Today is the birthday, in 1833, of Alfred Nobel. Nobel’s father was an alumnus of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and was an engineer and inventor who built bridges and buildings and experimented with different ways of blasting rocks. He encouraged and taught Nobel from a young age.
As a young man, Nobel studied with chemist Nikolai Zinin; then, in 1850, he went to Paris to further the work. There he met Ascanio Sobrero, who had synthesized nitroglycerin three years before. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of nitroglycerin because it was unpredictable, exploding when subjected to variable heat or pressure. But Nobel became interested in finding a way to control and use nitroglycerin as a commercially usable explosive; it had much more power than gunpowder.
Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert substance like kieselguhr (diatomaceous earth) it became safer and more convenient to handle, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as “dynamite”. Nobel later combined nitroglycerin with various nitrocellulose compounds, similar to collodion, but settled on a more efficient recipe combining another nitrate explosive, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a more powerful explosive than dynamite. Gelignite, or blasting gelatin, as it was named, was patented in 1876.
On 27 November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. He also made several other important contributions to science, holding 355 patents during his life.
Portrait of Nobel by Gösta Florman
Seventy Five!!!
BADA BING BING BING…
Don’t worry, Donald. You’re still eligible for the No Ball Prize.
tRUMP, putting the NO in Nobel Peace Price.
Anti-vaxxers, how do you feel about your Dear Leader getting a flu vaccine and Covid booster? It’s almost as if he took you for complete suckers.
I don’t have a train of thought, I have a Roomba of thought. It can move straight ahead, but as soon as it bumps into something, it turns around and starts moving in a brand-new, random direction.
They held a contest to choose the best neckwear. It was a tie.
Daughter: Alexa play “Let it Go.” Me: When I was your age I had to call the radio station, wait on hold for 30 mins to request a song, then sit by my boom box for an hour with a blank cassette tape for my song to play so I could record it. Daughter: I don’t know what any of that means.
Mr. Rogers did not adequately prepare me for the people in my neighborhood.
I was walking a pretty girl home from school one day when we ran upon one the school bullies. Good thing I was carrying her books or she wouldn’t have been able to beat him up.
Medical researchers have determined stress will kill you. Great … one more thing to worry about.
Apparently it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, which can’t be true because I’ve been an adult a lot longer than 10,000 hours and I still have no idea what I’m doing.
You donate a kidney, you’re a hero. You donate three kidneys, and suddenly the police are involved.
Husband: The nerve of that doctor. Saying I’m so old that he referred me to an archaeologist. Wife: Audiologist, dear. You can’t hear.
I’m not sure I agree with the idea that “when you snooze you lose.” At my age, snoozing seems more like winning to me.
IF YOU ARE ARGUING LOUDLY ON YOUR PHONE IN PUBLIC, PLEASE PUT IT ON SPEAKER, I NEED TO HEAR BOTH SIDES OF THE STORY.
Today is the birthday, in 1957, of American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer Steve Lukather, who with Toto had the 1983 US No.1 & UK No.3 single ‘Africa’. Lukather has recorded guitar tracks for more than 1,500 albums including the guitar solo for Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 No.1 single ‘Physical’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, and was also heavily involved in the recording of virtually all of Jackson’s Thriller album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY
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