July/August 2024: Science History from 50, 100 and 150 Years Ago

July/August 2024: Science Historical past from 50, 100 and 150 Decades In the past

By Mark Fischetti

1974

The Sawfly’s Barf Defense

“Many insects regurgitate or defecate when they are threatened, a phenomenon acquainted to just about any person who has held a grasshopper in their hand. It is be­­lieved that such discharges aid to protect the insect in opposition to predation. When the larva of the sawfly is disturbed, it immediately turns and dabs a droplet of a viscous resin from its mouth on the offending object. This oral effluent is obnoxious to numerous predators ants and spiders immediately flee. The sawfly larva feeds on the needles of conifers, including the reduced part, which incorporates resin from the branch. The resin repels other insects, component of the tree’s individual defenses versus assault.”

On supporting science journalism

If you’re savoring this posting, contemplate supporting our award-successful journalism by subscribing. By buying a membership you are aiding to assure the long run of impactful stories about the discoveries and strategies shaping our environment nowadays.

1924

Dying Rays No Just one Knows

“Every so generally we are startled by re­­ports of a new ray with weird and terrifying properties, in­­tend­ed for this sort of mild responsibilities as para­lyzing airplanes in flight, blowing up battleships and killing enemy troops by the wholesale. The mysterious ray is a legitimate perennial of science. It was talked about when Nikola Tesla experimented with high-­frequency currents in 1898 and set out of commission the generators in a electricity household numerous miles absent. Nearly a 12 months ago a French inventor is said to have demonstrated a mysterious ray which brought about Parisian taxicabs to cease. Not too long ago, the garrulous Leon Trotsky has instructed the earth to beware of a new Russian death ray. Guglielmo Marconi, from time to time, has been doing work on some mysterious ray for destructive uses, according to rumor. What are these diabolic rays? No just one apart from their sponsors truly is familiar with. We are given no evidence, besides a handful of unimpressive laboratory experiments. Groping about in pitch blackness, we are frankly, skeptical.”

1874

Perils of Nitroglycerin

“Nitroglycerin is a thick, colorless oil. People today are so accustomed to managing oils that it is pretty much impossible to make them comprehend the hazard that lurks even in the smallest amount of nitroglycerin. It explodes when carefully struck, and is 10 times extra potent as an explosive than gunpowder. The other evening, in Jersey City, a gentleman and lady had been using a moonlight stroll in the vicinity of just one of the shafts of the new Delaware and Lackawanna railway tunnel. The person noticed on the floor the glimmer of a little tube, picked it up, and slapped it from one particular hand to the other, when a great explosion ensued. His eyes were being wrecked, his limbs broken, and his companion was dreadfully hurt. It was a discarded nitroglycerin tube, this sort of as are utilised in blasting, and is intended to have been thrown absent.”

Oxygen Centennial

“We have alluded to the proposition of Dr. H. Carrington Bolt­on, of Columbia University, of a reunion of chemists to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of fashionable chemistry, that party getting preset in 1774, owing to the discoveries, at that time, of oxygen by Joseph Priestley, chlorine by Carl Wilhelm Scheele and other crucial investigations by Antoine Lavoisier. The working day established apart is August 1, in Northumberland, Pa., where by Priestley’s remains are buried.”

Prohibition, 46 Decades That’s why

“There is a compound that has been the cause of extra sorrow, criminal offense and suffering than all other evil organizations that have afflicted the planet. It has prompted tens of thousands of murders and uncounted circumstances of robbery, theft, arson and suicide it has introduced distress and want into hundreds of thousands of homes. What an dreadful indictment towards a substance which stands so carefully allied in chemical connection to harmless sugar! Alcohol is not a pure solution it can only outcome from a ferment. If this chemicaI adjust experienced been unattainable, the human race would have been saved from shedding tears, the aggregated quantity of which reaches that of a mighty river. We un­­hesitatingly declare that the globe in its existing innovative phase has no will need of liquor. Why not then make a identified hard work to rid the country and the earth of the monster? There is advantage and moral pressure more than enough to compel Congress to prohibit its importation, and ample in most States to compel legislatures to prohibit its manufacture.”

In the U.S., prohibition of the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages lasted from 1920 to 1933.