Today in History – March 5, 1991 – The 5 millionth patent is issued for a process turning garbage into fuel by Lonnie O. Ingram, a professor of microbiology at the University of Florida; Tyrell Conway, a former post-doctoral student at the university, and Flavio Alterthum, a visiting professor who is now chairman of the [...]

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Today in History-March 3, 1831–Thomas Jennings became the first African-American to receive a patent for his invention of ‘dry-scouring’, a process better known today as dry-cleaning. As a free man, he established a local business in New York in which he sold clothing. However, customers became disgruntled that there was no means to effectively clean [...]

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March is Women’s History Month. This celebration was initially inspired by the March 8th 1857 protest by women factory workers in  New York City over working conditions. As a consequence,  International Women’s Day was first observed in 1909. It wasn’t until 1981 that Congress established National Women’s History Week  in the U.S. to be commemorated [...]

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Today in History- March 1, 1864- Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first African American woman to receive a medical degree and the only to receive a degree at the New England Female Medical College, which closed in 1873. Dr. Crumpler was born in Delaware to Absolum Davis and Matilda Webber in 1831. Interestingly enough, the [...]

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Today in History – August 19, 1934 – First All-American Soap Box Derby.  This youth competition was inspired by photographer Myron Scott while he was covering a story on the soap box cars built by local boys for the Dayton Daily News. He was motivated to develop a similar program at a national scale. Not [...]

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