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

June 10 packs several good ideas into one summer day.

• Those empty jars in your kitchen? Perfect for windowsill herbs - it's National Herbs and Spices Day after all. While you're at it, skip the bottled stuff and brew tea from your fresh-cut sprigs.
• Photographers around town are capturing Art Nouveau's curves and twists in nature. Meanwhile, local AA groups always need more helping hands - check what's available near you.
• Keep summer safe around lakes and rivers this season. Portuguese cultural festivals bring green living ideas to life. And since it's Men's Health Week, maybe it's time for that check-up you've been putting off.

Grab a ballpoint pen today. Someone out there would love getting actual mail for once.

June 10th links several major discoveries, both on Earth and Mars.

• Back in 1596, Willem Barents and Jacob van Heemskerk spotted land during their Arctic voyage. After encountering a large white bear on the shore, they named the spot Bjørnøya. These days, the remote island hosts thousands of nesting seabirds in its protected areas.
• Paris made history too. In 1793, the former royal medicine garden became the Jardin des Plantes - giving citizens their first public botanical park. The garden has grown substantially since then. Its greenhouse collections now feature around 4,000 plant varieties, with another 2,500 growing outdoors.
• The date also marks two Mars milestones. In 2003, NASA's Spirit rover began its $400 million mission, later finding evidence of ancient water flows in Gusev crater.
• Years later, its companion rover Opportunity stopped responding in 2018. After traveling 45.16 kilometers and capturing 217,000 photos of the Martian surface, the small robot had lasted 14 years - quite a feat for a mission planned to run just 90 days.

Six scientists born on June 10th shaped different fields in unexpected ways. E.O. Wilson passed in 2021 at 92, after upending our view of the natural world. Known first for his ant research, he won two Pulitzers and sparked a bold idea: keeping half of Earth wild. Field researchers still use his methods for studying how species survive on islands.

At Leiden's Natural History Museum in the 1800s, Hermann Schlegel blended science with art. While most know him for finding that Japanese gecko, his lasting work came from revolutionizing wildlife illustration. He set new standards for showing animals exactly as they appear in nature.

Weather forecasting took a practical turn thanks to Augie Auer. Until 2007, he decoded New Zealand's tricky weather systems. Instead of technical jargon, he gave straight answers about what to expect from incoming storms.

Few scientists see their names on NASA spacecraft - especially while still alive. But Eugene Parker's 1958 theory about solar wind proved so accurate that NASA broke its own rules. By 2018, a probe bearing his name was studying how the sun's behavior affects our climate.

Claudio Gilberto Froehlich knew Brazil's rivers held secrets. By watching stoneflies until his death in 2023, he found these tiny insects could warn about water problems before tests showed anything wrong. His methods now protect waterways across South America, though some of his early findings still puzzle researchers today.