FYI September 15, 2018

On This Day

 
 
1616 – Joseph Calasanz opens the first modern public elementary school.
Joseph Calasanz, Sch.P. (Spanish: José de Calasanz; Italian: Giuseppe Calasanzio), (September 11, 1557 – August 25, 1648), also known as Joseph Calasanctius and Josephus a Matre Dei, was a Spanish Catholic priest, educator and the founder of the Pious Schools, providing free education to the sons of the poor, and the Religious Order that ran them, commonly known as the Piarists. He is honored as a saint by the Catholic Church.

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Born On This Day

 
 
1857 – Anna Winlock, American astronomer and academic (d. 1904)
Anna Winlock (born September 15, 1857 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; died January 4, 1904 in Boston[1]) was an American astronomer and daughter of Joseph Winlock and Isabella Lane. Like her father, she was a computer and astronomer. It is plausible that this connection allowed her to be among the first of the women to be known as “the Harvard Computers.” She was also a distinguished woman computer as she made the most complete catalogue of stars near the north and south poles of her era. She is also remembered for her calculations and studies of asteroids. In particular, she did calculations on 433 Eros and 475 Ocllo.

Early years

Winlock attended the Cambridge Schools as a child and began to develop an interest in both mathematics and the Greek language. Upon her graduation she received a letter from her principal expressing his appreciation for her Greek and of her character. Her father influenced her interest in astronomy. When she was twelve, she attended a solar eclipse expedition with her father in his homestate of Kentucky. In June 1875, Joseph died shortly after Winlock had graduated from primary school. Winlock quickly followed in her father’s footsteps becoming one of the first female paid staff members of the Harvard College Observatory.[2]


Harvard College Observatory

After the death of her father, it fell upon her to find financial support for her mother and four siblings, and soon she approached the Harvard College Observatory seeking a job in calculations. Specifically, she was capable of reducing volumes of unreduced observations, a decades worth of numbers in a useless state, that previously her father had left unfinished. The interim director of the observatory complained that he could not process the data, as “the condition of the funds is an objection to hiring anyone.” [3] Winlock presented herself to the observatory and offered to reduce the observations. Having been previously introduced to the principles of mathematical astronomy by her father she seemed like a capable asset to the observatory and could be paid less than half the prevailing rate for calculating at the time. Harvard was able to offer her twenty-five cents an hour to do the computations. Winlock found the conditions acceptable and took the position.[3]

In less than a year, she was joined at the observatory by three other women who also served as computers; they became known as Pickering’s Harem, gaining notoriety for leaving an uncomfortable example on the government computing agencies because of the women’s low wages and arduous work, even though it was of high quality.[4] Winlock found it important the work to be done in astronomy, especially for women. By her own development as a scientist and her lasting contributions to the stellar program of the observatory, she served as an example that women were equally capable as men of doing astronomical work.[5]

Major contributions

Through her thirty-year career at the Harvard College Observatory, Winlock contributed to the many projects the observatory faced. Her most significant work involved the continuous and arduous work of reducing and computing meridian circle observations. Five years earlier under the direction of her father, the observatory collaborated with multiple foreign observatories in a project for preparing a comprehensive star catalogue. The project was divided into sections or zones by circles parallel to the celestial equator. Winlock began to work on the section called the “Cambridge Zone” shortly after being hired on by the observatory. Working over twenty years on the project, the work done by her team on the Cambridge Zone contributed significantly to the Astronomische Gesellschaft Katalog, which contains information on more than one-hundred thousand stars and is used worldwide by many observatories and their researchers.[1][2] Besides her work on the Cambridge Zone, she also contributed to many independent projects. She supervised in the creation of the Observatory Annals (a collection of tables that provide the positions of variable stars in clusters) into 38 volumes.[2]

Death
Winlock’s death was unexpected. On December 17, 1904 she visited the Harvard College Observatory for what would be the last time, and she continued working through the holiday season. The last entry in her notebook of reductions was on New Years Day 1904. Three days later she died suddenly at the age of 47 in Boston, Massachusetts. A funeral service was held at St. John’s Chapel in Cambridge.[1][6]
 
 
 
 

FYI

 
 

By Brigit Katz: Record-Breaking Distance Runner Diane Leather Never Let Lack of Opportunity Slow Her Down The first woman to run a mile in less than five minutes has died at age 85
 
 
Diane Leather obituary First woman to run a sub-five-minute mile, who had to wait years for the recognition she merited
 
