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Benjamin’s Mystery Soup. It was the fifth of June, in Munich, Germany in the year 1784. Recently-knighted Sir Benjamin Thompson, later to become Count Rumford, chuckled to himself as he strode towards the entrance to his villa, thinking, “Little do the Bavarians know what is in store for them! When I complete my plan to reform the military, everything will change.” |
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The Atlantic Cable Story. It was June 24, 1824 in Belfast, Ireland, where university professor James Thomson and his wife, Margaret had their second son, William. Little did they suspect the many trage-dies and triumphs that lay ahead for little William and the world-changing effect that his work in physics and engineering would have. |
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Tickling the Dragon’s Tail. It is a little known fact that the scientist who was a key figure in assembling the first ‘atomic’ bomb ever to be exploded was a native Winnipegger, Louis Slotin. After Louis completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1936, he moved to Chicago and ended up working in the famous Met Lab where the first sustained nuclear reaction was carried out. From there he was drafted into the crucial bomb-construction phase of the Manhattan Project and, amazingly, he was the lead assembler of the first atomic bomb. |