made or had a hand in designing the American flag before it made its debut in 1777. The story cropped up in 1870, almost 100 years after the first flag was supposedly sewn, when William Canby, Ross’s grandson, told the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia that his grandmother made the…
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The Oldest Surviving US Shuttle
Discovery on Thursday(April 20, 2012) became the first spaceship of the retired US shuttle fleet to enter its permanent home as a museum artifact, marking a solemn end to the 30-year manned spaceflight program. The oldest surviving US shuttle, Discovery flew 39 missions to space beginning in 1984 and its transition from space-flying giant to tourist attraction drew mixed emotions from NASA veterans and space fans alike. Discovery ended its last mission to space in March 2011, and the return to Earth of Atlantis in July 2011 marked the end of the US shuttle program, leaving Russia as the only nation capable of sending astronauts to space. “The space shuttle…
