Michael Servetus, 1511 - 1553

Servetus was a physician, and discovered the pulmonary circulation of blood in the 16th Century.  Because he published ideas that questioned the accepted view of "the Trinity," he was burned alive in Geneva on October 27, 1553.

Raoul Wallenberg, 1912 - 1947

Soviets Killed WW II Diplomat, Russian Says

MOSCOW - Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who disappeared after helping tens of thousands of Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary, undoubtedly was shot and killed by the Soviets, the head of a Russian presidential commision said Monday.

The statement by Alexander Yakovlev, chariman of the presidential commission on rehabilitation of victims of political repression, indicates that Russia may be on the verge of confirming allegations that Soviet authorities denied for nearly half a century.

"We do not doubt that he was shot at Lubyanka," the Soviet secret police headquarters and prison in Moscow, the Interfax news agency quoted Yakovlev as saying.

The last confirmed sighting of Wallenberg was on Jan. 17, 1945, in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, when he was 32 years old.  Wallenberg, a member of of one of Sweden's wealthiest industrialist families, had gone to Hungary a year earlier as a diplomat.

He distributed Swedish passports to Jews in deportation trains and on death marches, won diplomatic protection for whole sections of Budapest and organized fod and medical supplies.  His efforts are credited with ssaving at least 20,000 lives.

The Soviet army occupied Budapest in January 1945, and Wallenberg was arrested and brought to the Soviet Union.  The Soviets said he was suspected of spying.  They maintained that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in Soviet custody in 1947.

The preceding news item (abridged) was carried by the Associated Press, November 28, 2000.

Philo Farnsworth, 1906-1971

Who invented television?  Everyone knows it was RCA, under the able leadership of David Sarnoff.  Or was it?

Philo Farnsworth was tilling a potato field with a horse-drawn harrow at the age of 14, working in a raster pattern, when he realized that an electron beam could scan images the same way, line by line.  His family's ranch was 4 miles from the nearest high school, so he rode a horse to school. He persuaded his chemistry teacher to give him special instruction in science, during which Farnsworth showed his instructor drawings for a television system.

After two hears of high school Farnsworth entered Brigham Young University.  He discussed his television idea to Vladimir Zworykin, also at BYU, who had emigrated to the U.S. from Russia with a dream of building an all-electronic television system.  After only two years of college Farnsworth's father died, and Philo had to quit school. By the age of 21 Farnsworth had found investors, and he set up a laboratory where, within a year, he succeeded in the construction of a television system (1927).  However, four years earlier Zworykin had made a patent application for a television system.  By 1933 Zworykin was working for RCA, and was funded to develop TV.  Farnsworth succeeded in obtaining a patent in 1934, based in part on his old chemistry teacher's testimony that the young Philo had made sketches of the TV device when in high school, and also on Farnsworth's priority in actually demonstrating a TV system.  RCA's chief, David Sarnoff, wasn't about to pay patent royalties to Farnsworth, and appealed the Farnsworth patent, but lost.  Nevertheless, additional litigation delayed royalty payments, and when World War II broke out the government suspended sales of TV sets.  Farnsworth's patents expired shortly after the war's end, and RCA waged a vigorous public relations campaign, promoting Zworykin and Sarnoff as the fathers of television.

Farnsworth withdrew to a house in Maine, suffering from depression, and taking up excessive drinking.  He had a nervous breakdown, spent time in hospitals and had to submit to shock therapy.  In 1947 his house burned to the ground.  Farnsworth died in 1971.

His son recalls his father's position on television in their home this way: "There's nothing on it worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household."

Adapted from an article written by Neil Postman, New York University,for Time (magazine),March 29, 1999 issue, featuring brief biographies of "Scientists and Thinkers of the 20th Century."

Robert Goddard, 1882-1945

In childhood Robert Goddard showed an instinctive feel for all things pyrotechnic, such as firecracker powder fuel and TNT.  After college Professor Goddard experimented with air-tight chambers, calculated energy-to-weight ratios, and concluded that liquid fueled rockets were theoretically better than solid fueled ones.  He published a short, technical article in 1920, "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," in which he mused that someday rocket technology may be capable of reaching the moon.  For some reason the New York Times newspaper pounced upon this obscure article and ridiculed it.  In essence the article stated that as everyone knew space travel was impossible because there was no air against which to push, and Professor Goddard lacked "the knowledge ladled out daily in high school."

Goddard seethed with anger, for not only had the writer made Goddard look like a fool, but he had gotten the science all wrong.  Thus began his quarter-century sulk, during which he would avoid all publication, and from which he would never fully emerge.  In 1926 he finally got a liquid-fueled rocket to actually lift-off and fly - for 2 1/2 seconds.  Even though he was thrilled with this triumph, he kept it secret.  By 1929 his 11-foot rocket caused such a stir that the police were called.  Sensing that he could not work in secret in Massachusetts, he moved his operation to New Mexico.

For the next 9 years his rockets got bigger, and his altitude records got higher, reaching 9000 feet.  By the late 1930s, after many patents but no publications, he noticed that only Germany seemed interested in his work.  In 1939, the Germans suddenly fell silent, and stopped asking him discreet questions.  With a growing concern over what might be afoot, he went to Washington, D.C., and spoke with Army generals - showing them film of his rocket launches.  He said "We could slant a little and do some damage."  The generals smiled politely, thanked him for his presentation, and dismissed him with no follow-up.

