A for effort: Another hard-fought workweek in the can, another well-earned weekend in the offing – remarkable job, dear readers, and we’re not easily impressed.
It’s Friday, April 23, and we’re here to put a bright bow on this inspiring week of socioeconomic innovation. Thanks for coming along.
Prost!: Raise a glass — or stein, or whatever — to German Beer Day.
Creative thinking: This’ll get you going – marking the anniversary of the first YouTube video upload (in 2005), this and every April 23 is International Creator Day, celebrating the makers among us.
Feeling a little peckish? Dig in – it’s also National Cherry Cheesecake Day and international German Beer Day.
Word up: And we can’t help but love English Language Day, the UN’s annual celebration of the world’s most-spoken lingo – native tongue to 360 million, spoken by more than 1.35 billion globally.
Merry birthday: Speaking of the Queen’s English, William Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” debuted on this date in 1597 – on the famed playwright’s 33rd birthday (more of those below), with none other than Queen Elizabeth looking on.
Still kind of a Mets: No matter how good, bad or ugly the current incarnation, this will always be a red-letter date for fans of the New York Metropolitans, who notched their first-ever franchise victory – after a bumbling 0-9 start – on April 23, 1962.
For those keeping score, the Pittsburgh Pirates earned the dubious honor.
Fast start: It was not much of a scientist, but Ranger IV died a hero.
Crash test: On that same day – April 23, 1962 – NASA launched the Ranger IV space probe, the first American spacecraft to reach the Moon.
Although onboard system failures fritzed the probe’s data-gathering mission, it did successfully crash on the lunar surface three days later.
Comfortable in their skin: Massachusetts General Hospital announced that it had tested artificial skin – genuine enough to successfully graft to the real stuff – on this date in 1981, saving the lives of three burn patients and helping numerous others.
A Coke and a (wry) smile: And it was this date in 1985 when the Coca-Cola Company introduced the worst marketing disaster – or greatest marketing long-play – of all time, the unholy New Coke.
The innovation proved unpopular, to say the least. But sales of Coke’s previously flagging formula – renamed “Coke Classic” – skyrocketed upon re-release, twisting the cap on decades of debate about whether the popmeister planned the whole thing.
Walking the Planck: German theoretical physicist Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (1858-1947), a thermodynamics expert who earned a Nobel Prize for inventing quantum theory, would be 163 years old today.
Shirley, you can’t be serious: She was serious.
Also born on April 23 were 15th U.S. President James Buchanan (1791-1868); prolific African American inventor Granville T. Woods (1856-1910), who snagged dozens of patents for railroad upgrades; British geneticist Edmund Brisco Ford (1901-1988), a champion of natural selection who made major contributions to modern genetics; American box office darling-turned-diplomat Shirley Temple Black (1928-2014); and “Fantasy Island” plane-spotter/deadly Bond villain Hervé Villechaize (1943-1993).
Get ready to “Rumble”: And take a bow, Michael Francis Moore! The rabble-rousing, award-winning American filmmaker, author and activist – and now podcaster – turns 67 today.
Wish these and all the other amazing April 23 innovators well at editor@innovateli.com, where controversial documentaries rarely play, but your news tips and calendar events always make the scene.
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BUT FIRST, THIS
Grease is the word: A $12.3 million upgrade of a Great Neck wastewater collection and treatment facility – including operations powered by residual cooking grease – has created a New York State first.
That’s according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, which on Thursday announced the completion of work at the Great Neck Water Pollution Control District facility, which services upwards of 25,000 Nassau County residents. The improvements include the installation of a 2,500-square-foot “grease receiving station,” designed to both fuel plant operations and help dispose of excess cooking grease, a major challenge for Long Island restaurants.
The facelift also includes the installation of a third microturbine and upgrades to the facility’s anaerobic digesters, resulting in “one of the most environmentally advanced wastewater-treatment plants in the state,” according to Cuomo’s office. Great Neck Water Pollution Control District Chairman Steve Reiter thanked the Empire State Development Corp., which funded the work, “for enabling the district … to become a municipal model of efficiency.”
