Vigil-ant: Welcome to Friday, dear readers, and not just any Friday but Good Friday, when Christians around the world commemorate the Crucifixion – the middle act of the Paschal Triduum, setting up history’s all-time comeback tour.
Whatever your spiritual persuasion, you’ve reached the end of this bountiful workweek, with just one more day between you and another well-earned weekend. Good? Let’s make it great.
Destructive spiral: It’s tempting … but on a Friday in lent?!?
Reason No. 42: We open with a baseball reference – but you don’t have to be a baseball fan to appreciate Jackie Robinson Day, the annual observance of the brave Brooklyn Dodger’s breaking of Major League Baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947.
Ham it up: Here’s a sticky wicket – it’s still Lent (complete with meatless-Friday menus), and a succulent glazed ham is a common staple of Easter Sunday dinners, but today is actually National Glazed Spiral Ham Day. So, good luck with that.
Whenever you get to it: And take a deep breath, procrastinators – today is not Tax Day. Although it customarily falls on April 15, the annual federal deadline to file your individual income-tax returns arrives on April 18 this year (something about Emancipation Day in Washington, which actually falls on April 16, but we digress).
For those keeping score, taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts have until April 19 to file (thanks to Patriots Day), while the IRS has extended tax-filing deadlines for winter-storm victims in Tennessee, Illinois and Kentucky, and wildfire victims in Colorado, all the way to May.
That’s Eerie: Taxes definitely played a part in the Erie Canal, a crucial 363-mile artificial waterway connecting Lake Erie (at Buffalo) and the Hudson River (at Albany) that was authorized for construction on April 15, 1817.
GE whiz: The General Electric Co. – still counted among the world’s largest corporations, with a $100.5 billion market cap – was founded in New York State 130 years ago today.
How quaint: Alexa, what’s a Rand McNally?
New direction: Electrifying drivers almost a century ago was Auto Chum – the first-ever Rand McNally road atlas, published on this date in 1924 by a company already well known for its topographic maps, railroad guides, geographic textbooks and children’s books.
What a Kroc: Big-picture entrepreneur Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s restaurant in Illinois on April 15, 1955.
Although it was not the first McDonald’s restaurant, the franchise location – featuring the first-ever Golden Arches – was the first opened by Kroc, who’d quickly build an empire.
Bay watch: And Virginia’s 17.6-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel opened to vehicular traffic on this date in 1964.
Featuring 12 miles of roadway trestles, two mile-long submerged tunnels, four artificial islands and other unique constructs, the bridge-tunnel combo is one of only a dozen such systems currently in service.
Leonardo da selfie: Artist’s impression (literally).
Leo of all trades: Italian polymath Leonardo di ser Piero (1452-1519) – a fairly productive painter, sculptor, engineer, scientist, theorist and architect who honored his hometown of Vinci with his adopted stage name – would be 570 years old today.
Also born on April 15 were Indian spiritual teacher Gurū Nānak (1469-1539), a.k.a. Bābā Nānak, the originator of Sikhism; German-born Russian astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (1793-1864), who doubled down on binary stars; American physician Mary Harris Thompson (1829–1895), a crusading feminist who founded the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children; American rocket scientist Samuel Hoffman (1902-1995), a propulsion specialist who developed engines for U.S. space vehicles; and Indonesian electronics engineer Samaun Samadikun (1931-2006), a microelectronics master who co-founded the Indonesian Academy of Sciences.
Stark industry: And take a bow, Margaret Constance “Maisie” Williams! The diminutive English actress and marine-life activist – known best as medieval teen assassin Arya Stark on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” adaptation – turns 25 today.
Give the deadly graduate of the House of Black White your best at editor@innovateli.com, where we know nothing, Jon Snow, without your news tips and calendar events.
About our sponsor: Farmingdale State College delivers exceptional academic and applied-learning outcomes through scholarship, research and student engagement for Long Island and beyond. Farmingdale State’s commitment to student-centered learning and inclusiveness prepares graduates to be exemplary citizens, equipped to excel in a competitive, diverse and technically dynamic society. The college solves the regional “brain drain” with 96 percent of FSC graduates working in New York State and 75 percent working on Long Island. Farmingdale State students rise to the challenge and are the emerging leaders of tomorrow. Learn more here.
