Like many of you, we’re excited for Pax West is this weekend, with Rose City Comic Con & BrickCon the following weekend – ’tis the season for conventions in the Pacific Northwest! But we’re also eagerly preparing and looking forward to Doxacon Seattle 2025 “Extasis: Escaping Reality in Pursuit of Truth”. Visit our guidelines page for information about how you can be part of the convention as a volunteer, vendor, or the presentations!
August 25 – Today marks the anniversary of the first installment of the Great Moon Hoax in The Sun (1835). The publication asserted that it was reprinting from the Edinburgh Journal of Science discoveries by Sir John Herschel – who really was a famous astronomer of the time. The six articles laid out claims that he had found life on the moon such as winged humanoids and animals (including unicorns)! Of course, none if it was true – the journal had stopped publishing years earlier and the article author (“Dr. Andrew Grant”) was a made-up person. The farce was so widely accepted that Yale University scientists came to New York to investigate! Read more about it at The Smithsonian.
August 27 – Twenty-one years ago today, the world’s biggest battery was plugged in (2003). Made by Saft, it covers 2,000 square metres of space and weighs in at about 1,300 tonnes, this massive battery provides emergency electricity to residents of Fairbanks in Alaska. It was recognized by the Guinness World Records in 2005 as the world’s most powerful battery. It even has a name, ‘BESS’, which comes from it being a battery energy storage system. Read about its creation and deployment at the Saft’s website.
August 28 – Today would be the 107th birthday of Jack Kirby (1917), cartoonist for Marvel & DC and a crucial figure in the creation of characters such as the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Avengers. During his time with DC, he also created The Demon, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, and Fourth World, though they were never as popular as his Marvel works. Read about his at the Kirby Museum.
August 29 – While fans enjoyed Tony Stark’s creation of paladium, scientists may have winced a bit at Marvel’s depiction of a new (fictional) element. But today marks the first time the element meitnerium was synthesized (1982) Lise Meitner, an Austiran physicist working at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. Read about the element and the woman it was named after at Nature.com.
August 30 – On this day in 1983, Guion Stewart Bluford becomes the first African-American to go to space as STS-8 – the third flight of NASA’s Challenger. He was a fighter pilot for the Air Force and earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering. He flew on a total of four shuttle missions, working with space station operations, Spacelab systems & experiments, among other responsibilities. Read about him at his page at the NASA website.
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