On this day in 1947, Kon-Tiki, a balsa wood raft captained by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, completes a 4,300-mile, 101-day journey from Peru to Raroia in the Tuamotu Archipelago, near Tahiti. Heyerdahl wanted to prove his theory that prehistoric South Americans could have colonized the Polynesian islands by drifting on ocean currents.
Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl with a model of the balsa raft “Kon-Tiki”
As King Thor after his arrival at Raroia
Heyerdahl and his five-person crew set sail from Callao, Peru, on the 40-square-foot Kon-Tiki on April 28, 1947. The Kon-Tiki, named for a mythical white chieftain, was made of indigenous materials and designed to resemble rafts of early South American Indians. While crossing the Pacific, the sailors encountered storms, sharks and whales, before finally washing ashore at Raroia.
The six men who made up the crew were: Thor Heyerdahl, leader of the expedition; Herman Watzinger, in charge of meteorological and technical research; Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby, both wireless operators, who maintained contact with radio amateurs; Erik Hesselberg, navigator, who plotted the drift of the raft; and the Swedish sociologist Bengt Danielson, who acted as steward.
The Crew takes on a different look after being at sea
Heyerdahl, born in Larvik, Norway, on October 6, 1914, believed that Polynesia’s earliest inhabitants had come from South America, a theory that conflicted with popular scholarly opinion that the original settlers arrived from Asia. Even after his successful voyage, anthropologists and historians continued to discredit Heyerdahl’s belief. However, his journey captivated the public and he wrote a book about the experience:
…that became an international bestseller and was translated into 65 languages. Heyerdahl also produced a documentary about the trip that won an Academy Award in 1951.
Thor Heyerdahl
Official Trailer of – Kon-Tiki
New research indicates Polynesian ancestors settled in Samoa around 800 BC, colonized the central Society Islands between AD 1025 and 1120 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 1190 and 1290.
Most historians consider that the Polynesians from the west were the original inhabitants and that the story of the Hanau epe is either pure myth, or a memory of internal tribal or class conflicts. However, in 2011 Professor Erik Thorsby of the University of Oslo presented DNA evidence to the Royal Society which whilst agreeing with the west origin also identified a distinctive but smaller genetic contribution from South America.
The world’s first international communications satellite, Telstar I, is launched into orbit ushering in a new era of communication.
The aluminum satellite was wimpy by modern standards. It used 14 watts of power – roughly one-seventh that of a modern laptop – generated by the 3,600 solar panels on its outer hull. As well, it could only carry 600 phone calls and one black-and-white TV channel, though not much more was really needed at the time.
The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully relayed through space the first television pictures, telephone calls, fax images and provided the first live transatlantic television feed. Telstar 2 was launched May 7, 1963. Telstar 1 and 2, though no longer functional, are still in orbit.
Belonging to AT&T, the original Telstar was part of a multi-national agreement between AT&T (US), Bell Telephone Laboratories (US), NASA (US), GPO (UK) and the National PTT (France) to develop experimental satellite communications over the Atlantic Ocean. Bell Labs held a contract with NASA, reimbursing the agency three million pounds for each launch, independent of success.
The satellite was built by a team at Bell Telephone Laboratories, including John Robinson Pierce, who created the project; Rudy Kompfner, who invented the traveling wave tube transponder used in the satellite; and James M. Early, who designed its transistors and solar panels.
John Pierce
James Early
Rudy Kompfner
The satellite is roughly spherical, measures 34.5 inches (876.30 mm) in length, and weighs about 170 pounds (77 kg). Its dimensions were limited by what would fit on one of NASA’s Delta rockets. Telstar was spin-stabilized, and its outer surface was covered with solar cells to generate electrical power. The power produced was 14 watts (0.019 hp).
The original Telstar had one innovative transponder to relay data, which was a television channel or multiplexed telephone circuits. An omnidirectional array of small antenna elements around the satellite’s “equator” received 6 GHz microwave signals to be relayed.
The transponder converted the frequency to 4 GHz, amplified the signals in a traveling-wave tube, and retransmitted them omnidirectionally via the adjacent array of larger box-shaped cavities. The prominent helical antenna was for telecommands from a ground station.
