Group items tagged

Canadian earthquake   In 1700, an earthquake, the most intense Canada has ever seen, hit the sea floor off the British Columbia coast. Long before Europeans first landed on Vancouver Island, native legend tells of a great disaster. The sea rose in a heaving wave, and landslides buried a sleeping village. Myth was resolved with science in 2003 by government research. Earthquakes of that intensity cause tidal waves, and Japanese written history tells of a massive tsunami striking fishing villages the next day along the coast of Honshu, killing hundreds. Coupled with geological evidence of the level 9 quake, the connection was clear. Mythology and seismology came together to validate history.

Pluto photographed (source)   In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh photographed the planet Pluto, the only planet discovered in the twentieth century, after a systematic search instigated by the predictions of other astronomers. Tombaugh was 24 years old when he made this discovery at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Silly Putty

In 1950, Silly Putty was introduced as a toy by Peter Hodgson, a marketing consultant, who packaged one-ounce portions of the rubber-like material in plastic eggs. It could be stretched, rolled into a bouncing ball, or used to transfer colored ink from newsprint. The original discovery was made in 1943 by James Wright who combined silicone oil and boric acid at the laboratories of General Electric. He was researching methods of making synthetic rubber, but at the time no significant application existed for the material. However, it was passed around as a curiosity. Hodgson saw a sample and realized its potential simply for entertainment and coined its name for marketing it as a toy. Its popularity made him a millionaire

Syzygy

  In 1982, a syzygy occurred when all nine planets aligned on the same side of the Sun. The planets are spread out over 98 degrees on this date. The four major planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, span an arc of some 73 degrees.