Science Teachers’ Assocation of NSW inc 2018–19 Calendar
MONDAY
TUESDAY
Australian
Citizenship Day
WEDNESDAY
Leadership in
Science , Kirrawee
High School
17
18
Family and
Community Day
(ACT)
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
1888 birth of David
Marine, US pathologist,
whose substantial
research on the
treatment of goitre with
iodine led to the iodising
of table salt.
1819 birth of Foucault,
French physicist, whose
pendulum experiment, 5
Jan 1851, proved that the
Earth rotates on its axis.
19
20
Labour Day
1908, Ford’s Model T, first
car made on an assembly
line, was offered at
US$825 and quickly
became the largest seller
in the US. True mass
production of cars had
begun .
1
25
8 9
1987, Paul Holc became
the youngest person
in the world known to
have an organ transplant
of any kind, when he
received a new heart at
just three hours old. He
survived to be an adult.
22
27
3
1731 birth of Henry
Cavendish, English
scientist who determined
mass and density of the
Earth, showed water is
a compound, measured
specific heat of various
substances and studied
electrostatics.
28
22
1839 death of Friedrich
Mohs, German
mineralogist, devised
Mohs scale to compare
mineral hardness; based
on ten common minerals
ranked by which can
scratch another.
29
5
17
National Kangaroo
Awareness Day
23 24
30
18
12
19
1972 death of Igor Ivan
Sikorsky, Russian-born
U.S. pioneer in aircraft
design, best known
for his successful
development of the
helicopter.
25
7
1884, Greenwich
was adopted as the
universal meridian.
An international
meeting decided that
all longitude would be
calculated both east and
west from this meridian
up to 180°.
1995, Americans Mario
Molina and Sherwood
Rowland, and Dutch
scientist Paul Crutzen
won a Nobel Prize for
their work warning that
CFCs are eroding Earth’s
ozone layer.
11
6
13
26
14
1824, Joseph Aspdin, a
stone mason in Yorkshire,
patented Portland
cement, made by
burning finely pulverized
lime and clay in kilns at
high temperatures.
2004 death of Lewis
Urry, Canadian-American
chemical engineer who
invented the alkaline
battery, then lithium
batteries. An estima ted
80% of dry cell batteries
now sold in the world are
alkaline.
16
23
1846, dentist
Dr. William Morton
used an experimental
anesthetic, ether, for the
first time on a patient
in Boston for tooth
extraction.
1956 death of Clarence
Birdseye, American
naturalist and inventor of
deep freezing for food.
On his Arctic field trips,
he observed that quick
freezing of fish stopped
large crystals forming
and damaging cells.
4
10
1921 death of John
Dunlop, Scottish inventor,
who in 1887 pioneered
the pneumatic tyre. His
9yo son complained of
the rough tricycle ride
over cobbled streets.
20
1873, US farmer Joseph
Glidden applied to
patent barbed wire.
1891, Philip Downing,
got a US patent for
improvements to the
street mailbox to protect
it from thieves and
weather. Today, it is
relatively unchanged.
21
1955 birth of Bill Gates,
US business man, who
dropped out of Harvard
University and co-
founded Microsoft.
27
YS Presentation
Ceremony
1998, US astronaut John
Glenn at age 77, was
launched into space
aboard Space Shuttle
Discovery. In 1962, he
had made history as the
first American to orbit
the Earth.
29
21
1957, the Soviet Union
won the space race
against the US, when
they launched Sputnik,
the first man-made
satellite, into orbit
around the earth.
2
1940 birth of Peter
Doherty, Australian
scientist who shared a
1996 Nobel Prize for work
on how T-lymphocytes,
recognise virus-infected
cells from healthy cells.
15
26
1836, Charles Darwin
returned from his voyage
on the HMS Beagle to
the Pacific and beyond. It
would be 23 years before
he published Origin of
Species.
1938, in New York the
radio altimeter was
first demonstrated. The
device gave pilots the
altitude of an aircraft
by reflection of radio
signals from the ground,
thus changing aviation
forever.
National Nut Day
2002 death of Nils Bohlin,
Swedish engineer who
invented the 3-point
lap and shoulder
seatbelt, one of the most
important innovations in
automobile safety.
SUNDAY
International Day
of Peace
1969, the Murchison
meteorite landed in
Australia. 100-kg of it
has been recovered and
92 different amino acids
identified within it, only
19 of which are found
on Earth.
YS ISEF/Broadcom
Panel
24
SATURDAY
30
1992, after a 13yr inquiry,
the Vatican admitted its
error of 359 years ago in
condemning Galileo of
heresy for his scientific
beliefs, such as the Earth
revolves around
the sun.
31
— 5 —
Science dates compiled by Sue Siwinski
28