Today in History: June 29

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower 60 years ago today. Its other title was the “National Interstate and Defense Highways Act,” and it authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile system of highways. The highways themselves ear signs identifying the roads as a part of the “Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.”

A national network of highways is something that Congress had discussed and even voted into law several times before—in 1916 and in 1944—but authorizing highways does not pay for their construction. The 1956 bill changed all that: it also authorized a means of paying for Eisenhower’s imagined “ribbons across the land.” A federal gas tax of two cents a gallon (now three cents) was imposed to help the federal government fund 90% of the construction costs of the new highways.
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Rain, Rain

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A 1964 article in Nature with the euphonious title, “Nature of argillaceous odour,” gave the world the not-as euphonious-sounding word, “petrichor.” In it, two researchers attempted to scientifically describe what it is we smell when we smell the world after a rain shower and to give it a name.

The two authors coined the word, “petrichor,” which I have been mispronouncing in my head since I first encountered it last year, when an article on the Huffington Post started making its social media rounds. It has a long “I,” so say it like this: “petra,” then “eye-core,” which is not how I hear it in my head, with a short “i.”
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A New Delay for Shawkan

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The second hearing in the trial of the photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid (“Shawkan”) was delayed until August 9 due to the “involuntary absence” of Shawkan and the other 738 defendants.

Shawkan’s lawyer, Karim Abdelrady, wrote in a social media post, “The Security Directorate addressed the court to announce that the defendants were not able to be transferred from prison to the courtroom, due to security reasons which it did not specify.”
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