Driven to succeed yet patient in times of failure, Cyrus Field kept the cable project going for twelve long years, crossing the Atlantic more than 30 times.
Gutta-percha, a natural plastic extracted from trees in Southeast Asia, sparked a craze in Victorian England, leading to its use in everything from golf balls to ear trumpets.
Ira Baldwin became a noted agricultural bacteriologist at the University of Wisconsin and the civilian science director of the United States biological weapons research program at Camp Detrick.
Determined to anticipate possible Soviet attacks, the U.S. staged more than 200 domestic tests aimed at assessing national vulnerabilities to biological warfare.
