The birth control movement in the United States was a social reform campaign from 1914 to the 1940s that increased the availability of contraception through education and legalization. The movement was started by Emma Goldman, Mary Dennett, and Margaret Sanger, who were concerned about the hardships that childbirth and self-induced abortions brought to low-income women. In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US, but it was immediately shut down by police. A major turning point for the movement came during World War I, when many US servicemen were diagnosed with venereal diseases, leading to an anti-venereal disease campaign that treated contraception as a matter of public health. Sanger successfully opened a second birth control clinic in 1923. Legal victories in the 1930s continued to weaken anti-contraception laws and in 1937 the American Medical Association adopted contraception as a core component of medical school curriculums. In 1942, the Planned Parenthood organization was formed, creating a nationwide network of birth control clinics. ( more...)

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March 12: Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth of Nations (2012); Arbor Day in China and Taiwan

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Hundreds of scientific books and articles were published by Albert Einstein throughout his career as a theoretical physicist. Best known for his theories of special relativity and general relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to statistical mechanics, especially his treatment of Brownian motion. Other high profile works included his resolution of the paradox of specific heats, and his connection of fluctuations and dissipation. Despite his reservations about its interpretation, Einstein also made seminal contributions to quantum mechanics and, indirectly, quantum field theory, primarily through his theoretical studies of the photon. In addition to the work he did by himself, he also collaborated with other scientists on additional projects, such as the Bose–Einstein statistics and the Einstein refrigerator. ( more...)