December 10th: National & International Days, Celebrations and Observances

December 10 marks several key events worth supporting.

• Post updates about Nobel Prize scientists and their work on climate solutions.
• Stop by your local farmers market - Terra Madre day reminds us to eat what's in season.
• Write a quick email to your local rep about the rights issues you care about.
• Libraries need volunteers, so spend an hour shelving books or leave a note for the hardworking staff.
• Young people are making great environmental videos - give them a boost by sharing their work.
• Skip meat for a meal to help cut emissions.
• At dinner tonight, bring up how human rights and environmental protection work hand in hand.
• And if you're interested, catch the live Nobel ceremony or Human Rights Day talks online.

The world gets better one small action at a time. Just start somewhere.

December 10th shaped modern science in three distinct ways.

• When mathematician Edmond Halley presented Newton's "De motu corporum in gyrum" to London's Royal Society in 1684, few grasped its significance. Newton had crafted simple math to explain how planets move - and science would never be the same.
• On the banks of the Nile in 1902, Egypt completed its first major dam at Aswan. At 1,900 meters wide and 54 meters tall, the structure brought predictability to farming and city life. Local floods became manageable, while stored water fed the region's growing needs.
• The lights went out at Wearmouth Colliery in 1993. The Sunderland mine's closure ended 158 years of Durham's deep coal mining tradition. More than 2,000 miners once descended into these pits - now silent monuments to Britain's industrial past.

Scientists who changed their fields rarely set out to make history. Yet their work endures.

• In the mid-1960s, Howard Martin Temin (1934-1994) questioned accepted genetic rules. Most colleagues dismissed his ideas at first. But his lab work uncovered reverse transcriptase, revealing how viruses behave. The Nobel Prize followed, and his methods still guide virus research.
• George Shaw knew what he saw in 1799, despite the skeptics. As a British Museum expert (1751-1813), he documented Australia's odd creatures with patience. His detailed "Naturalist's Miscellany" filled 24 volumes, proving animals like the platypus existed - even when fellow scientists doubted him.
• Few understood what Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was working on in 1843. She wrote instructions for a machine that didn't exist yet - creating what we now recognize as the first computer algorithm. Modern environmental scientists use her principles when building climate models.
• Australian geologist Greg Mortimer (b. 1952) combines science with adventure. He reached three summits no Australian had climbed before: Everest, K2, and Mount Vinson. Now his polar tours through Aurora Expeditions let visitors witness climate change effects in remote regions.
• Dutch scientist Louis Bolk (1866-1930) asked unusual questions about human evolution. His research on how people adapt to their surroundings brought fresh perspectives to ecological anthropology. Scientists today still test and expand on his ideas about human-environment interactions.