The joy of innovating: Happy day, dear readers! Another winning Wednesday has arrived, and we’re happily hurdling the hump of another hectic – but jovial! – autumn workweek.
It’s Oct. 18 out there (the date of India’s joyous Kati Bihu festival, since you asked) and we’re here to spread good cheer, starting with this high-spirited innovation review. Let’s see that smile!
Let them eat cake: With whipped frosting, please.
Chamber music: We open with a true celebration of regional socioeconomics – Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce Day, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s third-Wednesday-of-October salute to 4,000 town and state chambers across the country and the critical roles they play in local job creation and national economic development.
It’s also National Chocolate Cupcake Day, so maybe bring a tray over to your local chamber, just to be nice.
Last on our frontier, first in our hearts: And to our many readers along The Last Frontier, a safe and happy Alaska Day, a state holiday marking the Oct. 18, 1867, transfer of the territories comprising present-day Alaska (Aluet for “great land,” not an official state until 1959) from the Russian Empire to the United States.
Start talking: It didn’t stretch quite as far as Alaska, but the first long-distance telephone line connecting New York City and Chicago went live on this date in 1892 (with telephonic titan Alexander Graham Bell throwing his voice along 950 miles of copper wire).
Broadcasting news: Now a powerhouse of multimedia content, the BBC came to be 101 years ago today.
Start the show: Wireless transmissions shined on Oct. 18, 1922, when a conglomeration of European radio manufacturers – Guglielmo Marconi among them – founded the British Broadcasting Company. (For the record, the BBC reigns today as the world’s oldest continually operating local broadcaster.)
Start your antimatter engines: Other beamed breakthroughs associated with this date include the antiproton, the “negative proton” first detected 68 years ago today inside U.C. Berkeley’s powerful Bevatron atom-smasher.
Stop talking, please: It started well for James Watson, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory molecular biologist awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine on Oct. 18, 1962 (along with British scientists Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins) for cracking the DNA code – but then Watson wouldn’t shut his racist mouth.
Hard stop: And it was Oct. 18, 1989, when the Space Shuttle Atlantis released the space probe Galileo, which would slingshot around Venus and gather loads of interplanetary data en route to Jupiter.
The super-successful NASA probe completed a two-year study of the gas giant and its moons before intentionally crashing into Jupiter’s dense atmosphere. (Technocide was committed to avoid any chance of contaminating Galileo’s greatest discovery – a subsurface ocean on the moon Europa.)
Quantum leaper: German theoretical physicist Pascual Jordan (1902-1980) – who mathematically formulated matrix mechanics, essentially founding the field of quantum mechanics – would be 121 years old today.
Hail to the chief: Houphouët-Boigny rose from tribal leader to Ivory Coast president to decolonization icon.
Also born on Oct. 18 were English botanist, physician and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654), preeminent herbologist of his day; American humanitarian Florence Walrath (1877-1958), who modernized adoption agencies; Ivorian physician and politician Félix Houphouët-Boigny (1905-1993), the first president of Côte d’Ivoir and a linchpin of African decolonization; American musician Chuck Berry (born Charles Edward Anderson, 1926-2017), who pioneered rock and roll; and Czech American tennis champion Martina Navratilova (born 1956), an all-time athlete and global ambassador on numerous social issues.
Hill raiser: And take a bow, Lindsey Caroline Vonn! The American world-champion alpine ski racer and Olympic gold medalist – now a successful author/television personality/model/philanthropist – turns 39 today.
Wish the skiing sensation well at editor@innovateli.com, where your news tips are gold and it’s all downhill (the good kind) with your exciting calendar events.
About our sponsor: Stony Brook University Economic Development collaborates with regional innovators, supports startups and facilitates early-stage enterprise by leveraging the resources of a SUNY Flagship University and partner Brookhaven National Laboratory. Combining state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, the world-class expertise of 900-plus scientific investigators and best commercialization practices, Economic Development and its partners have the collective imagination and ability to attain exciting new heights for the Long Island innovation economy. Learn more here.
BUT FIRST, THIS
Kessel run: A veteran of Long Island socioeconomics will monitor Nassau County’s historically troubled finances.
Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed former New York Power Authority CEO Richard Kessel chairman and director of the board of the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority, effective immediately. Created by state legislators 23 years ago – when stagnant taxes, bloated union contracts and rampant borrowing left Nassau on the brink of insolvency – the NIFA is a public-benefit corporation empowered to restructure Nassau’s outstanding debt ($648.7 million in tax certiorari debt as of 2020) and issue bonds and notes for county purposes.
While he’s cultivated a regional reputation, Kessel – who also served 12 years as head of the New York State Consumer Protection Board – is intimately familiar with Nassau economics, having recently chaired the board of the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency. “I thank Gov. Hochul for appointing me to be chair of the Nassau Interim Finance Authority,” Kessel said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the governor, her administration and members of the NIFA Board to move the county forward in a positive direction.”
Presidential page-turner: With wars raging in multiple overseas theaters, a unique Long Islan
Cover story: Inboden’s latest reveres Reagan.
d-based historical society with presidential bloodlines has bestowed a prestigious book award to a review of the President of the United States’ vital role as international mediator.
“The Peacemaker” (Penguin Random House, 2022) has earned author William Inboden, executive director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Clements Center for National Security, the Society of Presidential Descendants’ Biennial Presidential Leadership Award, which recognizes literary excellence in the exploration of presidential headship. The book – the third authored solo by Inboden, a National Security Council appointee of President George W. Bush – examines President Ronald Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War.
Housed at The Roosevelt School at Long Island University, the civic-minded SPD found “The Peacemaker” to be a “vital reminder of the role America’s presidents have always played in diplomacy and furthering peace throughout the world,” according to Theodore Roosevelt’s great-grandson Tweed Roosevelt, chairman of both the SPD and The Roosevelt School – especially noteworthy “in today’s time of tension and turmoil in the Ukraine and the Middle East.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Talent agencies: Long Island’s leading economic-development organizations have developed a five-point action plan to build and sustain a dynamic Long Island workforce.
Winning streak: Former Nassau County Executive Laura Curran is one amazing podcast guest – and she’s just the latest smart and funny rainmaker to grace Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast. Get to know these people!
Here to help: Missed one of these entertaining and educational newsletters? No prob, we archive them right here. Missed a subscriber-only Monday Calendar Newsletter? Sorry, they’re not archived – but here’s an always -easy, always-free solution.
VOICES
The redrawing (many cite “gerrymandering”) of New York’s Congressional-district maps is not only important to state residents, but to the makeup of the entire U.S. House of Representatives – and it’s an ugly business, according to Sahn Ward Managing Member and Voices Legal Anchor Michael Sahn, who notes the political forces at play have anything but “the people” in mind.
STUFF WE’RE READING
Par for the course: From Pennsylvania Avenue to the Senate to the House, corruption is the new normal – but must it be so? USA Today has had enough.
Snow job: Far from her “dumb blonde” persona, Suzanne Somers proved herself a clever businesswoman. Variety chews on ThighMasters.
The Spelunkers: Meet the family that left America to live in an Italian cave. CNN Travel goes the distance.
RECENT FUNDINGS
+ Jetson, a California-based aviation innovator focused on eVTOL mechanics, closed a $15 million seed funding round. Backers included rapper will.i.am, Luca Spada and Rikard Steiber.
+ Leucine, a New York City-based digitalized pharmaceutical manufacturer, raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Ecolab, Pravega Ventures, Axilor Ventures and Techstars.
+ PickNik Robotics, a Colorado-based unstructured robotics manufacturer, raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by Stellar Ventures and Cypress Growth Capital.
+ Hook, a NYC-based music-expression platform, closed a $3 million seed funding round led by Point72 Ventures and Waverley Capital.
+ Perch Energy, a Massachusetts-based clean-energy technology platform, raised $30 million in Series B funding. Noveen made the investment.
+ Game of Silks, a Florida-based blockchain gaming platform, raised $5 million in extended seed funding. Backers included Taylor Made and FunFair Ventures.
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 Stony Brook University). Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (Odd Edition)
Shattering expectations: Wait, glass is a LIQUID? (Well, kinda…)
That’s weird: Scientifically speaking, glass is not what you think.
That’s bizarre: Physicists may have detected virtually invisible “demon” electrons.
That’s strange: Recreating ice that only melts at extremely high temperatures – and may be everywhere in the universe.
That’s incredible: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including Stony Brook University Economic Development, part of a vast technology-commercialization ecosystem with an uncanny track record of success. Check them out.
