50 Years ago

In 1949 it was found that water applied to the tongue of the frog elicited an electrical response from the glossopharyngeal nerve. This response was produced by specific fibres. It was first thought that these 'water' fibres might serve a particular purpose in water regulation in amphibians living in fresh water. These findings also revived the old problem of whether warm-blooded animals and man possess similar specific taste fibres mediating what we might call a water taste. The late Prof. David Katz of Stockholm, who believed this to be the case, often asked in his examinations: What is the taste of water? The correct answer was 'wet' ... It seems to us most likely that water does not elicit any positive taste sensation. The action must be of negative character in that water abolishes or decreases the resting activity of taste fibres ... The specific effect of water on taste in man can thus be looked upon as being of the same nature as that of blackness upon vision.

Also:

The world low air temperature record of −102.1 °F at the South Pole ... was exceeded in the polar night of 1958 at the Russian International Geophysical Year Antarctic stations Sovetskaya and Vostok. The Sovetskaya station recorded −86.7 °C (−124.1 °F) between 1900 and 2000 l.m.t. on August 9.

From Nature 17 January 1959.

100 Years ago

At the recent conference on the conservation of resources which met at the White House at the invitation of the President of the United States, notes of warning were sounded concerning the coming exhaustion of coal, wood, ores, and soils. Whether or not we accept as exact the estimates furnished by experts on that impressive occasion, there is no doubt that we are approaching the end of our available resources, and that the near future will have momentous problems to face.

From Nature 14 January 1909.