On July 8th 1497 Vasco Da Gama’s fleet of four ships sailed forth from Lisbon. They were the Sao Gabriel, the Sao Rafael, the Berrio and a storage ship of unknown name. The journey to the Cape took over three months and was the longest journey out of sight of land that had ever been made.

In Mozambique Da Gama impersonated a Muslim and was granted an audience with the Sultan. Da Gama’s gifts failed to impress the ruler and he was forced to flee, firing his cannons into the city. The fleet resorted to piracy, looting Arab merchant ships. During his second voyage, Da Gama is thought to have set fire to a ship load of Muslim pilgrims, including women and children.

Arriving in Calicut, India on May 20th 1498 Da Gama also failed to impress the King of Calicut. The King refused his request to leave a factor behind him in charge of the merchandise he could not sell and insisted that Da Gama must pay customs duty in gold or silver. Da Gama did not have gold or silver and kidnapped several aristocrats and fishermen. Even so, the expedition brought back cargo worth sixty times the cost of the expedition.

Sailing against the wind

The Indian Ocean crossing which had taken only 23 days on the way to India took 132 days on the way back. Da Gama had ignored local knowledge about the monsoon winds and was unprepared for the long voyage. Half of his crew and two of his ships were lost at sea.

The post Vasco da Gama: Sailing to India appeared first on trailblazers 101.

Graduating with a Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering in 1869, Röntgen continued his academic career and became a lecturer at the University of Strassburg in 1874. His career continued to progress to higher positions and he made his greatest discovery while holding the position of chair of Physics at the University of Wurzburg from 1888.

A new kind of rays

During the investigation of external effects from vacuum tubes when an electrical discharge is passed through them, he noted a fluorescent effect created outside a light tight tube. The fluorescent effect had been visible on a small cardboard screen painted with barium platinocyanide. To be sure it had not been a trick of the light, Röntgen completely darkened the room and used a thicker tube. To test the light-tightness of the tube, he conducted a test run. Seeing that the tube was, indeed, light-tight he turned to prepare the next step of the experiment when he saw the barium platinocyanide shimmering again.

He named the rays “x-rays”, x being a mathematical unknown variable, and continued his examination of their properties. Systematic observation revealed their ability to pass through flesh, bone to a lesser extent and not at all through lead. Röntgen’s first x-ray image was of his wife’s hand just two weeks after his first discovery. Röntgen is considered the father of diagnostic radiology.

The post Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen: X-rays appeared first on trailblazers 101.

Pasteur was made administrator and director of Scientific Studies at the elite college Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1956. Three of his five children died in childhood, leading to his studies of infection and disease.

The germ theory of disease was proven through Pasteur’s experiments in which he proved that the living organisms which cause spoilage in beverages were not a result of spontaneous generation. By eliminating all outside contamination from a boiled broth, Pasteur demonstrated that the broth would not spoil until exposed to contamination in the air. This was the birth of pasteurisation, the process by which milk and other beverages are decontaminated to prevent illness.

The science of saving lives

The discovery of infectious microorganisms revolutionised hygienic practices in hospitals and led Joseph Lister to develop antiseptic methods in surgery. This resulted in a massive drop in the mortality rate of surgical patients and death in childbirth. Pasteur’s discoveries continued to even greater heights when he noticed that spoiled bacteria failed to infect animals but made them immune from later infection. Inoculation against disease was not an unknown concept at the time, but it was necessary to find a naturally weak strain of the disease. Louis Pasteur developed a method of generating weak strains artificially.

Pasteur’s rabies vaccine was first tested on July 6th 1885 on a 9 year old boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. Although the boy’s risk of contracting rabies had been low, the experiment was deemed a success. This paved the way for the development and manufacture of many other vaccines.

The post Louis Pasteur: Vaccination against rabies and more appeared first on trailblazers 101.

Establishing a successful acetylene automobile headlamp business gave Bleriot the income he needed to fund his passion for flying. Early experiments include towing gliders behind a boat and constructing an ornithopter in 1900. The ornithopter was a machine which flapped its wings in a birdlike manner that had been tried and failed throughout the 19th Century.

Bleriot experimented with several designs including box-kite planes and a canard (tail-first) monoplane. His first big success was in 1905 with the Bleriot V, the world’s first successful monoplane. However it crashed too easily and had to be abandoned. His next success was the Bleriot VII in 1907 with an enclosed Antoinette engine that flew more than 500 metres.

