Word of the day
- tranche March 15, 2026Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 15, 2026 is: tranche • \TRAHNSH\ • noun Tranche refers to a division or portion of a whole. // A tranche of leaked documents was delivered to the newspaper anonymously, with more promised to come. See the entry > Examples: “Congress approved an initial tranche of funding legislation […]Merriam-Webster
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On This Day
1922 – The American Birth Control League, forerunner of Planned Parenthood, is incorporated.
The American Birth Control League (ABCL) was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921[1] at the First American Birth Control Conference in New York City. The organization promoted the founding of birth control clinics and encouraged women to control their own fertility.[1] In 1942, the league became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.[1]
History
The League was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921, and incorporated under the laws of New York State on April 5, 1922. Birth Control Leagues had already been formed in a number of larger American cities between 1916 and 1919 due to Sanger’s lecture tours and the publication of the Birth Control Review. By 1924, the American Birth Control League had 27,500 members, with ten branches maintained in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Colorado, and British Columbia.
In June 1928, Margaret Sanger resigned as president of the American Birth Control League, founding the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and splitting the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau from the League. In 1939 the two were reconciled and merged to form the Birth Control Federation of America.[citation needed] In 1942 the name was changed to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.[1]
Its headquarters were located at 104 Fifth Avenue, New York City from 1921–30 and at various offices on Madison Avenue from 1931–39. It was not associated with the National Birth Control League, founded in 1915 by Mary Coffin Ware Dennett, or the later Voluntary Parenthood League.[2]
The American Birth Control League was also instrumental in regards to African Americans and birth control.
Born On This Day
1622 – Vincenzo Viviani, Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (d. 1703)
Vincenzo Viviani (April 5, 1622 – September 22, 1703) was an Italian mathematician and scientist. He was a pupil of Torricelli and a disciple of Galileo.[1]
Biography
Born and raised in Florence, Viviani studied at a Jesuit school. There, Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici furnished him a scholarship to purchase mathematical books. He became a pupil of Evangelista Torricelli and worked on physics and geometry.[1]
In 1639, at the age of 17, he was an assistant of Galileo Galilei in Arcetri. He remained a disciple until Galileo’s death in 1642. From 1655 to 1656, Viviani edited the first edition of Galileo’s collected works.[1]
After Torricelli’s 1647 death, Viviani was appointed to fill his position at the Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno in Florence. Viviani was also one of the first members of the Grand Duke’s experimental academy, the Accademia del Cimento, when it was created a decade later.[1]
In 1660, Viviani and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli conducted an experiment to determine the speed of sound. Timing the difference between the seeing the flash and hearing the sound of a cannon shot at a distance, they calculated a value of 350 meters per second (m/s), considerably better than the previous value of 478 m/s obtained by Pierre Gassendi.[1] The currently accepted value is 331.29 m/s at 0 °C or 340.29 m/s at sea level. It has also been claimed that in 1661 he experimented with the rotation of pendulums, 190 years before the famous demonstration by Foucault[citation needed].
By 1666, Viviani started to receive many job offers as his reputation as a mathematician grew. That same year, Louis XIV of France offered him a position at the Académie Royale and John II Casimir of Poland offered Viviani a post as his astronomer. Fearful of losing Viviani, the Grand Duke appointed him court mathematician. Viviani accepted this post and turned down his other offers.[1]
In 1687, he published a book on engineering, Discorso intorno al difendersi da’ riempimenti e dalle corrosione de’ fiumi.[1]
Upon his death, Viviani left an almost completed work on the resistance of solids, which was subsequently completed and published by Luigi Guido Grandi.[1]
In 1737, the Church finally allowed Galileo to be reburied in a grave with an elaborate monument. The monument that was created in the church of Santa Croce was constructed with the help of funds left by Viviani for that specific purpose. Viviani’s own remains were moved to Galileo’s new grave as well.[1]
The lunar crater Viviani is named after him.
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wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for March 15 March 15, 2026Picture of the day Common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), Arrábida National Park, Portugal. The common cuttlefish is one of the largest and best-known cuttlefish species. They are a migratory species that spend the summer and spring inshore for spawning and then move to depths of 100 to 200m during autumn and winter. They only have a […]
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for March 14 March 14, 2026Picture of the day Fishermen fishing in the chars (shifting sediment islands) of the river Padma in Rajshahi District, Bangladesh. The chars are being frequently visible as the river is drying up. Today is the International Day of Action for Rivers.
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