Vacation initiation: Welcome to Friday, friends, and not just any Friday but the Friday before next Tuesday’s Fourth of July festivities – making the weekend ahead a four-day affair for many and the start of a weeklong blow for some.
Including us! Innovate Long Island will be lounging by the pool straight through next week, so no newsletters – back at you July 10 with your regularly scheduled Calendar Newsletter and fresh website content.
Have a safe and happy and all that – and hey, happy birthday, America! Way to hang together through all the bitter divisiveness. We can be loud and thickheaded and even bonkers enough for the occasional armed insurrection, but at least you don’t see tank divisions rolling toward the capital.
Emotional impact: But most “shooting stars” are tiny and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, high above ground.
Look out below: Back here on June 30, the republic and its mighty workforce innovates their way through one more workday before those long weekends and longer vacations.
And it all starts with mixed messages from space: Today is both International Asteroid Day – rising from the ashes of the hyper-destructive June 30, 1908, Tunguska Explosion (a 12-megaton asteroid impact that leveled 830 square miles of Russian forest) – and National Meteor Watch Day, an annual celebration of whimsically charming (and perfectly safe) “shooting stars.”
Welcome to MyInstaFaceMash, you twittering linked-in friendsters! Bored with nature already? Thank goodness it’s also the 13th annual World Social Media Day, a made-by-Mashable celebration of social media’s multicultural and progressive nature, because yeah, that’s what social media are all about.
Stone cold: The 70-carat Excelsior I, set here in the center of a diamond bracelet, is the largest of 11 stones cut from the Excelsior Diamond.
Chips off the old block: Other amazing things to see in nature include the Excelsior Diamond – or what’s left of it. (The 995.2-carat blue-white gem, dug up in South Africa on this date in 1893, was eventually chopped into pieces, since it was too big to sell).
A transi-whatsis? Far from nature, Bell Labs publicly introduced the transistor on this date in 1948 – a massive technological leap, if a bit of a head-scratcher at first.
Corvette summer: Cool from the start (and embodying innovation) was “America’s Sports Car” – the first Corvette rolled off a Michigan assembly line 70 years ago today.
Right NOW: Also hitting the ground running was the National Organization for Women, the largest U.S. feminist organization, founded on this date in 1966.
Night flyer: And taking to the skies was the small group of astronomers that boarded a prototype Concorde supersonic jet on June 30, 1973, to chase a solar eclipse.
From the proper spot in the Sahara Desert, the longest solar eclipse on Earth in hundreds of years got you 7 minutes, 4 seconds of darkness – flying high above the clouds at twice the speed of sound, the astronomers enjoyed more than 70 minutes in the Moon’s ebony shadow.
That’s the ticket: English cabinetmaker, grocer and inventor Thomas Edmondson (1792-1851) – who punched his ticket to immortality and changed train-travel forever with the Edmondson Railway Ticket system – would be 231 years old today.
Body of work: Tyson (right) was a savage puncher.
Also born on June 30 were German Australian botanist and explorer Sir Ferdinand von Mueller (1825-1896), who was born in the former and became the latter’s greatest scientist; American paleobotanist Elso Barghoorn Jr. (1915-1984), who reset the clock on evolution; Canadian experimental filmmaker Joyce Wieland (1930-1998), a master of mixed media; American singer Florence Ballard (1943-1976), a founding member of The Supremes who sang lead on 10 number-one hits; and overachieving American swimmer Michael Fred Phelps II (born 1985), history’s most decorated Olympian.
A little punchy: And take a bow, Michael Gerard Tyson! The retired American boxer – part hero, part villain, rightfully ranked among history’s greatest heavyweights and happy he never fought Vito Corleone – turns 57 today.
Wish Iron Mike well at editor@innovateli.com, where our sweet science always starts with your news tips – and your calendar events fill our weekly card.
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BUT FIRST, THIS
Sock exchange: From the Sock It To ’Em File come old friends Mark and John Cronin, the father-son duo behind Melville-based John’s Crazy Socks, now ankle-deep in its annual Sock Design Contest.
The popular competition offers a slate of prizes, including a $1,000 grand prize and the honor of having winning entries sewn into actual socks and sold alongside other company wares (with 10 percent of those sales going to charity). Contestant/artists ages 18 and up can complete a simple admission form and submit digital versions of their original designs – no trademarked logos, characters or images, please – through Aug. 1.