Telstar 1 prior to its encapsulation for launch
A Thor/Delta 316 launches with the Telstar 1 satellite from Cape Canaveral
Launched by NASA aboard a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral on July 10, 1962, Telstar 1 was the first privately sponsored space launch. A medium-altitude satellite, Telstar was placed in an elliptical orbit completed once every 2 hours and 37 minutes.
Telstar 1 relayed its first, and non-public, television pictures—a flag outside Andover Earth Station—to Pleumeur-Bodou on July 11, 1962. Almost two weeks later, on July 23, at 3:00 p.m. EDT, it relayed the first publicly available live transatlantic television signal. The broadcast was made possible in Europe by Eurovision and in North America by NBC, CBS, ABC, and the CBC.
The first public broadcast featured CBS’s Walter Cronkite and NBC’s Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby in Brussels. The first pictures were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The first broadcast was to have been remarks by President John F. Kennedy, but the signal was acquired before the president was ready, so the lead-in time was filled with a short segment of a televised game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.
The batter, Tony Taylor, was seen hitting a ball pitched by Cal Koonce to the right fielder George Altman. From there, the video switched first to Washington, DC; then to Cape Canaveral, Florida; to the Seattle World’s Fair; then to Quebec and finally to Stratford, Ontario.
The Washington segment included remarks by President Kennedy, talking about the price of the American dollar, which was causing concern in Europe.
During that evening, Telstar 1 also relayed the first telephone call to be transmitted through space, and it successfully transmitted faxes, data, and both live and taped television, including the first live transmission of television across an ocean from Andover, Maine, US to Goonhilly Downs, England and Pleumeur-Bodou, France. In August 1962, Telstar 1 became the first satellite used to synchronize time between two continents, bringing the United Kingdom and the United States to within 1 microsecond of each other (previous efforts were only accurate to 2,000 microseconds).
June 27, 1950: First Movie to Show a Functioning Computer
June 1950, Destination Moon is released, the earliest movie to show a functioning computer. In it, a GE Differential Analyzer is shown. While it is essentially an analog computer, it does perform complex calculations very quickly.
GE Differential Analyzer
Differential Analyzer for the movie Earth vs The Flying Saucers
Kay McNulty, Alyse Snyder, and Sis Stump operate the differential analyzer in the basement of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, circa 1942-1945.
The differential analyzer is a mechanical analogue computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used operationally.
Disc and sphere from Lord Kelvin’s harmonic analyzer of 1878. Used for mathematical analysis of tides
Destination Moon was the first sci-fi film made in the U.S. that also attempted technical accuracy in a manned rocket ship launch to moon. Produced by George Pal, directed by Irving Pichel, and shot in Technicolor. Pal produced a science fiction film dealing with the dangers inherent in space travel and with the possible difficulties of landing on the moon and safely returning to earth.
Pal commissioned an initial screenplay from screenwriters James O’Hanlon and Rip Van Ronkel, but science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein contributed significantly to Destination Moon’s final screenplay, also serving as the film’s technical adviser. Certain story elements from his 1947 juvenile novel, Rocket Ship Galileo were adapted for use in the film’s final screenplay. Heinlein also published a tie-in novella, Destination Moon, based on the screenplay. The film’s storyline also resembles portions of Heinlein’s novel The Man Who Sold the Moon, which he wrote in 1949 but did not publish until 1951, a year after the Pal film opened.
Cartoon character Woody Woodpecker’s creator Walter Lantz and producer George Pal had been close friends ever since Pal left Europe. As a result, Pal always tried to include Woody, out of friendship and good luck, in all his film productions. George Pal incorporates Woody in Destination Moon as a vital part of its unfolding storyline.
In a cartoon shown within the film, Woody explains the scientific principles behind space travel and then a trip to the Moon. This engaging cartoon is shown to a gathering of U. S. industrialists, who it’s hoped will patriotically finance such a daring venture before an (unnamed) non-western power can do so successfully. But the Woody cartoon actually serves the purpose of explaining, in layman’s terms, to the average 1950 movie going audience, the practical details of a manned space expedition to the Moon and how it might be accomplished.
