Marie Curie

Born today in Warsaw in 1867 was Marie Curie who would become a world renowned scientist for her studies in radioactivity. In the last years of my father's life he worked either in the area of exploration for and later the mining of uranium. His work covered much of Western Colorado and Eastern Utah. When he died he was working in a mine near Moab, Utah.

So what connection does this have with Marie Curie? In the early 1900s Marie Curie came to Western Colorado to get radium, which is a byproduct of Uranium. It was from this area that she got the materials for her experiments. Marie Curie would eventually die of radiation poisoning because at that time the dangers associated with radium and uranium were unknown.

For good or ill, Marie Curie made a major contribution to the life of the world.

This Day in History September 2

September 2 was by no means a boring day in history. It had a little good and a little bad in it.
It is on this day in 1945 that World War II in the Asian theater came to an end as Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru and General Umezu Yoshijiro signed Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Back in the 1980s Arletta and I went to Bremerton Washington where the USS Missouri was docked. For me it was a great moment to stand on the wooden deck of this great battleship on the spot where the Japanese singed an unconditional surrender to the armies led By General Douglas McArthur.

And for you Roman History buffs this is the day in history in 31 BC when Octavian, later to become Augustus Caesar, defeated Mark Antony at the battle of Actium.

This Day in History August 15

Today in History.
August 15, 1888 marks the birth of T. H. Lawrence who became the famous “Lawrence of Arabia.
Likewise, in 1769, Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica.
On the other end of the spectrum in 1935 this is the day that Wiley Post and Will Rogers were killed in a plane wreck near Pt. Barrow Alaska.
It is also the day that the Panama Canal was opened in 1914. It took ten years to build during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.
And Macbeth, king of Scots, a real person in 1057, was killed in battle on this day by Malcolm, eldest son of Duncan I. I assumed that Macbeth was an invented person by Shakespeare.