1749 – Edward Jenner, English physician and microbiologist is born.
Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world’s first vaccine. He is often called “the father of immunology”, and his work is said to have “saved more lives than the work of any other human”. A member of the Royal Society, in the field of zoology he was the first person to describe the brood parasitism of the cuckoo. In 2002, Jenner was named in the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest Britons.
1792 – The New York Stock Exchange is formed under the Buttonwood Agreement.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), sometimes known as the “Big Board”, is an American stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York. It is by far the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at US$19.69 trillion as of May 2015. The average daily trading value was approximately US$169 billion in 2013.
The NYSE trading floor is located at 11 Wall Street and is composed of 21 rooms used for the facilitation of trading. A fifth trading room, located at 30 Broad Street, was closed in February 2007. The main building and the 11 Wall Street building were designated National Historic Landmarks in 1978.
The NYSE is owned by Intercontinental Exchange, an American holding company it also lists (NYSE: ICE). Previously, it was part of NYSE Euronext (NYX), which was formed by the NYSE’s 2007 merger with the fully electronic stock exchange Euronext. NYSE and Euronext now operate as divisions of Intercontinental Exchange.
The NYSE has been the subject of several lawsuits regarding fraud or breach of duty and in 2004 was sued by its former CEO for breach of contract and defamation.
1940 – Alan Kay, American computer scientist and academic is born.
Read more.1962 – Rosalind Picard, American computer scientist and engineer, co-founded Affectiva, is born.
Rosalind Wright Picard is Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, director and also the founder of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, co-director of the Things That Think Consortium, and co-founder of startups Affectiva and Empatica. In 2005, she was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Picard is credited with starting the branch of computer science known as affective computing with the publication of Affective Computing. This book described the importance of emotion in intelligence, the vital role human emotion communication has to relationships between people, and the possible effects of emotion recognition by robots and wearable computers. Her work in this field has led to an expansion into autism research and developing devices that could help humans recognize nuances in human emotions.
2004 – The first legal same-sex marriages in the U.S. are performed in the state of Massachusetts.
The movement to obtain civil marriage rights and benefits for same-sex couples in the United States began in the 1970s and in 1971 the United States Supreme Court dismissed a case, Baker v. Nelson claiming such right on appeal, establishing it as a precedent as it came from mandatory appellate review. The issue did not become prominent in U.S. politics until the 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court decision in Baehr v. Lewin that declared that state’s prohibition to be unconstitutional. During the 21st century, public support for same-sex marriage has grown considerably, and national polls conducted since 2011 show that a majority of Americans support legalizing it. On 17 May 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state and the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage following the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health six months earlier.
2015 – BIG NEWS! Adafruit is manufacturing Arduino for Arduino.cc in New York, New York, USA @arduino #TeamArduinoCC
“Adafruit and Arduino.cc have been working together on open-source software and hardware for almost 10 years in a variety of ways, this is expanded partnership and manufacturing is part of our collective goal to make the world a better place through the sharing of ideas, code and hardware with our communities. We’re currently manufacturing the ARDUINO GEMMA with Arduino.cc right here in New York City at the Adafruit factory, it instantly became a top seller and we’re looking forward to bringing our manufacturing expertise and processes to start shipping more versions and types of Arduinos right here from the USA as soon as possible!” – Limor “Ladyada” Fried.
