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Monday, May 5, 2025
Open today 4 PM - 11 PM
The element scandium, a metallic rare earth, discovered by Lars Fredrik Nilson in 1879; the remelted cube is one cm. on a side (Wikimedia commons)
Lars Fredrik Nilson, a Swedish chemist, died May 14, 1899, just shy of his 59th birthday. Nilson was professor of chemistry at Uppsala, later...
Gérard Paul Deshayes, a French paleontologist, was born May 13, 1795. In the early 1820s, Deshayes began collecting fossil mollusks from the...
Lincoln Ellsworth, an American polar explorer, was born May 12, 1880, in Chicago.
Gregor Reisch, a German monk, died on May 9, 1525, at the age of about 58.
Adèle Dumont d'Urville, the daughter of a French watchmaker named Pépin, died May 8, 1842, in a dramatic demise detailed below.
Amiel Weeks Whipple, a U.S. Army officer and engineer, died May 7, 1863, having been born on Oct. 21, 1817, in Greenwich, Mass.
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, a French civil engineer, was born Dec. 15, 1832.
Ferdinand von Richthofen, a German geographer, was born May 5, 1833, in Carlsruhe, in what was then Prussian Silesia.
Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit natural philosopher working in Rome, was born May 2, 1601 (or 1602), in Fulda, Germany.
Orazio Grassi, an Italian Jesuit mathematician and astronomer, was born May 1, 1583.
David Thompson, a British/Canadian explorer and cartographer, was born Apr. 30, 1770, in Westminster, London.
Mary Ward, an Irish microscopist, popular science writer, and illustrator, was born Apr. 27, 1827, at the family estate, Castle Ward, County Down.
Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian electrical engineer and inventor, was born Apr. 25, 1874, into a wealthy family in Bologna.
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