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January 19 is Tin Can Day

January 19, 2017/0 Comments/in January

Today is Tin Can Day. On this date in 1825, the first U.S. patent for the invention of the tin can was awarded to Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett. Like many things, the story of the tin can is not without intrigue. (Tintrigue?) A little history:

France

Paris confectioner Nicolas Appert invented a method of sealing foods in glass jars, then placing them in boiling water, effectively sterilizing them, decades before Louis Pasteur demonstrated that heat killed bacteria.

In 1810, Appert entered a competition sponsored by the French military. He won a cash prize in exchange for making his findings public. The preserved goods were a boon to the armed forces, especially the French navy, which had no fresh food for long stretches while at sea. Appert is considered by many to be the “father of canning,” despite never using cans.

England

There were drawbacks to Appert’s system: glass was heavy, fragile and prone to rupture from internal pressure. Later in 1810, British merchant Peter Durand received a patent from King George III to preserve foods in tinplated cans.

Durand is well-known as the inventor of the tin can but his patent application reveals it was “an invention communicated to him by a certain foreigner residing abroad.” Evidence suggests that Frenchman Philippe de Girard came to London and used Durand as an agent to patent his own creation.

On January 28, 1811, Sir Charles Blagden, a fellow of the Royal Society, wrote of Girard’s frequent visits to test his canned foods on the members. “M Girard came and brought his preserved foods…The broth had been kept since August last, he said. The milk and beef six weeks…His patent is taken out in the name of Durand.”

Why not file in France? Girard had recently designed a flax-spinning loom for which Napoleon promised a reward of one million francs but never paid. But there’s no record of Durand paying him for the rights.

In any case, Durand sold the British patent to Bryan Donkin for one thousand pounds. In 1818, Durand received a U.S. patent for the same design he’d sold in England. Perhaps Durand should be hailed, not as an inventor, but as a recycler. (Girard continued to innovate, without much financial success, until his death in 1844.)

United States

Until America won its independence in 1783, the power to grant patents was that of the British crown. The United States Constitution of 1787 first included provision for the Congress to issue patents:

The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The first Patent Act, “An Act to promote the progress of useful arts,” was enacted in 1790 and enabled any two of the secretary of state, the secretary of war, and the attorney general to grant patents lasting 14 years for new inventions and innovations that were “useful and important.”

We have finally arrived at our stated destination. Daggett and Kensett received their patent for the process of “preserving animal substances” on January 19, 1825. More than 4,000 patents had been granted in the United States by that time, one of them Durand’s.

So who should we credit for the tin can? We’re not sure but one person we should all thank is Ezra J. Warner, who patented the first can opener —decades later—on January 5, 1858.

January 18 is Thesaurus Day

January 18, 2017/0 Comments/in January

Today is Thesaurus Day. It celebrates the birthday on January 18, 1779, of Peter Roget, who published his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases in 1852, at the age of 72.

According to Joshua Kendall’s biography, The Man Who Made Lists, Roget was compelled from an early age to create lists and tally objects to bring order to a chaotic childhood filled with mentally ill family members, including an uncle who cut his own throat and died in Roget’s arms.

Roget’s obsessions followed him into adulthood. He found that counting things gave him comfort and noted, ” I every day go up at least 320 steps.” He marveled at his ability to control the movement of his own irises.

He found Paris filthy but admired the precision of Napoleon’s military parades. Later, as a doctor in his native England, he helped introduce lifesaving public health policy in Manchester. The city’s squalor drove him to spend his evenings composing the synonymic word lists that would eventually make up the Thesaurus.

He never intended it as a book of synonyms: he felt there was “really no such thing” because of the unique meaning of every word. Instead, it was an elaborate system of 1,000 lists meant to spur readers to higher levels of scholarship. The index he added, almost as an afterthought, is the only part that most people use. He continued to revise and update it until his death at the age of 90.

To honor Thesaurus Day, we consulted it for a synonym for “synonym.” We found “analogue,” “equivalent” and the obviously trying-too-hard “metonym.”

What about synonyms for “thesaurus?” Along with “glossary” and “lexicon,” we found less worthy terms such as “sourcebook” and “reference book.” Our favorite? “Onomasticon.” Try to sneak that into a sentence today and have a happy Thesaurus Day!

