On May 31, 1870 Belgian immigrant Edward J de Smedt who was at Columbia University in New York City patented asphalt pavement. So we all know what asphalt is, as we all drive on it, and have all felt that heat rising off of it in the summer! But do you know how it is made? I didn’t until I started to deal with it at my job. From Wikipedia:
This morning as I was looking over the front page of Wikipedia to see what was new, I noted that author Ruth Rendell has passed away. One would think that as a lover of mystery books I would have read plenty of Ruth Rendell’s works, but somehow I have avoided them and I can’t give you one good reason why!! From Wikipedia:
This morning as I read through events that happened on this day (March 4) the one that peaked my interest was, that in 1877 Emile Berliner invented the microphone. That seemed like something I had to find out more about and what I did was pretty interesting!
On February 9, 1895 William G. Morgan a YMCA physical education director in Holyoke, Massachusetts unveiled his new game called Mintonette. Mintonette was designed by Morgan as an indoor game, that combined a little of tennis, you hit a ball over a net and a little of handball – no racquets you just used you hands. The game was invented about four years after basketball was introduced in the area by James Naismith in Springfield Mass.Morgan had met Naismith while Morgan was studying at Springfield College, Massachusetts in 1892. Both Naismith and Morgan pursued careers in Physical Education at the YMCA. Morgan designed Mintonette to be less rough than basketball, to be suitable for older members of the YMCA, but so that it still required some athletic effort.
