The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future. – Stephen W. Hawking
1743 – Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
In 1743, the Lyonnais physicist Jean-Pierre Christin, permanent secretary of the Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de LyonFR, working independently of Celsius, developed a scale where zero represented the freezing point of water and 100 represented the boiling point of water. On 19 May 1743 he published the design of a mercury thermometer, the “Thermometer of Lyon” built by the craftsman Pierre Casati that used this scale.
1911 – Parks Canada, the world’s first national park service, is established as the Dominion Parks Branch under the Department of the Interior.
Parks Canada was established on May 19, 1911, as the Dominion Parks Branch under the Department of the Interior, becoming the world’s first national park service. Since its creation, its name has changed, known variously as the Dominion Parks Branch, National Parks Branch, Parks Canada, and the Canadian Parks Service, before a return to Parks Canada in 1998. The service’s activities are regulated under the provisions of the Canada National Parks Act, which was enacted in 1930, and amended in 2000.
1942 – Gary Kildall, American computer scientist, founded Digital Research Inc. is born.
Gary Arlen Kildall was an American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc. (DRI). Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as fully capable computers rather than equipment controllers and to organize a company around this concept. He also co-hosted the PBS TV show The Computer Chronicles. Although his career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in connection with IBM’s unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP/M for the IBM PC.
1963 – The New York Post Sunday Magazine publishes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, drafted shortly after his arrest on April 12 during the Birmingham campaign advocating for civil rights and an end to segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The letter was in response to “A Call for Unity”: A statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods, following his arrest, and became one of the most-anthologized statements of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
The Letter from Birmingham Jail (also known as “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” and “The Negro Is Your Brother”) is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws, and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. Responding to being referred to as an “outsider”, he wrote that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere“.
The letter was widely published and became an important text for the American Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s…
…An editor at the New York Times Magazine, Harvey Shapiro, asked King to write his letter for publication in the magazine, but the Times chose not to publish it. Extensive excerpts from the letter were published, without King’s consent, on May 19, 1963 in the New York Post Sunday Magazine.
2013 – Ladyada’s desk in the NY Times!
There’s a Method to My Desk’s Madness @ NYTimes.com.
Even the most modular, bland work space tends to succumb to the tastes or personality of its inhabitant. How can it not? The average office worker spends nearly six hours a day sitting at a desk. In the first of an occasional column, we take a close look at how successful people organize their work spaces. Their answers have been edited and condensed.
Our founder and engineer, Ladyada, has her desk in this New York Times feature today!
