69 years ago #Today, Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was declared safe and successful, Salk was hailed as a "miracle worker" and the day almost became a U.S. national holiday.
@Rainmaker1973 It looks like the dude in the background told Jonas to be careful with the glass jars many times before.
@Rainmaker1973 Today would be a good day for a holiday!
@Rainmaker1973 We should have a holiday for scientists who've helped humanity. They are ignored.
Albert Einstein and Marie Curie reminiscing by a lake, 1929. In 1906, Curie's husband, Pierre, was killed. She later became close to Pierre’s student, Paul Langevin, who was separated from his abusive wife. Langevin's wife exposed their relationship to the press, creating a scandal and forcing Curie and her daughter into hiding. Langevin tried to defend Curie's reputation in an unarmed duel with a tabloid editor. During this, Einstein sent Curie a letter expressing his admiration and support: "Highly esteemed Mrs. Curie, Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say. But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the public is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. However, I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble, whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism! I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels. Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated. With most amicable regards to you, Langevin, and Perrin, yours very truly, A. Einstein" Despite the scandal, Curie won her second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.
@Rainmaker1973 It did stop polio though. Not like the COVID vaccine.