The Human Genome Project is perhaps the most significant research effort in the history of science. It's as important as the Copernican revolution in cosmology, with implications broader than the Manhattan Project. The promise of the Human Genome Project is the ability to understand and control the fundamentals of human life. The end result will be a roadmap of our genetic code. Read more...

Why Albert Einstein? Why does he deserve his own section in an almanac devoted to slightly larger things, like Mars or the Human Genome Project? Can an individual be as important as a planet? It's an interesting question. Albert Einstein is a unique figure in the history of the 20th century, other centuries too. He didn't wear socks. According to Peter A. Bucky, a friend of his, he was once given one of those drinking glasses with the tipping bird, and spent three and a half months trying to figure out how it worked. But, by the time he was thirty he had changed how we view fundamental things like light, gravity, matter, and space forever. He was also offered the presidency of Israel.

Giovanni Schiaparelli saw them first, a network of lines encompassing all of the planet Mars. He called them 'canali,' the Italian word for channels. He ascribed them to natural, geological processes; though when asked whether they could have been the work of intelligent beings, he conceded that, "I should carefully refrain from combating this supposition, which involves no impossibility." Percival Lowell, on the other hand, was convinced that the canals were the work of intelligent life, trying to survive on a dry planet. Was he right? Read more...