January 17 is Palomares Hydrogen Bomb Accident Day

January 17, 2017/0 Comments/in January

Palomares Hydrogen Bomb Accident Day

January 17, 2016, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the worst nuclear accident you’ve probably never heard of, which took place over and on Palomares, Spain, and its 2,000 inhabitants. Its effects are still being discovered and its dangers are evolving as plutonium, with a half-life of 24,000 years, continues to contaminate the town and its people, plants and animals.

On January 17, 1966, the Cold War was in full swing and the US Air Force was on continuous airborne alert, flying routes across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to points along the border of the Soviet Union. The lengthy flights required two mid-air refuelings.

A B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs collided with its refueling plane, killing seven airmen and dropping its bombs. Conventional explosives in two detonated on impact, scattering radioactive plutonium over the farming town of Palomares.

Luckily—luck being a relative thing—the warheads were unarmed, preventing thermonuclear explosions, each of which would have been 73 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

The story most of the world heard was that one bomb had fallen and was eventually retrieved intact from the water eighty days later. The search for that bomb overshadowed the calamitous radioactive fallout that resulted. No one was evacuated from the village.

U.S. Ambassador Angier Duke told the press, “This area has gone through no public health hazard of any kind, and no trace whatsoever of radioactivity has ever been found.” On March 8, he (and tourism minister Manuel Fraga) took a much-publicized swim at a local beach to prove the water was safe. “If this is radioactivity,” he told reporters, “I love it!”

For three months, U.S. personnel and Spanish Civil Guards worked to decontaminate the area. Radioactive topsoil covering 5.4 acres was shoveled into thousands of barrels and shipped to the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina for processing. Land with lower surface contamination levels, totaling 42 acres, was plowed under to a depth of 12 inches.

Buildings were pressure-washed; those that still registered significant radiation were painted to cover the plutonium. Chipping, scraping, or sanding to repaint would, of course, reintroduce it into the atmosphere to be inhaled, ingested and absorbed.

Palomares was known for its delicious raf tomatoes. In 1966, all of them were burned (an action that dispersed more plutonium). After the cleanup, the next several crops failed but farmers persevered. They continue to grow them today, resentful that they have to sell them under a false name because of safety concerns about local produce.

It has never been officially acknowledged that the humans who grew those tomatoes should be worried about their own exposure to radiation. In 1971, Wright Langham, a scientist at Los Alamos Laboratories, visited Palomares to assess the monitoring program put in place post-cleanup.

He found that only 100 villagers had undergone lung and urine testing; 29 tested positive, but that number was deemed “statistically insignificant.” None of the participants were allowed access to their medical records until 1985, after the town’s mayor successfully agitated to have them released.

In 2006, radiation levels detected in snails and other wildlife indicated the presence of dangerous amounts of radioactive material underground. In April 2008, two trenches containing debris and contaminated earth were discovered near the crash sites. American troops dug them in 1966, most likely in a last-minute effort to complete the cleanup before the mission ended. The U.S. government denied any wrongdoing.

Even when the U.S. began making payments to Spain shortly after the accident to help monitor the aftermath, it took no responsibility for loss of life or livelihood, let alone poisoning the land. When the agreement lapsed in 2009, their payments stopped. A new deal between the two countries seemed unlikely.

That, at least, has changed. On October 19, 2015, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Spanish Foreign Minister José García-Margallo y Marfil signed a “statement of intent.” (full text here)

The United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain (hereinafter collectively the “Participants”) intend to cooperate in a program to further remediate the site of a radioactive accident near Palomares, Spain, and with that aim they intend to negotiate as soon as possible an agreement to establish the necessary activities, roles and responsibilities of each Participant in that remediation and disposal project.

When? Soon. Until then, here’s a fence to keep everyone safe. Happy 50th anniversary, Palomares Hydrogen Bomb Accident Day!

UPDATE:

On June 20, 2016, the New York Times ran an article about the American servicemen ordered to do cleanup at the site with no protective gear. After fifty years, government records have been declassified, showing systemic negligence toward the servicemen put in harm’s way.

When urine tests taken during the cleanup showed alarmingly high concentrations of plutonium, the Air Force threw out the results as “clearly unrealistic.” Although its own report recommended it, there was no effort to do follow-up tests and the Air Force has kept the radiation tests out of the men’s files.