The Channel crossing prize

In 1908 the Daily Mail offered a prize of £1,000 to the first aviator to cross the English Channel from Calais to Dover. Three men competed for the prize: 1909, Hubert Latham, Charles de Lambert and Louis Bleriot. Latham attempted the crossing on July 19th 1909 but was forced to make an emergency landing on the sea just 10km from his destination. De Lambert was injured during a test flight and was forced to quit the competition.

Bleriot became the first man to fly across the English Channel on July 25th 1909 in his monoplane, the Bleriot XI. He flew 35 kilometres from Les Baraques to Dover in 37 minutes. During the flight the weather became dangerous. Rain cooling the engine put it in danger of stalling and he lost sight of both his boat escort and land. He cut off the engine at 20m altitude but the landing was deemed successful.

The post Louis Blériot: Channel Crossing appeared first on trailblazers 101.

The three great Pacific voyages

Cook’s first voyage, from 1768 to 1771, was commissioned by the Royal Society to record the Transit of Venus. During this voyage Cook achieved the circumnavigation of New Zealand, proving it to be separate from both modern day Australia and from a mythical great southern continent. His ship, the HMS Endeavour, ran aground on a shoal in the Great Barrier Reef and was nursed to the mouth of a river at what is now known as Cooktown, Queensland.

The second voyage, from 1772 to 1775, was commissioned once again by the Royal Society to search for the mythical great southern continent, Terra Australis. This continent was thought to be bigger than Australia and to lie further south. The HMS Resolution was accompanied by the HMS Adventure circumnavigated the globe at a very low southern latitude, even crossing the Antarctic Circle. This voyage put to rest any ideas about a great southern continent but produced maps so accurate they were still in use in the mid-20th Century.

The third voyage, from 1776 to 1779, was to look for the Northwest Passage, which was not to be found until 1903 by Roald Amundsen. After travelling through the Tasman Strait of Australia and the Cook Strait between New Zealand’s islands, the HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery sailed north to the Bering Strait. Cook returned to the Pacific Ocean arriving in Hawaii in 1779 where he was killed in a confrontation with Hawaiian villagers.

The post James Cook: South Pacific Voyages appeared first on trailblazers 101.

Suffering an injury to his legs disqualified Köhl from further service in the engineer troops so he volunteered for the German Army Air Service. He was promoted to commander of a bomber squadron and received the Pour le Mérite in 1918. Crashing behind enemy lines, Köhl was captured as a POW in France but he escaped and returned to Germany.

After the war, Köhl worked first for the German police and the Reichswehr before turning to civil aviation. He became the head of the Lufthansa Nightflight Branch in 1926. The first trans-Atlantic flight was made by Charles Lindburgh in 1927 in a west-east direction. The return flight in an east-west direction, however, was far more difficult due to prevailing winds and had not yet been attempted.

Flying across the Atlantic Ocean

Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünefeld was an aviation enthusiast who, due to lifelong sight defects and illness, could never become a pilot himself. In 1928 he bought two Junkers W33 planes and named them “Bremen” and “Europa”. He enlisted Hermann Köhl as an experienced pilot and the pair broke the flight duration record during their practice flights.

In April 1928 Hünefeld and Köhl flew to Baldonnel, Ireland where they joined with James C. FitzMaurice of the Irish Air Corps. These three men were dubbed the Three Musketeers of the Air. On April 12th 1928, the three men flew the “Bremen” out of Baldonnel headed for New York City. They landed instead in on Greenly Island, Canada but they successfully flew across the Atlantic Ocean.

The post Hermann Köhl: Crossing the North Atlantic appeared first on trailblazers 101.

The primary aim of the expedition was a hydrographical survey of the coasts of the southern part of South America. Although he was a paying passenger on the ship, Darwin was to provide expertise on mineralogy and geology for this purpose. Darwin had a special position on the ship as a guest and a gentleman. Junior officers called him “sir” until the captain gave him the nickname Philos. In South America Darwin spent most of his time on land, meeting the ship at prearranged ports to send and receive mail. The ship’s surgeon, who traditionally took the role of naturalist, was so frustrated by favouritism toward Darwin that he returned home to England.

The beginning of evolution

Although the majority of Darwin’s writings from this voyage of the HMS Beagle are about geology rather than zoology, the first stirrings for his theory of evolution by natural selection are apparent. He noted the similarities between extinct and living species and observed slight differences in within species that lived on different islands of the Galapagos.

