May 28 - Battle of the Eclipse

   Posted on May 28, 2022     


This is an update of my post published on May 28, 2011:


The year was 585 B.C.

The Medes and the Lydians were at war. 

The king of the Medes was fighting the king of the Lydians, and the king of the Lydians was fighting the king of the Medes - and that meant that they were both sending soldiers to fight one another.

They were fighting over land and revenge for an act that had been carried out in revenge for another act that had been carried out in revenge for... Well, you get the idea. Everybody was acting badly, and soldiers had been battling it out on behalf of their kings for MORE THAN FIVE YEARS!

Then, on May 28, 585, the gods stepped in.

The gods made day into night to show their displeasure, and the battle stopped.


The Lydians (above) looked with astonishment at...
a black hole in the sky (below)
where the Sun should have been...



Somehow the two sides managed to arrange a truce. A boundary line was agreed on. One king's daughter married the other king's son to make sure the truce lasted.

Umm....

Of course, what stopped the battle on this day almost 2,500 years ago wasn't a miracle created by the many Lydian gods or the one Median god. It was a total solar eclipse. Total solar eclipses are very rare but also completely normal and (nowadays) well understood.

Basically, the battle site just happened to be in the moon's shadow.


I hope you get to see a total solar eclipse someday.
I have! And it looks really, really WRONG, somehow,
even if you completely know how normal it is, and
the cause, and that everything will be back to normal
in just a few minutes.

Because we can very accurately calculate the dates of solar eclipses, this battle is one of the earliest events that modern historians can pinpoint with a precise date.










 Julia Pierpont Day


 (Saturday before Memorial Day)





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May 27 - Happy Birthday, Rachel Carson

   Posted on May 27, 2022     


This is an update of my post published on May 27, 2011:




Some Rachel Carson she started an entire movement—

...A movement that is worldwide in import, with life-and-death stakes.

Rachel Carson, born in Pennsylvania on this day 1907, is credited with starting the modern environmental movement. She was a marine biologist who was a gifted writer; she wrote three books about ocean life that earned her financial security and a certain amount of fame—two of them were even best sellers.


She turned her attention to the problems caused by synthetic (“man”-made) pesticides. She was able to use her writing skills, her fame, and her connections with both the scientific community and with publications such as The New Yorker to shine a spotlight on the effects of pesticides such as DDT on creatures such as birds, and her book Silent Spring eventually caused the nationwide ban on DDT.


Spraying poison willy-nilly should give us all the willies!

Thanks to Rachel Carson, more people began to think globally rather than locally, long-term rather than short-term, and holistically—taking into consideration the entire ecosystem rather than just one insect farmers want to get rid of.


Carson chatting with some kids in a forest...

Carson had to deal with breast cancer, a respiratory virus she may have caught because she was weakened by radiation treatments, severe anemia caused by radiation treatments, and cancer spreading to her liver—but after all that her cause of death almost two years after the publication of Silent Spring was a heart attack. She was just 57 years old.

Still, Carson made a huge impact for the better by showing that human activities sometimes have a huge impact for the worse on the environment.

Schools, research vessels, several buildings, many 
conservation areas, and this bridge have all been
named after Rachel Carson.


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May 26 - Happy Birthday, Sally Ride

  Posted on May 26, 2022     


This is an update of my post published on May 26, 2011:


Yeah! 

The first American woman in space and - at the time of her first flight - the youngest American ever sent into orbit—

—and this "first" and "youngest" had a cool name like “Sally Ride”???!!! 

NASA couldn't have planned it better!

Born on this day in 1951 in Los Angeles, California, Ride became a nationally ranked tennis player in high school, earned double Bachelor's degrees from Stanford in physics and English, and went on to earn her Master's and PhD from the same prestigious university. Her research was in astrophysics and free electron laser physics.

A bit of an over-achiever, I think!

NASA was looking for more astronaut trainees, and Ride was one of around 8,000 people to answer a newspaper ad for the position. (A newspaper ad? Really?) Of course, NASA snatched her up.






Ride's first Space Shuttle flight was in 1984, and both flights that she participated on were on the Space Shuttle Challenger. 

Ride was NOT on board the Challenger in 1986. Instead, she was training for her third mission in space - and was as horrified as the rest of us when the Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing its seven crew members. (Two of the crew members were women, and one of them, Christa McAuliffe, was the first member of the Teacher in Space Project.) Sally Ride participated in the commission that investigated the Challenger disaster.

After her time with NASA, Ride became a physics professor, served on a variety of commissions and boards, and began her own company to promote science to kids, especially girls.  One thing the company does is to put on festivals for girls from fifth to eighth grades—festivals with booths, activities, food, and music.




Sadly, Ride died of pancreatic cancer when she was just 61 years old.

Watch two short videos about Sally Ride. 

Want more? Here is a short bio. 







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