Time is equal to life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life. ~Alan Lakein
1907 – Rachel Carson, American marine biologist, writer and environmentalist, is born.
Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.
Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.
Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.
1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the mile-wide, three-mile-long channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to Marin County, bridging both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and the United States. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The Frommers travel guide considers the Golden Gate Bridge “possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world”. It opened in 1937 and had, until 1964, the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet (1,300 m).
1986 – Dragon Quest, the game credited as setting the template for role-playing video games, is released in Japan.
Dragon Quest, published as Dragon Warrior in North America until 2005,[Note 1] is a series of internationally best-selling console role-playing video game (RPG) titles created by Yuji Horii and his studio, Armor Project. The series is published by Square Enix (formerly Enix), with localized versions of later installments for the Nintendo DS (NDS) being published by Nintendo outside of Japan. The first title was published in 1986 and there are currently ten main-series titles and numerous spin-off games. Nearly every game in the main series has either an anime or manga adaptation, or both. The series has had a significant impact on the development of console RPGs, and introduced a number of features to the genre. Installments of the series have appeared on MSX computers, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and Wii video game consoles, and several models of mobile phones. Each Dragon Quest video game soundtrack is arranged into an orchestral piece and the video game series is the first to have live-action ballet adaptations.