June 25, 1997: Progress Spacecraft Collides with Mir
June 25, 1997 was a frightening moment in the history of manned spaceflight. An unmanned Progress spacecraft collided with the Russian space station Mir.
The Russian Progress supply spacecraft crashed into the Russian Mir space station during testing of a docking procedure via remote control. The 7,200 kilogram, school bus-sized Progress failed to properly respond to braking commands and collided into a solar panel attached to one of the Spektr research modules and then breached the hull of the module itself.
Collision Damage
Close-up of panel damage
As he had been trained, U.S. astronaut Mike Foale retreated to the Soyuz escape vessel. He soon left after realizing that his companions, cosmonauts, Alexander Lazutkin and VasilyTsibliev, had not joined him. They were trying to save the station.
Foale
Lazutkin
Tsibliyev
Progress M-34 collided with solar arrays on the Spektr module and crashed into the module’s outer shell, puncturing the module and causing depressurization on the station. Only quick actions on the part of the crew, cutting cables leading to the module and closing Spektr’s hatch, prevented the crews having to abandon the station in Soyuz TM-25.
Their efforts stabilized the station’s air pressure, whilst the pressure in Spektr, containing many of Foale’s experiments and personal effects, dropped to a vacuum. In an effort to restore some of the power and systems lost following the isolation of Spektr and to attempt to locate the leak, EO-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev and flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov carried out a risky salvage operation later in the flight, entering the empty module during a so-called “intra-vehicular activity” or “IVA” spacewalk and inspecting the condition of hardware and running cables through a special hatch from Spektr’s systems to the rest of the station.
Animation of hte Collision
Following these first investigations, Foale and Solovyev conducted a 6-hour EVA on the surface of Spektr to inspect the damage to the punctured module. Foale was aboard Mir as part of a $400 million contract NASA had signed with the Russian space agency for a series of nine shuttle-Mir docking missions intended to serve as checkouts of the procedures and techniques that would be needed to assemble the international space station.
Lazutkin, with Foale’s help, managed to sever cables to seal off the damaged module from the rest of the station. By successfully isolating the damaged compartment, the crew prevented the entire space station from depressurizing to dangerous levels. Severing the power-generating solar panels left Mir with only about half of its original power levels at the time.
When the accident occurred Tsibliev was manually maneuvering the unmanned Progress M-34 cargo spacecraft in a test of the Russian-built Toru docking system. NASA officials said the incident ultimately would prove useful lessons learned for the space station program.
A view of Mir from Soyuz TM-2 showing the station in its early configuration. In view (from left to right) are the Base Block, Kvant-1 module and docked Soyuz TM-3 spacecraft.
Feb 9, 1998 approach view of the Mir Space Station viewed from Space Shuttle Endeavour during the STS-89 rendezvous. A Progress cargo ship is attached on the left, a Soyuz manned spacecraft attached on the right.
Michael Foale explains the collision of the Progress
The Viking 1 spacecraft enters into orbit around the planet Mars 10 months after being launched from Earth. Viking 1 would become the first US spacecraft to land on Mars and the first spacecraft overall to successfully soft land and perform a mission on Mars.
Replica of the Viking 1 lander in the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC
Launched aboard a Titan IIIE rocket August 20, 1975, Viking 1 arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. The first month was spent in orbit around the martian planet and on July 20, 1976, Viking Lander 1 separated from the Orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia.
Launch of Viking 1
Artists Rendition of the Viking Landing
Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft (along with Viking 2) sent to Mars as part of NASA’s Viking program. It was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and perform its mission, and held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of 6 years and 116 days or 1775 sols (from landing until surface mission termination, Earth time) until that record was broken by the Opportunity Rover on May 19, 2010.
