+
upworthy

History (Education)

Cage for reviving canary, with oxygen cylinder, made by Siebe Gorman & Co. Ltd, London.

These days the phrase "canary in the coal mine" is used to refer to any early warning sign of trouble or danger, but it's based in the real history of canaries being used in coal mining. Miners would carry the songbirds into the mine with them as a makeshift carbon monoxide alarm, as the bird's small body would be impacted by the odorless gas first, giving miners time to evacuate before it built to deadly levels.

Many if not most of us probably assume the canaries used for this purpose gave up their lives to save the coal miners. As it turns out, that was not always the case.

In fact, the man who created the canary in the coal mine system went out of his way to make sure the birds could do their job safely.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

The very real story of how one woman prevented a national tragedy by doing her job

Frances Oldham Kelsey believed thorough research saves lives. She was so right.

Image by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey and President John F. Kennedy.

True
Seventh Generation


Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey had only been with the Food and Drug Administration for about a month when she was tasked with reviewing a drug named thalidomide for distribution in America.

Marketed as a sedative for pregnant women, thalidomide was already available in Canada, Germany, and several African countries.

Keep ReadingShow less

Future generations may know more about the 80s than the present

There's no denying that we live in a digital world, even our money is mostly digital. So much so that the Girl Scouts have started accepting payments through ApplePay and Venmo because very few people carry cash on them and even fewer carry a checkbook. But it's not just our money living in some digital matrix, it's our information too.

Everything from our health records to our social lives and news are all uploaded and stored digitally. There's a popular saying when teaching people about the consequences of what they post online, "the internet is forever." But is it? Sure teens and young adults shouldn't post inappropriate things online because it can come back to haunt them, but with larger platforms collapsing, it's got people thinking.

Where are our documents going to go if someone stops paying for the server? Where does our news go if the now digital newspaper company shutters its doors ceasing to pay archival fees? The disappearance of digital information even hits us on a a more personal level when a relative dies and they suddenly we're unable to find the memories stored on that person's social media account.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why the heck we have leap days

Neil deGrasse Tyson sat down with comedian Chuck Nice to give an entertaining and informative explanation of our calendar's biggest head scratcher.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology/Wikipedia, Representative Image from Canva

Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why we have a Leap Year.

While Neil deGrasse Tyson might usually break down the more complex mysteries of our universe, he also has a knack for discussing the mundane in a way that makes it every bit as interesting.

On a recent episode of the StarTalk Podcast, where the popular astrophysicist chats about “everything under the sun; Or rather under the universe!” Tyson sat down with comedian Chuck Nice to break down how and why Leap Day came to be.

“People seem to be mystified by it. A day just shows up on the calendar,” Tyson told Nice.

Keep ReadingShow less