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The Four Enemies of Paper, Photos & Textiles
by William D. Welge, CA * Most people, who are the keepers of family treasures, may not be aware that, the air we breathe, the light we allow in our homes, the settings on our heating and air conditioners are causing damage to important documents, photographs or clothing. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in America during the 19th century, air borne pollutants have been, and continue to be, one of the major components that attack and can damage heirlooms in your possession. Dust, exhaust fumes, smoking, and microscopic contaminates are harmful. How to minimize the risk can be simple, if applied on a regular basis: First, change the…
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DNA Code Made Easy
Francis Crick and James Watson have been famous for discovering Deoxyribonucleic acid’s double helix structure, since Feb. 28, 1953, when they exclaimed that they had accomplished the amazingly unimaginable feat of discovering the secret of life, in an English pub of all places. Those British diners had as much of a chance understanding the complexities of DNA’s double helix as a school child. Yet, Francis Crick managed to give a simplified summation of the collection of nucleotides that make us unique, along with a scrawled-out illustration, in a letter to his 12 year-old son. That hand written letter, dated March 19, 1953, was auctioned off at Christie’s last week for a Sale Total including Buyer’s Premium of …
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Anniversary Date of Oklahoma City Bombing
I can still vividly recall the morning of April 19, 1995, when the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed by domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols. As someone born and raised in Oklahoma City, I was driving along the nearby I-40 cross town. We were detoured away from the downtown area that showed a large black cloud of smoke rising into the sky. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. I stared with a blank and confused gaze onto my city’s center. The thirteen barrels, each containing an explosive, chemical concoction and with a combined weight of approximately 7,000 pounds, were placed in a rented 1993 Ford F-700 Ryder truck. McVeigh parked this…
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Nefertiti’s Measure to Achieve More Respect
Nefertiti was married to Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. In a desire to gain more respect as a leader of her people, Nefertiti changed her title and dress to that of a masculine identity. She presented herself as a King and was seen wearing men’s clothing and a false beard. Ironically, the meaning of her name is ‘the beautiful one has come.’ As displayed in sculpture and recorded in history, she lived up to her name; being one of the most beautiful of famous women. Whether or not this extra measure, of creating an association with a male persona, was effective or not is hard to say, but, for many reasons, she attained…
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Who Discovered the North Pole
Read more here: National Geographic North Pole Facts Smithsonian Magazine Cook vs Peary
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American Indian Memoirist Dies
The author, Mary Ellen Moore-Richard, died on Febuary 14th at the age of 58. She wrote the memoir Lakota Woman, which was published in 1990. Her life began on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. The reservation was, and still is, where the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota nation, live. When Mary Ellen was young, in the 1950s and 60s, life on the reservation was not easy. There was much poverty. Even today the same dire living conditions she had to endure remain unchanged, as reported in a CNN article: “Nearly half of the people in Todd County live under the federal poverty line, making it the…
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The History of DNA
On Saturday, Feb. 28, 1953, New York Times, in an ironically understated setting for such an ultimately world reknown and Nobel Prize winning reveal, scientists Watson and Crick announced during lunch at the English pub the Eagle, that they had discovered the secret of life. However, the necessary foundation had long been established, before the scientific work on the structural properties of the double helix brought DNA to the spotlight of the mainstream. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was discovered in the late 1860s by Friedrich Miescher. It probably comes as a surprise to most, that it was Swiss chemist Miescher who first identified the ingredients for human life. Most people associate the momentous finding with…
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St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
It was about 10:30 in the morning on a cold Chicago day, Valentine’s Day to be exact, when seven men were gunned down gangster style in the Clark Street garage at 2122 N. Clark St. All of the victims, but one, (an unlucky optician who enjoyed the company of criminals) were gangsters marked for killing by Al Capone.Though Capone was the one behind ordering the killings, he wasn’t present that day. Instead he was at his vacation place in Palm Island, Fla. He had a solid alibi. No one was ever jailed for the shootings; not even the henchmen who did Capone’s bidding. The heinous slaughter accomplished Capone’s desired result, which was to permanently…
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Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday
Today, February 12, we remember the birthday of perhaps the most popular American president that has ever served our United States. Lincoln lived an against-the-odds story. He started life off in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky, and yet, despite his humble beginnings, he succeeded in attaining the highest possible office. He had a difficult childhood losing his mother, who died of tremetol, a.k.a. milk sickness, when he was just 9 years old. An interesting sidenote is that, according to An Evolutionary Psychology of Leader-Follower Relations , there is a real connection between losing a parent to death in one’s childhood and achieving eventual public eminence. When Lincoln was 22, his father moved the family to Coles County, Illinois at…
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Historic Blizzards of New York City
New York City has seen its share of major snowstorms. The largest occurred, according to NYC.gov, on February 11 and 12, 2006. Over a 16 hour time period 26.9 inches of snow accumulated across the city. This nor’easter had winds of about 20-30 mph, where 2,500 city deployed workers labored to do snow clean-up. The second largest snowstorm was on Jan. 7-8, 1996 measuring 20 inches of snow in Central Park. This nor’easter’s winds topped the first runner by hitting 50 mph gusts. It resulted in the closings, on January 8th, of Broadway shows, the public and parochial school systems and the Stock Market at mid-day. Coming in as the third largest accumulation of snowfall was the March Blizzard…