Wise decision: Moving to Hauppauge has worked out for Forward Industries and Intelligent Product Solutions.
Full exposure: A new purchasing agreement will introduce a top Long Island innovator’s advanced software-development services to 200,000-plus U.S. healthcare providers.
Forward Industries has announced a new group purchasing agreement between subsidiary Intelligent Product Solutions, a longtime Hauppauge-based product-development stalwart, and Premier Inc., a North Carolina-based healthcare-services provider counting 4,100 U.S. hospitals and hundreds of thousands of total providers among its customers. As a Premier supplier, IPS will offer cutting-edge software-development services – including integrated data and analytics, supply-chain solutions and other key expertise – to Premier members at “special pricing and terms pre-negotiated by Premier,” according to Forward Industries.
Forward Industries Chairman and CEO Terry Wise, who relocated his company from Florida to Hauppauge in 2020 to capitalize on its 2018 acquisition of IPS, cited the purchasing agreement as a prime example why. “We’re very pleased to be designated as a supplier to Premier,” Wise noted. “This is an example of how, as part of Forward Industries, IPS has expanded its customer base.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Ally of the force: Regional workforce development has a friend in Rosalie Drago, the first woman to serve as Suffolk County labor commissioner and second guest of our new podcast series.
Highly resilient: Catching up with former Stony Brook University VP Yacov Shamash, who’s a step ahead of what the national energy grid needs to be.
Print lives: And it could solve the national homeless crisis, according to architect Kevin Paul, who foresees big things for tiny 3D-printed houses (with Albany’s help).
Innovation in the Age of Coronavirus: Improved numbers, dispelled vaccination myths and more – Long Island’s one-and-only pandemic primer is still doing its job.
ICYMI
A forward-thinking merger with a seasoned production house has a Long Island communications ace screening new opportunities.
BEST OF THE WEST (AND SOMETIMES NORTH/SOUTH)
Innovate LI’s inbox overrunneth with inspirational innovations from all North American corners. This week’s brightest out-of-towners:
From California: San Jose-based fine-art technocrat MORF Gallery combines AI, robotics and neuroscience to recreate lost classics, starting with a Picasso.
From North Carolina: Charlotte-based digital-health player Todays Health Science joins the online wellness conversation with new multimedia platform.
From California: Chico-based commercial-vehicle tech enabler World Truck Solutions revs up Vehicle Acquisition Search Tool to help dealers handpick inventory.
ON THE MOVE
Lauren Nichols
+ Lauren Nichols, president of Farmingdale-based 3G Warehouse, has joined the Advisory Board of the Hempstead-based Center for Entrepreneurship at Hofstra University.
+ Bernard Kennedy has been appointed to the Melville-based Long Island Association Board of Directors. He is senior vice president of corporate and legal affairs at Hauppauge-based King Kullen Grocery Co.
+ Jane Chen has been appointed co-chairwoman of the Asian American Bar Association of New York’s Real Estate Committee. She is an associate in the Real Estate and Corporate and Mergers & Acquisitions practice groups at Uniondale-based Forchelli Deegan Terrana.
+ St. Francis Hospital and Heart Center in Roslyn has named Zaid Ali director of the DeMatteis Cardiovascular Institute. He previously served as director of intravascular imaging and physiology, director of cardio-nephrology and associate director of translational science at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan.
+ The Garden City-based Nassau BOCES Board of Education has named Johanna Malament assistant director of the Department of Special Education. She is the principal of Robert Williams School in Jericho.
BELOW THE FOLD
The director’s cut: And bruised and battered, but still punching.
Think about it: What to say when asked “why should we hire you?”
Get over it: Four proven habits to deal with fear and anxiety.
Go for it: “Rocky IV” may be the greatest motion picture achievement of all time – why did Stallone remake it?
Own it: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including SUNY Old Westbury, where your best future is there for the taking and yours for the making. Check them out.