This is the first “clear” image ever transmitted from the surface of Mars
This color picture of Mars was taken July 21, 1976 the day following Viking l’s successful landing on the planet. The local time on Mars is approximately noon
The Viking 1 Orbiter was inserted into Mars orbit on June 19, 1976 and trimmed to a 1513 x 33,000 km, 24.66 h site certification orbit on June 21. Landing on Mars was planned for July 4, 1976, the United States Bicentennial, but imaging of the primary landing site showed it was too rough for a safe landing. The landing was delayed until a safer site was found. The lander separated from the orbiter on July 20 08:51 UTC and landed at 11:53:06 UTC. It was the first attempt by the United States at landing on Mars.
This picture was taken by the Viking Lander 1 on February 11, 1978 on Sol 556. The large rock just left of the center is about two meters wide. This rock was named “Big Joe” by the Viking scientists. The top of the rock is covered with red soil. Those portions of the rock not covered are similar in color to basaltic rocks on Earth. Therefore, this may be a fragment of a lava flow that was ejected by an impact crater. The part of the Lander that is visible in the lower left is the cover of the nuclear power supply.
Test of General Relativity
High-precision test of general relativity (artist’s impression) Gravitational time dilation is a phenomenon predicted by the theory of General Relativity whereby time passes differently in regions of different gravitational potential. Scientists used the lander to test this hypothesis, by sending radio signals to the lander on Mars, and instructing the lander to send back signals. Scientists then found that the observed signals matched the predictions of the theory of General Relativity
Swedish engineer Gideon Sundback of Hoboken patents all-purpose zipper, the first of his several patents as he continually improved the design.
The zipper or concept for the zipper didn’t appear overnight but was developed over many years as technology and the ability to actually manufacture the concept became available.
A fellow by the name of Whitcomb Judson was the first American inventor to conceive and construct workable interlocking teeth (below) . The device had its debut at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Problem was, the device wasn’t very reliable in real world use.
Gideon Sundback (left) was a Swedish-American electrical engineer working for the Fastener Manufacturing and Machine Company as head designer. After his 1913 patent he devoted himself to improving the fastener and obtained several other patents for his zipper designs.
Sundback Zipper
The popular North American term zipper came from B.F Goodrich Co when they opted to use Sundback’s fastener on a new type of rubber boot and called the fastener, the zipper – the name stuck. The two main uses at that time were boots and tobacco pouches.
It wasn’t until 20 years later that the fashion industry began promoting the novel closure. In 1937 the zipper beat the button in the “Battle of the Fly”.
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13, the third lunar landing mission, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The spacecraft’s destination was the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, where the astronauts were to explore the Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments. After an ox ygen tank exploded on the evening of April 13, however, the new mission objective became to get the Apollo 13 crew home alive.
April 13, at 9:08 p.m., an explosion rocked the spacecraft. Oxygen tank No. 2 had blown up, disabling the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water. Lovell reported to mission control: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and the crew scrambled to find out what had happened. Several minutes later, Lovell looked out of the left-hand window and saw that the spacecraft was venting a gas, which turned out to be the Command Module’s (CM) oxygen. The landing mission was aborted.
Lunar Module
As the CM lost pressure, its fuel cells also died, and one hour after the explosion mission control instructed the crew to move to the LM, which had sufficient oxygen, and use it as a lifeboat. The CM was shut down but would have to be brought back on-line for Earth reentry. The LM was designed to ferry astronauts from the orbiting CM to the moon’s surface and back again; its power supply was meant to support two people for 45 hours. If the crew of Apollo 13 were to make it back to Earth alive, the LM would have to support three men for at least 90 hours and successfully navigate more than 200,000 miles of space. The crew and mission control faced a formidable task.
To complete its long journey, the LM needed energy and cooling water. Both were to be conserved at the cost of the crew, who went on one-fifth water rations and would later endure cabin temperatures that hovered a few degrees above freezing. Removal of carbon dioxide was also a problem, because the square lithium hydroxide canisters from the CM were not compatible with the round openings in the LM environmental system. Mission control built an impromptu adapter out of materials known to be onboard, including that always handy duct tape, and the crew successfully copied their model.