The expedition continued to circumnavigate the globe, landing in New Zealand and the eastern and western coasts of Australia. By the time they arrived in the Keeling Islands of the Indian Ocean, Darwin’s fame in England was already growing. Arriving in England to a scientific celebrity status, Darwin continued to build his career in science. His youthful ambition to become a parson had eroded as his belief in species being fixed was shaken by this amazing Voyage of Discovery.

The post Charles Darwin: South America appeared first on trailblazers 101.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) of the English Royal Navy was inspired by his colleague, Markahm’s, idea for an expedition to the South Pole. He applied to lead the expedition which was intended to earn the honour of reaching the South Pole first for England. He hoped to gain promotion through success in this undertaking.

Opposite Approaches

Just as the two men’s lives differed, so did their approaches to reaching the South Pole. While Amundsen’s goal was to reach the South Pole first, Scott’s stated objectives placed scientific research above polar exploration. Amundsen’s expedition was planned and precisely carried out while Scott’s loosely made and poorly communicated plans were deviated from.

Amundsen’s team carefully prepared supply depots at 80°, 81° and 82° on their intended path to the pole at 90°. They used dog sleds and skis to transport themselves and had one clear goal: be the first to reach the South Pole! They left on October 19th 1911 and reached their goal on December 14th.

Scott’s team had troubles from the outset. The initial expedition to lay the supply depots was afflicted by bad weather and Scott ordered a supply depot established 56km north of its planned location. On November 1st, 1911, a caravan of motors, ponies and dogs started their journey south travelling different speeds. Poor communication between the groups would seal the party’s fate. Reaching the South Pole on January 17th 1912, five weeks after Amundsen, they turned north to begin their last march. All five men in the final leg to the South Pole died on the return journey, the last being Scott himself on March 29th 1912.

The post Amundsen and Scott: South Pole race appeared first on trailblazers 101.

Earhart was home schooled until joining public education at the age of twelve. Moving to Chicago at the age of 17, the future female aviator canvassed the local high schools to find the best science program.

Beginning flying lessons in 1921, Earhart broke her first record the following year.

Breaking aviation records

Earhart broke the women’s world altitude record in 1922, but was little more than a passenger on her first trans-Atlantic flight in 1928. This inspired her to complete the flight as the first solo woman to fly the Atlantic.

Records broken throughout her career include:

1922

• Woman's world altitude record: 14,000 ft

1928

• First woman to fly the Atlantic

1931

• Speed records for 100 km (and with 500 lb (230 kg) cargo)
• First woman to fly an autogyro
• Altitude record for autogyros: 15,000 ft

1932

• First person to cross the U.S. in an autogyro
• First woman to fly the Atlantic solo
• First person to fly the Atlantic twice
• First woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross

1933

• First woman to fly non-stop, coast-to-coast across the U.S.
• Woman's speed transcontinental record

1935

• First person to fly solo between Honolulu, Hawaii and Oakland, California
• First person to fly solo from Los Angeles, California to Mexico City, Mexico
• First person to fly solo nonstop from Mexico City, Mexico to Newark, New Jersey

1937

• Speed record for east-to-west flight from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii

Earhart and her co-pilot, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean attempting the last leg of an around-the-world flight. Radio contact was broken and, despite extensive search efforts, no trace was ever found.

The post Amelia Earhart: The Record-Breaker appeared first on trailblazers 101.

During World War I he was able to continue his medical studies, becoming a captain of the Army Medical Corps. His service earned him the honour of being Mentioned in Dispatches. Returning to St Mary’s in 1918, Fleming continued teaching and research.

A new hope against deadly diseases

In 1928, while working on the influenza virus, a staphylococcus plate became contaminated with a mould that formed a bacteria free ring around itself. Further research found that that the mould culture prevented the growth of staphylococci bacteria, even when heavily diluted.

This new antibiotic substance was found effective in the prevention of bacterial infection in wounds as well as treating bacterial diseases spread by animals and insects. Diseases which had previously proven fatal, including gangrene and tuberculosis, were now treatable and the pharmaceutical industry was born.

Sir Alexander Fleming earned numerous accolades for his contributions to science including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. Prior to this he had been elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1943 and knighted in 1944. He was awarded honorary doctorates at almost 30 European and American universities.

The post Alexander Fleming: Penicillin appeared first on trailblazers 101.