 
Diane Leather Charles (7 January 1933 – 6 September 2018) was an English athlete who was the first woman to run a sub-5-minute mile.[1]
 
 
 
 
By Julie Muncy: The Sound Engineer Behind Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Tron Has Passed Away
 
 

Frank Serafine was a motion picture sound designer and sound editor, and composer. He was best known for his work as a Hollywood Supervising Sound Editor / Designer on such blockbusters as the Star Trek and Tron movies, Addams Family, The Fog, Poltergeist: The Other Side, RobotJox, Ice Pirates, Hoodwinked 2, Orgazmo, The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, Field of Dreams, Emmy-Winning Sound Design on The Day After and Oscar-Winning Sound Design for The Hunt for Red October. Frank died after being struck by an automobile while crossing Palmdale Boulevard in Palmdale, CA on September 12, 2018.

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By Elizabeth Werth: Desiré Wilson Proved She Was the Most Successful Woman in Racing by Winning in a Formula One Car
Desiré Randall Wilson (born 26 November 1953)[1] is a former racing driver from South Africa and one of only five women to have competed in Formula One.[2] Born in Brakpan,[1] she entered one Formula One World Championship Grand Prix in 1980 with a non-works RAM Racing-prepared Williams FW07, but failed to qualify.[3] She also raced in the 1981 non-world championship South African Grand Prix in a one off deal with Tyrrell Racing. This race was not part of the 1981 world championship due, in part, to the FISA–FOCA war.[4] She qualified 16th and, after a disastrous start where the car stalled, she moved up though the field in wet conditions, as conditions dried she fell back and damaged the car when it touched a wall while she was letting the race leader through.[5]

She became the only woman to win a Formula One race of any kind when she won at Brands Hatch in the short-lived British Aurora F1 Championship in 1980.[3] As a result of this achievement, she has a grandstand at Brands Hatch named after her.[5] Following her attempts in Formula One, Wilson participated in other disciplines including CART[6] and sports car racing.[5] In 1982, Wilson entered the Indianapolis 500, but failed to qualify. She did not qualify for 1983 and 1984 Indy 500s as well.[5]

She is married to fellow South Africa-native and road course architect, Alan Wilson.[2]

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By Elizabeth Werth: Yes, The U.S. Army Actually Developed a Flying Jeep with Guns
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
By Tom McKay: Watch the Last Delta II Rocket Carry ICESat-2 Into Space
 
 
 
 
National Science Foundation September 2018
 
 
NSF’s 10 Big Ideas
In 2016, NSF unveiled a set of “Big Ideas” — 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering. With its broad portfolio of investments, NSF is uniquely suited to advance this set of cutting-edge research agendas and processes that will require collaborations with industry, private foundations, other agencies, science academies and societies, and universities and the education sector. The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge — indeed to define that cutting edge — of global science and engineering leadership and to invest in basic research and processes that advance the United States’ prosperity, security, health and well-being.
 
 
 
 
Atlas Obscura Anne Ewbank: Before Food Trucks, Americans Ate ‘Night Lunch’ From Beautiful Wagons They were the ancestors of the modern diner.
 
 
 
 
Alaska Master Gardner Blog: Fuchsias , Good for more than one season in Fairbanks?
 
 
 
 
By MessyNessy: The Secret Rooftop Farms you can Visit above Parisian Department Stores
 
 
By Francky Knapp: Sneaking into the Forbidden City with our Travel Heroine du Jour
 
 
 
 
By James Clear: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
 
 
 
 


Think about it~

Ozy: The Internet Could Become an Environmental Problem
 
 
Ozy: Volunteering Overseas May Do More Harm Than Good
 
 
 
 
The Old Motor: 1955 Heavy Traffic on the Lodge Expressway Detroit, Michigan
 
 
 
 
By Joanne Guidoccio: Inspired by Jann Arden
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Ideas

 
 

 
 
 
 
By Hometalk Highlights: Don’t Kick Your Old Crib to the Curb Before Seeing These 14 Ideas Just because your kids are older does not mean you have to get rid of their crib.
 
 


 
 

 
 

Recipes

 
 
My Recipe Treasures: Oriental Chicken Salad, Pina Colada Pie, Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins and more->
 
 
 
 
Michael’s Test Kitchen: Dutch Apple Pie
 
 
 
 
Michael’s Test Kitchen: Beer Bread
 
 

 
 
 
 
Michael’s Test Kitchen: Homemade BBQ Sauce
 
 

 
 
 
 
Michael’s Test Kitchen: Lemon Cucumber Smoothie
 
 


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