FYI July 08 & 09, 2019

  • Filed under FYI

On This Day

1948 – The United States Air Force accepts its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).
Women in the Air Force (WAF) was a program which served to bring women into limited roles in the United States Air Force. WAF was formed in 1948 when President Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, allowing women to serve directly in the military.[1] The WAF program ended in 1976 when women were accepted into the USAF on an equal basis with men.

WAF was distinct from the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), a small group of female civilian transport pilots that was formed in 1942 with Nancy H. Love as commander. WAFS was folded into the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) in 1943; WASP was disbanded in December 1944.

Read more ->

 
 
1893 – Daniel Hale Williams, American heart surgeon, performs the first successful open-heart surgery in United States without anesthesia.
Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856[1] – August 4, 1931) was an American general surgeon, who in 1893 performed the first documented, successful pericardium surgery in the United States to repair a wound.[2][3][4][5] He founded Chicago’s Provident Hospital, the first non-segregated hospital in the United States and also founded an associated nursing school for African Americans.

The heart surgery at Provident, which his patient survived for the next twenty years, is referred to as “the first successful heart surgery” by Encyclopedia Britannica.[6][7] In 1913, Williams was elected as the only African-American charter member of the American College of Surgeons.[6]

Read more ->

Born On This Day

1867 – Käthe Kollwitz, German painter and sculptor (d. 1945)
Käthe Kollwitz, née Schmidt (German pronunciation: [kɛːtə kɔlvɪt͡s]; 8 July 1867 – 22 April 1945), was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including The Weavers and The Peasant War, depict the effects of poverty, hunger and war on the working class.[1][2] Despite the realism of her early works, her art is now more closely associated with Expressionism.[3] Kollwitz was the first woman to not only be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts but to also receive honorary professor status.[4]

Read more ->

 
 
1926 – Mathilde Krim, Italian-American medical researcher and health educator (d. 2018)
Mathilde Krim (Hebrew: מתילדה קרים; née Galland; July 9, 1926 – January 15, 2018) was a medical researcher and the founding chairman of amfAR, American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Biography
Mathilde Galland was born in Como, Italy to a Swiss Protestant father and Italian Roman Catholic mother.[1] She received her PhD in Biology from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 1953. In 1948, she married David Danon, an Israeli man she met at University of Geneva School of Medicine.[2] She converted to Judaism before marriage. [3] They had a daughter and shortly thereafter relocated to Israel.

While living in Switzerland, she assisted members of the Irgun in their efforts to purchase arms from former French resistance members, prior to Israel’s independence. After moving to the U.S., she was also very active in collecting donations for Israel.[4]

Medical research career
From 1953-59, she pursued research in cytogenetics and cancer-causing viruses at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where she was a member of the team that first developed a method for the prenatal determination of sex.

After her divorce, she moved to New York and joined the research staff of Cornell University Medical School, following her 1958 marriage to Arthur B. Krim — a New York attorney, head of United Artists, later founder of Orion Pictures, active member of the Democratic Party, and advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter. On May 19, 1962, the Krims hosted an exclusive celebrity-filled soirée at their home following the 45th birthday party for President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. During the course of their marriage, Arthur and Mathilde Krim were very active in the American civil rights movement, the movements for independence in Rhodesia and South Africa, the gay rights movement, and in numerous other civil liberties and human rights movements.

In 1962, Krim became a research scientist at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and, from 1981-85, she was the director of its interferon lab. Until recently,[when?] she held an academic appointment as Adjunct Professor of Public Health and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Soon after the first cases of what would later be called AIDS were reported in 1981, Krim recognized that this new disease raised grave scientific and medical questions and that it might have important socio-political consequences. She dedicated herself to increasing the public’s awareness of AIDS and to a better understanding of its cause, its modes of transmission, and its epidemiologic pattern.[5][6]

Contributing to the fight against AIDS, she established AIDS Medical Foundation in 1983. Later the Foundation merged with a similar organization and called the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR). [7] With Elizabeth Taylor, she founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research contributing generous amounts of her own funds and lending her considerable skills to raising awareness about AIDS and raising funds for AIDS research. She continued working on behalf of AIDS awareness through AmfAR.

Awards and recognition
Krim was awarded 16 doctorates honoris causa and has received numerous other honors and distinctions. In August 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, in recognition of her “extraordinary compassion and commitment”.[5]

In 2003, Krim received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.[8]

Death
Krim died at home in Kings Point, New York on January 15, 2018, aged 91.[9]

FYI

Open Culture: When MAD Magazine Ruffled the Feathers of the FBI, Not Once But Three Times; The Most Disturbing Painting: A Close Look at Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” and more ->
 
 
 
 
Time By Lee Brown: ‘Exotic’ bird was really just seagull covered in curry powder
 
 
 
 
ARS Technica By Jennifer Ouellette: Snowball the dancing cockatoo has wide range of killer moves, new study finds Head bangs, body rolls, foot lifts, and down shakes—this bird can even vogue.
For those tempted by Snowball’s charm to adopt their own dancing cockatoo, Patel advises caution. Most of the birds in Schulz’s shelter were dropped off by owners who couldn’t handle the long-term commitment required to care for such creatures. Snowball himself ended up there because his previous owner, an elderly man, could no longer care for him after his daughter went off to college. “People get them because they think they’ll be fun and amusing pets,” said Patel. “They don’t realize they have the personality of a three- or four-year-old and they live for 50 years.”
 
 
 
 
Time By AYA BATRAWY: The First Major Airline Just Dropped Boeing’s 737 Max for a Rival Airplane
 
 
 
 
Fast Company Compass: Celtics star Jaylen Brown wants to fix American schools; Can this Harvard professor police Facebook from the inside? Meet Moxi, the robot winning over hospital patients and more ->
 
 
 
 
Vox By Rani Molla: Why you have to keep logging in to read news on your phone It’s complicated and no one is happy.
 
 
 
 
The Rural Blog: New law in S.D. aims to address epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women; other states working on it too; Bug appétit: Maggots may revolutionize animal feed industry, help with waste management and climate change; Outdoorsy Kentucky clothing brand gains steam worldwide and more ->
 
 
The Rural Blog: Feds use facial-recognition tech to scan license photos without drivers’ consent; does your state or locality allow it? Virginia to begin gun-control session Tuesday; Democratic governor says his ideas can get GOP votes to pass More ->
 
 
 
 
By Nick Fouriezos: Love Thy Neighbor: The Bible Belt Is Becoming a Dumping Ground
Why you should care
Progressive waste laws are playing a game of “pass the trash” that falls mostly on poor, rural, minority communities in the South.
 
 
 
 
GlacierHub.org Weekly Newsletter 7-8-19: While it’s uncertain whether the plants were cultivated intentionally or selectively harvested for high potency, it is clear that glaciers played a central role in hydrating the marijuana used in western China around 500 BC. And more ->
 
 
 
 
The Passive voice: Sticking Copyright Criticism Where It Doesn’t Belong; The Princess Bride, Tara Westover’s Educated, and Supporting the Learning Society; Indie Publishing; What You Get Back When You Reclaim Your Time from Social Media; These Researchers Are Trying to Keep Facebook Users from Feeling Depressed
 
 
 
 
MessyNessy 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCCLIX): The Red Regatta; Japanese Maiko-san ride a special 3 wheel car somewhere in Japan in 1923; The New York Central Streamliner ‘Mercury’ passes through Syracuse City Hall (New York), 1936; Crazy Beautiful America; An Ode to the Tumbleweed: Invasive Icon of the West and more ->
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Recipes


Widget not in any sidebars

 
 

Widget not in any sidebars