FYI October 27, 2019

On This Day

1838 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be killed.
Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the Extermination Order,[1][2] was an executive order issued on October 27, 1838, by the Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs. The order was issued in the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River, a clash between Mormons and a unit of the Missouri State Militia in northern Ray County, Missouri, during the 1838 Mormon War. Claiming that the Mormons had committed open and avowed defiance of the law and had made war upon the people of Missouri, Governor Boggs directed that “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description”.[2] The Militia and other state authorities—General John B. Clark, among them—used the executive order to violently expel the Mormons from their lands in the state following their capitulation, which in turn led to their subsequent migration to Nauvoo, Illinois. The order was supported by most northwest Missouri citizens but was questioned or denounced by a few. However, no determination of the order’s legality was ever made. On June 25, 1976, Governor Kit Bond issued an executive order rescinding the Extermination Order, recognizing its legal invalidity and formally apologizing on behalf of the State of Missouri for the suffering it had caused the Mormons.[3]

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Born On This Day

1910 – Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, American chemical engineer (d. 2000)
Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau (October 27, 1910 – January 12, 2000) was an American chemical engineer who designed the first commercial penicillin production plant.[1][2] She was the first female member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.[3]

Life
Hutchinson was born in 1910 in Houston, Texas, the daughter of a clothing store owner. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Rice Institute in 1932 and her Doctor of Science degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 1937, the first woman to earn a doctorate in the subject in the USA.[4] Her thesis topic was The effect of solute on the liquid film resistance in gas absorption.[2]

On May 1, 1939, she married William Caubu Rousseau, a co-worker at E.B. Badger & Sons, who was later a chemical engineering lecturer at MIT. They had one son, William.[citation needed]

She died January 12, 2000, aged 89, at her home in Weston, Massachusetts.[4]

Career
Hutchinson started her professional career with E. B. Badger in Boston. During the Second World War, she oversaw the design of production plants for the strategically important materials of penicillin and synthetic rubber.[5] Her development of deep-tank fermentation of penicillium mold enabled large-scale production of penicillin.[2][6] She worked on the development of high-octane gasoline for aviation fuel.[2] Her later work included improved distillation column design and plants for the production of ethylene glycol and glacial acetic acid.[5]

Hutchinson retired in 1961, and later became an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.[7]

Honors
In 1945, Hutchinson became the first woman to be accepted as a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.[8][3] In 1955 she received the Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers.[7][9] In 1983 she was the first female recipient of the prestigious Founders Award of the AIChE.[3]

 
 

FYI

Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: An Occasion for Unselfing: Iris Murdoch on Imperfection as Integral to Goodness and How the Beauty of Nature and Art Leavens Our Most Unselfish Impulses and more ->
 
 
 
 
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By Kathleen Davis, Fast Company: This Is What It’s Like To Not Own A Smartphone As more people start to question their dependence on devices, I’m digging my heels in on my flip-phone life.
 
 
 
 
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Recipes

Food Network: 10 Cute and Creepy Lunchbox Ideas for Halloween
 
 
Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti & More from Kitchn