Astronaut John Swigert on the right. An unseen Lovell on the left holds in his right hand the feed water bag from the Portable Life Support System (PLSS). It is connected to a hose (center) from the Lunar Topographic (Hycon) Camera. In the background is the “mail box,” a jury-rigged arrangement which the crew men built to use the CM lithium hydroxide canisters to scrub CO2 from the spacecraft’s atmosphere. The “mail box” was designed and tested on the ground before it was suggested to the Apollo 13 astronauts.
Navigation was also a major problem. The LM lacked a sophisticated navigational system, and the astronauts and mission control had to work out by hand the changes in propulsion and direction needed to take the spacecraft home. On April 14, Apollo 13 swung around the moon. Swigert and Haise took pictures, and Lovell talked with mission control about the most difficult maneuver, a five-minute engine burn that would give the LM enough speed to return home before its energy ran out. Two hours after rounding the far side of the moon, the crew, using the sun as an alignment point, fired the LM’s small descent engine. The procedure was a success; Apollo 13 was on its way home.
For the next three days, Lovell, Haise, and Swigert huddled in the freezing lunar module. Haise developed a case of the flu. Mission control spent this time frantically trying to develop a procedure that would allow the astronauts to restart the CM for reentry. On April 17, a last-minute navigational correction was made, this time using Earth as an alignment guide. Then the repressurized CM was successfully powered up after its long, cold sleep. The heavily damaged service module was shed, and one hour before re-entry the LM was disengaged from the CM. Just before 1 p.m., the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Mission control feared that the CM’s heat shields were damaged in the accident, but after four minutes of radio silence Apollo 13’s parachutes were spotted, and the astronauts splashed down safely into the Pacific Ocean.
March 25, 1928: Jim Lovell, American Astronaut is Born
James “Jim” Arthur Lovell, Jr., a former NASA astronaut and a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission which suffered a critical failure en route to the Moon but was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew and mission control.
Lovell was also the command module pilot of Apollo 8, the first Apollo mission to enter lunar orbit. Lovell is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. One of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon, the first of only three people to fly to the Moon twice, and the only one to have flown there twice without making a landing. Lovell was also the first person to fly in space four times.
Lovell was backup commander of Apollo 11 and was scheduled to command Apollo 14, but he and his crew swapped missions with the crew of Apollo 13. Lovell lifted off aboard Apollo 13 on April 11, 1970 with CM Pilot Jack Swigert and LM Pilot Fred Haise. He and Haise were to land on the Moon.
But on April 13, while in Earth-Moon transit, a damaged heater coil in a cryogenic oxygen tank sparked during a routine tank stir. This quickly turned liquid oxygen into gas with a huge increase in pressure, which burst the tank and damaged a second tank, resulting in the loss of all stored oxygen in just over two hours. This disabled the fuel cell-driven electrical power system, crippling the Command/Service Module “Odyssey” and requiring immediate abort of the landing mission; the goal of the mission became safely returning to Earth.
The damaged Apollo 13 Service Module as seen from the Command Module after separation shortly before the Apollo 13 Crew re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. As can be seen, the explosion caused severe damage, ripping open the Service Module.
Using the LM as a “life boat” providing power, oxygen and propulsion, Lovell and his crew immediately re-established the free return trajectory that they had left, and swung around the Moon to return home. Based on calculations made on Earth, Lovell had to adjust the course two times by manually controlling the Lunar Module’s thrusters and engine, using his watch for timing. Apollo 13 returned safely to Earth on April 17. Lovell is one of only three men to travel to the Moon twice, but unlike John Young and Eugene Cernan, he never walked on it.
Lovell accrued over 715 hours, and had seen a total of 269 sunrises from space on his Gemini and Apollo flights. This was a personal record that stood until the Skylab 3 mission in July through September of 1973. It is also probable that Apollo 13’s flight trajectory gives Lovell, Haise, and Swigert the record for the farthest distance that humans have ever travelled from Earth.
Along with Jeffrey Kluger, Lovell wrote a book about the Apollo 13 mission, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. This book was the basis for the later Ron Howard movie Apollo 13. Lovell’s first impression on being approached about the film was that Kevin Costner would be a good choice to portray him, given the physical resemblance, but Tom Hanks was cast in the role. In order to prepare, Hanks visited Lovell and his wife at their house in Texas and even went for a ride with Lovell in his private airplane.
