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Different Types of Plastics
Parkesine
The first man-made plastic was created by Alexander Parkes who first publicly demonstrated it at the 1862 Great International Exhibition in London. The material called Parkesine was an organic material derived from cellulose that once heated could be molded and retained its shape when cooled.
Celluloid
Celluloid was derived from from cellulose and alcoholized camphor. John Wesley Hyatt invented celluloid as a substitute for the ivory in billiard balls in 1868. He first tried using collodion a natural substance, after spilling a bottle of it and discovering that the material dried into a tough and flexible film. However, the material was not strong enough to be used as a billiard ball, until the addition of camphor, a derivative of the laurel tree. The new celluloid could be molded with heat and pressure into a durable shape. Besides billard balls, celluloid became famous as the first flexible photographic film used for still photography and motion pictures. John Wesley Hyatt created celluloid in a strip format for movie film. By 1900, movie film was an exploding market for celluloid.

The Astronomical League's selection of 400 Herschel objects, for which the AL grants the Herschel Award. This list was compiled by Brenda Branchett of Deltona, Florida.
The full Herschel list of 2500 (actually 2514), which according to David was originally compiled by Fr. Lucian J. Kemble (1922-1999), a Franciscan Friar then living in Cochrane, Canada, who later moved to Lumsden, Saskaschewan, Canada, but the list partially lost; Richard Hook (astronomer from England, now at ESO) helped to restore. The list may still be somewhat buggy, though. Moreover, besides these (mostly typing) errors, Herschel's list is indeed considerably less reliable than Messier's smaller catalog: Herschel's catalog contains 36 duplications, 4 entries belong to two objects each, two further are listed twice as it is uncertain which object corresponds to them, and 87 objects marked as nonexistent in our lists (for whatever reason). Thus it seems that actually 2397 objects belong to the total of 2520 entries in our list (some of these objects are still multiple stars, or asterism).
I have created a Herschel 2500 list sorted by Herschel number, available in html (linked to our pages) or as plain ascii file.
I extracted the "Notes" on Herschel's catalog of David Bishop from Bill's README
Goto Bill Arnett's complete Herschel directory.
More material on Friedrich Wilhelm (William) Herschel:

Agnes Arber was an eminent plant morphologist during the first half of the twentieth century. In an attempt to understand more completely the organs and organisms she had studied, she turned to philosophy and metaphysics, and ended her career as a mystic. In an article in 1941 ("The interpretation of leaf and root in the angiosperms." Biological Reviews 16: 81-105) she wrote "The leaf is a partial shoot . . . which has an inherent urge towards the development of whole shoot characters."

Two men held a circle of plastic over a heater in a San Luis Obispo garage in 1948, trying to mold a lip onto the disc's down-turned edge. One of those men would be hailed as the inventor of the Frisbee. The other would die unknown, just as he began to fight for a share of the credit and millions in royalties the Frisbee generated.

Carl Sagan played a leading role in theAmerican space program since its inception. He was a consultant and adviser to NASA beginning in the 1950s, briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to the planets. He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperature of Venus (a massive greenhouse effect), the seasonal changes on Mars (windblown dust) and the reddish haze of Titan (complex organic molecules).

Galileo's Considerations on the Copernican Opinion
In order to remove (as much as the blessed God allows me) the occasion to deviate from the most correct judgment about the resolution of the pending controversy, I shall try to do away with two ideas. These are notions which I believe some are attempting to impress on the minds of those persons who are charged with the deliberations, and, if I am not mistaken, they are concepts far from the truth.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born on April 27, 1791, in Charlestown, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Jedidiah Morse, a pastor who was as well known for his geography as Noah Webster, a friend of the family, was known for his dictionaries

When their father died, Fleming's eldest brother inherited the running of the farm. Another brother Tom had studied medicine and was opening a practice in London. Soon, four Fleming brothers and a sister were living together in London. Alec, as he was called, had moved to London when he was about 14, and went to the Polytechnic School in Regent Street. Tom encouraged him to enter business. After completing school he was employed by a shipping firm, though he didn't much like it. In 1900, when the Boer War broke out between the United Kingdom and its colonies in southern Africa, Alec and two brothers joined a Scottish regiment. This turned out to be as much a sporting club as anything; they honed their shooting, swimming, and even water polo skills, but never went to the Transvaal. Soon after this, the Flemings' uncle died and left them each 250 pounds. Tom's medical practice was now thriving and he encouraged Alec to put his legacy toward the study of medicine.

Accomplishments and Awards
Articles, Quotes and Other Writings of George Washington Carver
Caring for the Fruits of Creation
Creative Quotes from George Washington Carver
Poem: "Equipment" (recited at the 1942 Selma University commencement address)
Articles of Interest

From Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod to the Hubble Space Telescope, this timeline covers some of America's technological innovations and inventions.