The Department of Veterans Affairs relies on the Air Force’s records, which maintain that there was no harmful radiation in Palomares. The result? Veterans suffering multiple forms of cancer due to plutonium contamination are unable to receive full health care coverage; their claims are denied again and again.

Ronald R. Howell, 71, told the New York Times, “First they denied I was even there, then they denied there was any radiation.” Regarding a recent brain tumor removal, he said, “I submit a claim, and they deny. I submit appeal, and they deny. Now I’m all out of appeals. Pretty soon, we’ll all be dead and they will have succeeded at covering the whole thing up.”

January 14 is Caesarean Section Day

January 14, 2017/0 Comments/in January

Today is Caesarean Section Day. (Cesarean is a popular alternate spelling.) It commemorates the first recorded successful caesarean delivery in the U.S. On January 14, 1794, Dr. Jesse Bennett performed the operation on his wife, in his home, with no antiseptics or medical equipment.

Dr. Bennett, 24, did not intend to deliver his own baby. He engaged Dr. A. Humphrey to assist his wife Elizabeth through labor. Humphrey declared it impossible for the baby to be born naturally, after an unsuccessful attempt at delivery with forceps. He refused to assist in a caesarean operation, certain it would prove fatal to mother and baby.

Humphrey’s opinion had merit. At that point in history, statistics in the U.K. and Ireland showed that mothers had only a 15% chance of survival from the surgery.

Elizabeth was sure she would die but hoped the baby could be saved. Her husband made the difficult decision to operate. She was placed on a table and given a large dose of laudanum to make her sleepy. Her sister, Nancy Hawkins, sat by her side holding a tallow candle for light, and two African-American servants to hold her down.

Dr. Bennett performed the operation, removed the baby and stitched the wound with linen thread, which they used in the house to sew heavy clothing. Much to everyone’s surprise, both mother and baby, daughter Maria, survived. Elizabeth lived another thirty-six years. Maria died at the age of seventy-six.

Bennett felt no doctor would believe such an operation could be performed, without proper equipment, in a home in the backwoods of Virginia. He was sure he’d be branded a liar, so he didn’t submit it to a medical society for publication.

Thirty-three years later, in 1827, Dr. John Lambert, an Ohio physician, performed a caesarean delivery with modern equipment. Medical journals at the time reported it as the first caesarean operation in the U.S. Some medical societies still give Dr. Lambert credit.

After Dr. Bennett’s death in 1842, Dr. A.L. Knight, who’d grown up a neighbor of the Bennetts and heard them tell the story, decided to set history straight. He tracked down witnesses Nancy Hawkins and a servant present that evening to confirm the events, then wrote The Life and Times of Dr. Jesse Bennett, M.D., which was published in The Southern Historical Magazine in 1892.

Of course, neither Bennett nor Lambert originated the surgery; it’s been performed for millennia. The term “caesarean” has long been believed to refer to the birth of Julius Caesar, who ascended to the dictatorship of Rome before being assassinated on the steps of the Senate in 46 B.C.

That assumption is likely due to author Pliny the Elder’s referral to one Julius Caesar–ancestor of the ruler–as ab utero caeso (cut from the womb). That explained, he wrote, the cognomen, or descriptive name, “Caesar” which was then carried by his descendants, also called Julius Caesar.

The Roman Lex Caesarea (imperial law), in place roughly 600 years before Caesar’s birth, required a baby to be removed from a mother who had died in childbirth. Burying a pregnant woman was taboo. The procedure was performed on a living woman only when she had reached her tenth month of pregnancy and wouldn’t live through delivery. There is no classical source of the period that records any woman surviving the surgery.

By all indications, future emperor Julius Caesar’s mother Aurelia lived, which would indicate a natural birthing process. Even the Oxford English Dictionary perpetuates this confusion, defining caesarean birth as “the delivery of a child by cutting through the walls of the abdomen when delivery cannot take place in the natural way, as was done in the case of Julius Caesar.” It’s understandable to assume that it refers to the Caesar we know, rather than a Caesar we don’t.

From ancient history to modern times, caesarean section deliveries have been fraught with danger. These days, we may take this surgical procedure’s safety for granted but it hasn’t always been so. Today, we say thank you to reluctant pioneer Dr. Jesse Bennett and physicians everywhere.

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