Milwaukee / Wisconsin Connection
Born in Cleveland, Ohio to a Czech mother, Lovell’s family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Juneau High School and became an Eagle Scout.
Later he attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years, joining the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity.
North James Lovell Street is the stretch of 7th Street between W. State Street and W. Clybourn Street in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Imagine what it would be like to float in space… tethered to your capsule… hovering in the dark over the earth below. On this day in 1965, March 18, Alexei Leonov became the first human to “walk” in space.
The Soviets stunned the world again as they had with the first satellite and first man in space by sending Leonov in his spacecraft the Voskhod 12, into orbit around planet earth.
He was outside for 12 minutes, 9 seconds connected to his spacecraft by a 5.35 meter tether (17.5 feet). When he needed to come back in he had one small problem, he couldn’t fit in the airlock. His spacesuit had inflated so much from the vacuum of space that he just couldn’t fit. He went to plan B, which was to open an air valve to bleed off some pressure to deflate the suit. He was just barely able to get back into the capsule.
Leanov’s only means of control was to pull on his tether, claiming it was easy. But the suit had ballooned and stiffened so much he wasn’t even able to activate the shutter of his chest mounted camera.
The image is a still from the external movie camera attached to his vessel
Leonov, who is an accomplished artist, took colored pencils and paper into space, where he sketched the Earth and drew portraits of the Apollo astronauts who flew with him during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. His published books include albums of his artistic works and works he did in collaboration with his friend Andrei Sokolov.
A painting by Alexei Leonov of his own spacewalk
Alexei Leonov, First Spacewalk
Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his notes of 2010: Odyssey Two that after a 1968 screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Leonov pointed out to him that the alignment of the Moon, Earth, and Sun shown in the opening is essentially the same as that in Leonov’s 1967 painting, Near the Moon, although the painting’s diagonal framing of the scene was not replicated in the film. Clarke kept an autographed sketch of this painting, which Leonov made after the screening, hanging on his office wall.
Clarke’s Opening shot
Leonov’s 1967 painting, Near the Moon
In 2004, Leonov and former American astronaut David Scott began work on a dual biography / history of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Titled Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race, it was published in 2006. Neil Armstrong and Tom Hanks both wrote introductions to the book.
“Leonov and Scott have gone to extra lengths to explain the inexplicable in Two Sides of the Moon. And thank goodness they have. Theirs was a gamble taken voluntarily and eagerly with the single-minded pursuit of earning the assignment and then getting the job done. Sometimes they were first. Often they were best. Always they were colorful. And yet each time they returned, neither man claimed to have come back a changed man who had gone into space and seen the spirit of the universe. They came back from their missions in space having seen the spirit of themselves as even more of the human beings they were before leaving our world of air, land, and water…. Leonov, the artist and Scott, the engineer/dreamer. The two of them-the Cheaters of Death.”
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
Albert Einstein
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.
Albert Einstein
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Albert Einstein
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
Albert Einstein
There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein is Born, the son of a Jewish electrical engineer in Ulm, Germany. Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity drastically altered man’s view of the universe, and his work in particle and energy theory helped make possible quantum mechanics.
10 Things (maybe) You Don’t Know About Albert Einstein
By Jennifer Rosenberg,
10. Loved to Sail
When Einstein attended college at the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, he fell in love with sailing. He would often take a boat out onto a lake, pull out a notebook, relax, and think. Even though Einstein never learned to swim, he kept sailing as a hobby throughout his life.
9. Einstein’s Brain
When Einstein died in 1955, his body was cremated and his ashes scattered, as was his wish. However, before his body was cremated, pathologist Thomas Harvey at Princeton Hospital conducted an autopsy in which he removed Einstein’s brain. Rather than putting the brain back in the body, Harvey decided to keep it, ostensibly for study. Harvey did not have permission to keep Einstein’s brain, but days later, he convinced Einstein’s son that it would help science. Shortly thereafter, Harvey was fired from his position at Princeton because he refused to give up Einstein’s brain.
