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It took politicians with guts to funnel all that money

Oh please. The Cold War is the only reason we ever had a space program.

" The Cold War is over. You can't simply say “Russia!” to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, “How much?” We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives. "

--Michio Kaku
https://todayinsci.com/K/Kaku_...

"I hope so, I don't know why so many people heard of one study, which was proved false, and not the others which disproved it."

This is what Marc-Auguste Pictet called "a secret taste for marvels" (~1800)

"So-called extraordinary events always split into two extremes naturalists who have not witnessed them: those who believe blindly and those who do not believe at all. The latter have always in mind the story of the golden goose; if the facts lie slightly beyond the limits of their knowledge, they relegate them immediately to fables. The former have a secret taste for marvels because they seem to expand Nature; they use their imagination with pleasure to find explanations. To remain doubtful is given to naturalists who keep a middle path between the two extremes. They calmly examine facts; they refer to logic for help; they discuss probabilities; they do not scoff at anything, not even errors, because they serve at least the history of the human mind; finally, they report rather than judge; they rarely decide unless they have good evidence." [link]

Today is Fred Hoyle's birthday, it turns out.

http://www.todayinsci.com/6/6_24.htm

Why is Hu Jintao referred to as a scientist when in the next sentence it's clearly stated that he was trained as an engineer? I see the general public often being confused by the two terms, but I expect better from a slashdot posting. Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been. - Theodore Von Karman http://www.todayinsci.com/K/Karman_Theodore/KarmanTheodore-Quotations.htm

1. The Today in Science listing of birth and death dates of scientists, and notable events. (For example, today is the anniversary of the publication of Einstein's paper on General Relativity, Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitästheorie.

2. Interactive science simulations from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

3. Science news articles at PhysOrg.com, New Scientist, and Technology Review.

Several times in "The Door Into Summer" (1957) Heinlein used variations of the statement "Engineering is the art of the practical and depends more on the total state of the art than it does on the individual engineer. When railroading time comes you can railroad - but not before." He attributed it to Charles Fort, who apparently phrased it as "If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time." (1931)

So people were thinking the same thing almost 80 years ago, and i would not be at all surprised if others had stated the same idea in different ways even earlier. (Victor Hugo coined the phrase "One cannot resist an idea whose time has come" in 1851, even if it wasn't specifically about technology.) In terms of the idea of people coming up with the same ideas simultaneously, this guy is a little slow out the gate :)

Also, even considering buying from the next state over was quite a challenge in the horse and buggy days. It would have probably taken you a whole day to travel to the next town over, just to buy your goods.

Now you can place your order in 5 minutes, and it's delivered to your house in a day or two.

It isn't going to happen.

The first U.S. plant patents were granted in 1930, sixteen patents were awarded posthumously to Luther Burbank, 1849-1926, the 10,000th plant patent was granted in 1997. Today in Science History

Burpee was commercially developing hybrid plant and animal stocks as early as 1876, only ten years after Mendel gave selective breeding a scientific basis.

Incisive comment... my money is on it being the 102nd :) (which in fact it is, as this page reveals).

this page talks about some other interesting scientific events that have their anniversary today:

1986 - First non-stop, non-refuelled flight around the world
1967 - Announcement of first synthesis of biologically active DNA
1962 - Mariner transmits information from first-ever rendezvous with Venus