Current Events and other Studious Things

We’ll probably never know how many women inventors there were. That’s because in the early years of the United States, a woman could not get a patent in her own name. A patent is considered a kind of property, and until the late 1800s laws forbade women in most states from owning property or entering into legal agreements in their own names. Instead, a woman’s property would be in the name of her father or husband.

For example, many people believe that Sybilla Masters was the first American woman inventor. In 1712 she developed a new corn mill, but was denied a patent because she was a woman. Three years later the patent was filed successfully in her husband’s name.

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—	FactMonster.com (via stfuconservatives)

fyeaheasterneurope:

One of the stranger manifestations of Soviet messaging in the 1950s and 1960s was the use of silviculture propaganda: giant signs created in fields and forests by carefully-planted plots of trees. Back in the mid-20th century, these were presumably thought of as tokens to be seen by future generations from communist spaceships above the earth.

The content of the messages were fairly simple, but they are still visible today. And through Google Maps, anyone can now see them, even decades after their aspirational creation.

From here.

cheatsheet:

Photo of the Day:

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: 11,541 red chairs are displayed along a main street representing the 11,541 Sarajevans killed during the Bosian war which started 20 years ago today. (Amel Emric / AP Photo)

More Photos of the Day

eachwildidea:

descroissants:

Derweze, also known as the door to hell, is a 70 meter wide hole in the middle of the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan. The hole was formed in 1971 when a team of soviet geologists had their drilling rig collapse when they hit a cavern filled with natural gas. In an attempt to avoid poisonous discharge, they decided to burn it off, thinking that the gas would be depleted in only a few days. Derweze is still burning today

life:

Here, on the anniversary of the April day in 1959 when NASA announced the names of the Mercury 7 to the world, LIFE.com offers a gallery of pictures taken in the early days of their training by long-time LIFE photographer Ralph Morse — a man who spent so much time with Glenn, Shepard, Schirra and the rest (and, ultimately, with the Gemini and Apollo crews, as well) that he was sometimes referred to as “the eighth astronaut.”

Pictured: Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1959. Cooper, who retired from both NASA and the Air Force (as a colonel) in 1970, was the last Mercury astronaut launched into space, and spent more time aloft during his May 1963 mission (34-plus hours) than all five previous flights combined.

(Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

latimes:

Solar storm sends charged particles toward Earth: The bombardment is expected to reach us Tuesday morning, but the threat to satellites and power grids appears to be low.

Photo: A solar flare erupts Sunday night, in a storm that is sending charged particles toward Earth. Credit: NASA

futurejournalismproject:

Foxconn Employees Threaten Mass Suicide

Foxconn, the world’s largest electronic component maker (think: Apple, Amazon, Nintendo, Dell, Panasonic… well, you get the point) is not a nice place to work. So rampant have the suicides been that last year the company made workers sign pledges not to kill themselves.

Via The Atlantic Wire:

As American consumers ogle over shiny new gadgets at this week’s Consumer Electronic’s Show, the workers that make those products are threatening mass suicide for the horrid working conditions at Foxconn. 300 employees who worked making the Xbox 360 stood at the edge of the factory building, about to jump, after their boss reneged on promised compensation, reports English news site Want China Times. It’s not like this is the first time working conditions at Foxconn have made news outside China. But iPhone and Xbox sales surely haven’t lagged in the wake of those revelations and neither Apple nor Microsoft has done much of anything to fix things.

As The Atlantic Wire points out, this week’s This American Life features a trip to a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China where approximately 350,000 to 450,000 people are employed.

You can listen to the episode here.

Image: Workers at Foxconn via China Southern Weekly

picturesoftheday:

Thousands of young people desperate to study—and their parents—pushed their way to the gates of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa Tuesday, where some 11,000 people were expected to vie for as few as 800 spots. One woman died in the crush.

theweekmagazine:

The rise and fall of Kodak: After 131 years in the photography business, Eastman Kodak Co. is reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy. The iconic film and camera company invented the consumer photography craze more than a century ago and was once deeply ingrained in the American psyche. But, in recent years, it’s struggled to adapt to the digital age. Here, a look back.

Andy Carvin explains how Twitter is his ‘open-source newsroom’ | Poynter. »

npr:

Andy Carvin and Clay Shirky spent an hour on WBUR’s “On Point” program Tuesday morning discussing Twitter’s impact on media and the world. In one of several insightful exchanges, Carvin explained how Twitter helps him cover the Arab spring uprisings