Today in History – August 31, 1921 – Lt. John A. Macready performed the first crop dusting flight on a surplus World War I Curtiss JN-6H (Jenny), taking off from McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio. The goal was to attack the Catalpa sphinx moth by dusting an orchard with a load of lead-arsenate from a [...]

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Today in History – May 23, 1930 – U.S. Plant Patent Act of the Hawley-Smot Trariff allows plants to be patented. This new U.S. Plant Patent Act provided, for the first time, patent protection for new and distinct varieties of asexually reproduced plants. Plant breeders now had a financial incentive to perform plant breeding experiments [...]

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Today in History – April 29, 1998 – Ten percent of the Amazon rain forest is preserved. On this day, Brazil agreed to set aside about 25 million ha (62 million ac) of the Amazon rain forest for conservation in cooperation with the World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund. This initiative will  protect 10% [...]

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Today in History – April 25, 1925 – Florence Rena Sabin is the first woman elected to National Academy of Science. Dr. Florence Rena Sabin, Professor of Histology in the Johns Hopkins Medical School was also the first woman to be a full professor in that institution and also the first woman to be President [...]

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Today in History – February 3, 1958 -  Rachael Carson publishes the Silent Spring. Rachel Carson, a writer, scientist and ecologist, worked seventeen years for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where she learned about the problems of pesticides on the environment. She is best known for her book called Silent Spring, which is often [...]

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