John’s Crazy Socks – which has leveraged John’s Down syndrome into a successful business (4,000-plus sock choices) with a progressive social message (most employees have a differing ability) and a philanthropic bent (5 percent of revenues are donated to the Special Olympics) – will whittle submissions to 10 semifinalists for an online vote down to five finalists, before a selection committee headed by John picks the winner. “I love seeing all the designs our customers submit,” the co-founder noted.
Certified fresh: The latest graduates of Island Harvest’s Workforce Skills Development Institute are ready to rock.
But teach a person to fish…: A busy regional food bank on an ancillary socioeconomic mission – essentially, to negate the need for its own existence – has graduated a second cohort from its innovative Workforce Skills Development Institute.
Melville-based Island Harvest Food Bank certified 13 new graduates June 23, marking the second class to complete the institute’s technical and nontechnical warehousing and inventory-control curriculum, which is custom-designed in concert with regional employers. Comprised solely of unemployed, underemployed and under-skilled Island Harvest clients, the first technically proficient and highly employable class graduated in March, with half of those 10 alums now employed full-time, according to the food bank.
Combining high-impact training and critical student-support services like transportation and childcare – all in partnership with the local business community – redefines how food banks interact with their constituencies, according to Island Harvest President and CEO Randi Shubin Dresner. “Distributing food to help people who are food insecure is a short-term solution,” Dresner noted. “We are taking a holistic approach in addressing one of the root causes of hunger and food insecurity.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Series premiere: Discover Long Island’s new video-feature series – and its accompanying digital-marketing campaign – will target tourists throughout the Northeast.
Mall security: Lesso Mall Development Real Estate Director Dominic Coluccio joins Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast to discuss the challenges of creating a world-class dining/entertainment/retail destination in a post-pandemic world. Let’s go to the mall!
ICYMI
Albany has completed $47 million in visitor-friendly weatherproofing work at Hempstead Lake State Park.
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 New York City: Innovative urban parking-solution startup Xtraspots activates first app empowering property owners in congested parking areas.
From California: Santa Barbara-based artisan ice creamery McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams heats up freezer aisle with organic flavors and fresh-baked cookies.
From Canada, eh: Vancouver-based ethical manufacturer Grounded People Apparel steps up with first-ever cruelty-free leather and suede shoes.
ON THE MOVE
Joanna Hazelton
+ Joanna Hazelton has been hired as an associate at Uniondale-based Farrell Fritz. She held the same position at Wiggin & Dana in Manhattan.
+ David Goldstein has been hired as a partner in the Trusts and Estates Practice Group at Uniondale-based Farrell Fritz’s Manhattan office. He was an associate at Shearman & Sterling in Manhattan.
+ Charles Lefkowitz has been appointed chairman of the Oakdale-based Suffolk County Water Authority’s Board of Directors. He is president of CAMCO Services of New York and Louis Lefkowitz Realty in Port Jefferson Station.
+ Amanda Romero has been hired as a senior accountant at Ronkonkoma-based Campolo, Middleton & McCormick. She was a staff accountant at FFP Taste in Melville.
+ James Maron has been promoted to senior vice president and Long Island commercial banking leader at Wells Fargo in Melville. He previously served as the market credit leader.
+ Alice Tomasello has been hired as a senior sales representative at Westbury-based Hicks Nurseries. She previously served as northeast market manager for Landscape Hub in Chicago.
+ Jason Stern has been elected dean of the Hauppauge-based Suffolk Academy of Law. He is a partner and director of litigation at Melville-based Weber Law Group.
Like this newsletter? Innovate Long Island newsletter, website and podcast sponsorships are a prime opportunity to reach the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and executives you need to know (just ask New York Tech). Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (Matter Of Life Or Death Edition)
The air up there: Deep breath!
Life: The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines for these espionage/tampering charges you’ve been hearing about don’t screw around.
Death: That time NASA found life on Mars and promptly killed it.
In between: The Air Quality Index, and why you care.
Your best life: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including the New York Institute of Technology, which has helped generations of students become great technologists and excellent people. Check them out
.