For the next four decades, Harvey kept Einstein’s chopped-up brain (Harvey had it cut into over 200 pieces) in two mason jars with him as he moved around the country. Every once in a while, Harvey would slice off a piece and send it to a researcher. Finally, in 1998, Harvey returned Einstein’s brain to the pathologist at Princeton Hospital.
8. Einstein and the Violin
Einstein’s mother, Pauline, was an accomplished pianist and wanted her son to love music too, so she started him on violin lessons when he was six years old. Unfortunately, at first, Einstein hated playing the violin. He would much rather build houses of cards, which he was really good at (he once built one 14 stories high!), or do just about anything else. When Einstein was 13-years old, he suddenly changed his mind about the violin when he heard the music of Mozart. With a new passion for playing, Einstein continued to play the violin until the last few years of his life. For nearly seven decades, Einstein would not only use the violin to relax when he became stuck in his thinking process, he would play socially at local recitals or join in impromptu groups such as Christmas carolers who stopped at his home.
7. Presidency of Israel
A few days after Zionist leader and first President of Israel Chaim Weizmann died on November 9, 1952, Einstein was asked if he would accept the position of being the second president of Israel. Einstein, age 73, declined the offer. In his official letter of refusal, Einstein stated that he not only lacked the “natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people,” but also, he was getting old.
6. No Socks
Part of Einstein’s charm was his disheveled look. In addition to his uncombed hair, one of Einstein’s peculiar habits was to never wear socks. Whether it was while out sailing or to a formal dinner at the White House, Einstein went without socks everywhere. To Einstein, socks were a pain because they often would get holes in them. Plus, why wear both socks and shoes when one of them would do just fine?
5. A Simple Compass
When Albert Einstein was five years old and sick in bed, his father showed him a simple pocket compass. Einstein was mesmerized. What force exerted itself on the little needle to make it point in a single direction? This question haunted Einstein for many years and has been noted as the beginning of his fascination with science.
4. Designed a Refrigerator
Twenty-one years after writing his Special Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein invented a refrigerator that operated on alcohol gas. The refrigerator was patented in 1926 but never went into production because new technology made it unnecessary. Einstein invented the refrigerator because he read about a family that was poisoned by a sulphur dioxide-emitting refrigerator.
3. Obsessed Smoker
Einstein loved to smoke. As he walked between his house and his office at Princeton, one could often see him followed by a trail of smoke. Nearly as part of his image as his wild hair and baggy clothes was Einstein clutching his trusty briar pipe. In 1950, Einstein is noted as saying, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs,” Although he favored pipes, Einstein was not one to turn down a cigar or even a cigarette.
2. Married His Cousin
After Einstein divorced his first wife, Mileva Maric, in 1919, he married his cousin, Elsa Loewenthal (nee Einstein). How closely were they related? Quite close. Elsa was actually related to Albert on both sides of his family. Albert’s mother and Elsa’s mother were sisters, plus Albert’s father and Elsa’s father were cousins. When they were both little, Elsa and Albert had played together; however, their romance only began once Elsa had married and divorced Max Loewenthal.
Elsa Loewenthal
1. An Illegitimate Daughter
In 1901, before Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric were married, the college sweethearts took a romantic getaway to Lake Como in Italy. After the vacation, Mileva found herself pregnant. In that day and age, illegitimate children were not uncommon and yet they were also not accepted by society. Since Einstein did not have the money to marry Maric nor the ability to support a child, the two were not able to get married until Einstein got the patent job over a year later. So as not to besmirch Einstein’s reputation, Maric went back to her family and had the baby girl, whom she named Lieserl.
Although we know that Einstein knew about his daughter, we don’t actually know what happened to her. There are but just a few references of her in Einstein’s letters, with the last one in September 1903. It is believed that Lieserl either died after suffering from scarlet fever at an early age or she survived the scarlet fever and was given up for adoption. Both Albert and Mileva kept the existence of Lieserl so secret that Einstein scholars only discovered her existence in recent years.
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