BUT FIRST, THIS
Selection without representation: The State University of New York Board of Trustees has formed an elite search committee to identify and recruit SUNY’s next chancellor – but it’s missing a key element, according to SUNY students, who are challenging their lack of committee representation.
On April 8, the trustees announced a multifaceted, 19-member search squad featuring Board of Trustees Chairwoman Merryl Tisch, U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY 8), four university presidents, multiple captains of industry and even three Long Island voices – Kelly Ieong, a Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine resident urologist; Marilyn Simons, a 1974 SBU graduate and co-chairwoman of the New York City-based Simons Foundation; and Cary Staller, a SUNY trustee and president of Islandia-based commercial real estate kingpin Staller Associates.
But the panel eschewed student representatives, a flaw highlighted by elected leaders of the SUNY Student Assembly – the student-government organization representing nearly 1.4 million SUNY students – in an April 13 letter to Jeffries. The disenfranchised students implored the congressman to support their demand for search-committee representation, suggesting the slight “clearly demonstrates SUNY’s viewpoint of students as second-class citizens.” Stay tuned.
Market revolution: The ace advertisers of Southold Junior/Senior High School.
Virtual tie: A second Long Island high school has emerged victorious from a prestigious national business-development competition.
Just days after Westhampton Beach High School students were announced as the winners of Virtual Enterprises International’s National Business Plan Competition, the New York City-based nonprofit named Southold High School the champion of its National Marketing Competition. The Southold students won with their strategy for Doze, a circa-2021 simulated startup offering a sleeping pill made with natural ingredients, including locally grown organic hemp extract.
Both contests took place earlier this month during VE’s annual Youth Business Summit, which attracted 1,000 in-person and 10,000 online participants for leadership events and “virtual business” competitions – with students creating real business plans, websites, marketing strategies and more, all for simulated businesses. Summit participants also conducted an “international trade show,” buying and selling products and commodities with “credit cards” issued by a “central bank,” part of an intricate faux economy created by VE to closely simulate real-world economics.
TOP OF THE SITE
Potent partners: With a $100 million stake and visions of national healthcare equity, Northwell Health and Aegis Ventures have launched a unique business-creation platform.
Ready, set, university: St. Joseph’s has become the second Long Island higher-ed institution promoted from “college” to “university” this year.
This is us (and them): Before next week’s Season 2 finale, catch up with everyone and everything you’ve missed on Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast – big names, big ideas, great conversations, all streaming your way.
ICYMI
An award-winning business plan with a vintage twist; a groundbreaking international effort with a Long Island spin.
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 Massachusetts: Cambridge-based tech startup Lumafield reveals top-secret, AI-powered accessible X-ray computed tomography platform for engineers.
From Pennsylvania: The King of Prussia-based Center for Breakthrough Medicine inks a manufacturing deal with London-based biopharma, ramping up T-cell cancer therapies.
From Maryland: Baltimore-based public-health pioneer LifeStraw announces the launch of cutting-edge water-filtration systems for rural consumers and backcountry adventurers.
ON THE MOVE
Linda Merenguelli
+ Linda Merenguelli has been promoted to first vice president and commercial lines marketing manager at Woodbury-based HUB International Northeast. She previously served as vice president.
+ Plastic surgeons Nicholas Bastidas and Rachel Ruotolo have been appointed co-directors of Northwell Health’s Cohen Children’s Hagedorn Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Center in Great Neck.
+ Michael Webb has joined Uniondale-based Farrell Fritz as real estate counsel. He was previously as counsel at Nixon Peabody in Jericho.
+ Zachary Mike has joined Ronkonkoma-based Campolo, Middleton & McCormick as an associate in the firm’s Corporate Department. He previously worked at an East End vineyard.
+ Keith Frank has joined Uniondale-based Forchelli Deegan Terrana as a partner in the Employment & Labor Practice Group. He held the same position at Garden City-based Moritt Hock & Hamroff.
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 Farmingdale State). Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD
Gottfried: No joke too raunchy.
Paging Larry David: A Harvard study notes the need for more brutally honest advice.
Saving Will Smith: How the mad slapper and other “cancelled” celebs can recover.
Remembering Gilbert Gottfried: The fearless comic gave absurdity a voice.
Famously academic: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including Farmingdale State College, where a topnotch education is the real star of the show. Check them out.
