On July 21, 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in a public school classroom, and fined $100. The ambiguous legacy of the trial would continue — for decades, even to the present — to reveal the tensions inherent within a school system run by government and funded by taxpayers.
Scopes’ biology lessons leaned heavily on a “eugenics” play on Darwinism, at variance both with Darwin and the general thrust of today’s evolutionary thought.
Today is the 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission’s perambulation upon the Moon, on July 21, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked upon the surface of Mare Tranquillitatis for about two hours and 15 minutes. They spent over 21 hours on the surface, total, most of it inside the Lunar Module, at the site they called Tranquillity Base, before launching to rejoin astronaut Michael Collins in lunar orbit and returning to Earth on the 24th.
One reply on “Monkeyshine, Moonshine”
And let us note
[1] that the much maligned Bryan had previously opposed the idea that a white America was entitled to rule supposedly inferior people of the Philippines, whereäs Darrow had used vicious racist arguments in other court proceedings; and
[2] that the play Inherit the Wind stole arguments from Bryan and gave them to the Darrow-analogue, rather than leaving them with the Bryan-analogue, to make Bryan look the fool and Darrow look clever.