CAMILLE BOHANNON

July 10, 1925: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called Scopes
Monkey Trial began with John Thomas Scopes, a young
high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution
in violation of the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law.

The law, passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable
by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine
Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead
that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

The trial became a national spectacle, with prominent figures
like Clarence Darrow defending Scopes and William Jennings
Bryan assisting the prosecution.

John Thomas Scopes(1900 – 1970) the teacher
on trial for teaching evolution.

Defense attorney Clarence Darrow, left, and
prosecutor William Jennings Bryan speak
with each other during the trial.  

On April 26, 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving
1.8 million children, began at the Franklin Sherman Elementary
School in McLean, Virginia.

Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated
in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard
double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending
doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo.

One year later, on April 12, 1955, researchers announced the
vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard
part of childhood immunizations in America.

Jonas Salk holding bottles of culture he        
used to develop the polio vaccine.

Today, polio has been eliminated throughout
much of the world due to the vaccine; but,
there is still no cure for the disease and it
persists in a small number of countries in
Africa and Asia.

 
TIM MAGUIRE

Concorde G-BOAA takes off from London Heathrow on
its first passenger service to Bahrain.

Concorde entered service on 21 January 1976 with Air
France from Paris-Roissy and British Airways from
London Heathrow.  

The passengers onboard British Airways Concorde.

The Concorde passenger cabin at the Museum of Flight near Seattle.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Kennedy ran for president in the 1960 presidential election. His
campaign gained momentum after the first televised presidential
debates in American history, and he was elected president,
narrowly defeating Republican opponent Richard Nixon, the
incumbent vice president.