Setting the mood: This month flew by, dear readers – yet it’s still April out there, at least for one more blustery day.
It is Friday, however, and both the rainiest month and this warm week of bright innovation set today. Let’s finish big.
Day in the sun: All those choices … and you pick raisins?
Out like a lion: April certainly finishes big – today is National Arbor Day, National Raisin Day, National Oatmeal Cookie Day, National Bubble Tea Day and National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day.
It’s also National Hairball Awareness Day (which makes sense, on National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day) and National Bugs Bunny Day (marking the celluloid birth of Warner Bros.’ looniest tune … actual births below).
Jazz it up: April 30 is also International Jazz Day, a global salute to a true American innovation.
Take a pill: Speaking of American innovation, Big Pharma became a thing 225 years ago today, when Connecticut inventor Samuel Lee Jr. earned a U.S. patent for his “Bilious Pills.”
The first-ever medicine in pill form – recommended for everything from Yellow Fever to dysentery to “female complaints” – also marked the first U.S. medicinal patent.
Start of something big: The best of times, for Dickens.
Installment plan: The first part of Charles Dickens’ famous (and famously long) “A Tale of Two Cities” was published in a British periodical on April 30, 1859, with weekly installments following through Nov. 26.
Let there be light: The Edison Electric Illuminating Co., soon to focus on the construction of electrical generating stations, was incorporated on this date in 1883 in Pennsylvania.
Electron-ifying: The electron was revealed, almost, on April 30, 1897, when physicist J.J. Thomson announced his discovery of an as-yet-unnamed miniscule mass – smaller than an atom – with a negative charge.
Fair enough: And featuring futuristic technologies like fluorescent lighting, FM radio and even a primitive fax machine, the first New York World’s Fair opened on this date in 1939 in Queens.
Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, site of the 1939 fair, would later host a second World’s Fair, which opened at the end of April 1964.
Poetry in notion: American psychiatrist and author Jack Leedy (1921-2004) – the “father of poetry therapy,” who mainstreamed the written art form as a viable psychotherapeutic tool – would be 100 years old today.
Mama mia: “Crazy” Cloris Leachman never met a role she didn’t own.
Also born on April 30 were German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), arguably history’s greatest arithmetician; Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939), who coined the term “schizophrenia” and significantly improved understanding of many mental illnesses; British aeronautical engineer Roy Chadwick (1893-1947), who designed England’s WWII bomber squadrons; American mathematician George Stibitz (1904-1995), a Bell Labs researcher who built the first electromechanical computer on his kitchen table; and American actress and comedian Cloris Leachman (1926-2021), an Oscar,- Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner.
Well composed: And take a bow, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich! The prolific American postmodernist/neoromantic composer – the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music – turns 82 today.
Drop a note (wink) for the musically gifted innovator at editor@innovateli.com, where you always get to name that tune: Story tips and calendar events harmoniously accepted.
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BUT FIRST, THIS
Big fan: Eleanor Belvin, entrepreneur.
Dove story: A first-year music-business major has captured top honors in the 2021 Hofstra Digital Remedy Venture Challenge.
Freshman Eleanor Belvin and her startup, FanDove, a social media platform for virtual meet-and-greets between musicians and fans, captured $12,000 in startup capital and $30,000 in business-building services from New York City-based media company Digital Remedy – which cosponsors the contest with Hofstra University’s Center for Entrepreneurship – during the business-plan competition’s April 23 final round. Second place ($21,000 prize package) went to Customary, a web-based marketplace connecting customers and local print shops, developed by senior finance majors Kyle Bhiro and Kerem Proul.
Onton – maker of multitasking accessories for home-exercise fanatics, conceived by medical students Zarina Brune and Joseph Mootz – took third place ($8,500) in the annual competition, now in its ninth year. “This was the most difficult decision in years,” Digital Remedy CEO and Chairman Mike Seiman, the Hofstra alumnus and trustee who founded the contest, told competitors. “You all had great ideas and you should all continue to innovate and work toward becoming entrepreneurs.”
Square deal: Applauding plans for “underutilized land” and predicting a “vibrant community,” the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency is looking to help a local developer continue its Huntington Station revival.
Affordable rentals are just one of the benefits leading the IDA to issue preliminary approval of roughly $760,000 in tax breaks over 15 years to Blue & Gold Holdings – abatements that will help the family-owned, Huntington-based developer construct a 20,337-square-foot, multi-use “community” on New York Avenue, featuring 16 one-bedroom residential units (three listed below market rental rates) and two retail storefronts. The development, known as Northridge Square, is slated for empty land near the Long Island Rail Road’s Huntington Station.
A final IDA vote is still pending, but Blue & Gold Holdings cofounder and President Grant Havasy was playing past that this week. “The IDA’s assistance on this project will allow us to continue our vision to rebuild the area around Huntington Station while providing professionals with quality housing options,” Havasy said Wednesday. “Northridge Square’s proximity to the train station and Huntington Village provides residents with the best of both worlds.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Are you smarter than an ancient hominin: Yes, but not because your brain is so big, according to this groundbreaking scientific study led by Stony Brook University.
But, are you smart enough? Doesn’t take a genius to know your entire innovation team should have free subscriptions to this awesome newsletter. Or does it?
Innovation in the Age of Coronavirus: Innovative Island manufacturers score critical emergency funds – it’s another busy week for Long Island’s one-and-only pandemic primer.
ICYMI
Blocking enzymes to treat cancer is one thing; blocking sunlight to treat global warming is a whole other scientific conundrum.
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 Diego-based wireless wonder WAIV lights up world’s first solar-powered GPS tracker for capsized boats and lost jet skis.
From Colorado: Denver-based reality-augmenter Concept3D creates 360-degree virtual tours for Yale University.
From California: San Jose-based 17-year-old Steve Dou creates a $41 smartwatch designed to detect overdoses before it’s too late.
ON THE MOVE
Krista Svedberg
+ Krista Svedberg has been hired as director of marketing at Smithtown-based Hendel Wealth Management Group. She was previously vice president of marketing for Suffolk Federal Credit Union.
+ Jamie Rosen has been promoted to equity partner at Lake Success-based Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Formatto, Ferrara, Wolff and Carone. Her practice focuses on mental health, healthcare and elder law.
+ Alex Leibson has been promoted to equity partner at Lake Success-based Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Formatto, Ferrara, Wolff and Carone. His practice focuses on commercial litigation.
+ Michael Maimone has been elected to the Hauppauge-based National Electrical Contractors Association-Long Island Chapter’s Board of Directors. He is senior project manager at Yaphank-based Gordon L. Seaman Inc.
+ Thomas Grech has been appointed to the boards of the Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency and the Town of Hempstead Local Development Corp. He previously served as president and CEO of the Jackson Heights-based Queens Chamber of Commerce.
BELOW THE FOLD (We Still Love Dr. Suess Edition)
Melts the heart: Or maybe the eyes.
If I ran the zoo: The top 50 most-innovative CIOs, on a radical transformation mission.
Oh, the places you’ll grow: The top 50 workplaces for advancing your career.
The butter battle: Maybe the best 50 minutes you’ll ever spend watching butter melt.
And other stories: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including New York Tech, where clever courses and industry-savvy instructors make your success as easy as one fish, two fish … you know the rest.