Being rebuffed by the Army for his rocket ideas, he spent the war working on experimental airplane engines for the Navy.  But after the war, he joined group that was studying captured German V-2 rockets, like those that had harassed London.  When a captured German scientist was asked about the origin of the V-2, he was said to have responded "Why don't you ask your own Dr. Goddard?  He knows better than any of us."  By 1945 Goddard had over 200 patents on rocketry, all of which were in the "public domain" - including the Germans.  When Goddard finally got to inspect a V-2, he acknowledged that it seemed to be "his rocket."

In 1945 Goddard was found to have throat cancer, and died within a year.

Based on the German use of Goddard's work, the American's finally started-up a rocket program - after Goddard's death.  The Army's Redstone put the first Americans in space, and the Saturn too men to the Moon in 1969.  On the occasion of the first lunar landing, the New York Times took a bemused look backwards, to 49 years before, when it so shamelessly heaped scorn on Goddard, and weakly wrote "Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere.  The Times regrets the error."

Adapted from an article written by Jeffry Kluger,Time senior writer, for Time (magazine), March 29, 1999 issue, featuring brief biographies of "Scientists and Thinkers of the 20th Century."

Ignatz Semmelweiss, 1818-1865

In 1847 Dr. Semmelweis asserted that hospital patients were dying from "childbed fever" because physicians were not washing theri hands, sometimes after perorming autopsies.  He implemented a policy in his department of washing with a disinfectant before attending to patients, and mortalityr ates from this disease dropped from 18% to 1.3%.  H epulished his findings, but the medical community reacted with hostility. Dr. Semmelweis defended his finding vigorously, but was unable to convince skeptics, and was admitted to an insane asylum in 1865, where he died "possibly from beatings by asylum guards."

Man Accidentally Backs Over Wife

San Francisco - An elderly woman was hospitalized in serious condition after her husband accidentally backed his car over her on Friday night.  San Francisco General Hospital officials said the 77-year-old, whose name has not been released, suffered internal injuries, a fractured right leg and a broken pelvis.  The woman was directing her husband into a parallel parking space when the man apparently hit the car's gas pedal instead of the brake.

Santa Barbara News-Press, June 10, 2001.

The Honest Dishwasher

"On a lonely eveing beneath the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles, Ascension Franco Gonzales had the kind of moment Mexican songwriters put to music and transform into myth.  The ballad, or corrido, would tell the now-familiar tale:  How last Aug. 27 an armored truck lurched, its back doors flipped open and out tumbled a bag containing $203,000.  And how Franco, an illegal immigrant dishwasher, picked it up.  And how he gave it back the next morning.  But it is doubtful the corrido could capture the vexing fallout of that fateful decision, the knuckleball trajectory of integrity's consequences."

"'Everybody says I'm an idiot,' said Franco, who is still washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant in South Los Angeles."

On the morning Franco agreed to meet the police at a nearby baseball field to turn over the money, he stuffed the money in his laundry bag.  The police kept asking if they could notify the media about his honesty, and each time Franco decliend, citing concern over deportation by the INS.  When the police said he might get offers for a better job, Franco relented.  "After the cops took the money, he was looking at them, and they said, 'What's the matter? Is there anything else?' He said 'Can I have my laundry bag back?"

"Glowing newspaper stories about Franco appeared across the country, as well as in Latin America, Asia and Europe.  But he was irritated - 'I made a fool of myself" - when he agreed to wash dishes in the background as a Spanish-language TV reporter pronounced that Franco would 'continue to be a poor dishwasher.'"

Although his mother was proud of him (all mothers are proud of their children, no matter how good, or how bad they are), "others called him un buey - literally an ox, figuratively an idiot.  Even one of Franco's uncles ... called him an 'idiot for returning money God had secured for him.' "

Franco is accused of lacking ambition for having turned-in the money. However, Franco came to the United States in order to earn money which he is sending to his parents to build a house, now partly completed.

"Franco never did get a job offer."

Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2002, Column One, "Ballad of the Poor Samaritan," written by Times staff writer Hector Becerra.
 

Best Workers are Laid Off

"On the morning of Feb. 5, Robert Wood waited outside his Circuit City store with a handfull of other employees.  They had been told to report for a quick meeting before the store opened.  Aware that the company was beset with financial difficulties, Wood was relieved to see that the others waiting were, like him, among the store's top salesmen."

"A seven-year veteran of Circuit City, Inc., Wood was the second-highest paid performer at the Jensen Beach., Fla. store, moving more than $1 million  in computers and consumer electronics last year, he says. He earned $54,000 in salary and bonuses, and a place in the President's Club for top salesmen."

"At 10 a.m, the store manager ushered the waiting employees inside the store with a smile, saying he wanted to explain the company's new 'staffing model.'  The first salesman went into the manager's office, then quickly exited.  Wood's heart sank as the salesman cleared out his belongings from a locker and was escorted out the door by another manager.  When Wood's turn came ... the firing took less than five minutes."

"Wood and 3900 others laid off that day were faulted for nothing. They simply made too much money at a time when the company was desperate to economize. Circuit City then hired about 2100 lower-paid hourly workers to replace Wood and the others, who had represented 20 percent of its sales force."

The article goes on to explain that this is part of a trend: replacing experienced workers with lower-paid, inexperienced workers.  Circuit City's senior vice president for human resources said this move "was the best thing, long term."  The new terminology is "dismissing higher-paid workers with lower-paid employees."  The emphasis is on how much workers are paid, not how experienced or effective they are.

The Wall Street Journal, "Best-Paid Workers Often First in Line for Firing" by Carlos Tejada and Gary McWilliams, June 16, 2003.
 

This site opened:  April 15, 2000.  Last Update:  June 23, 2003