Due diligence: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, as another demanding workweek – complete with challenging schedules and changeable springtime weather patterns – runs its busy course.
No hump day would be complete, in any season, without a visit from Innovate Long Island – so take five from that hectic workload and enjoy this jam-packed innovation newsletter. You deserve it!
You bec: The full-bodied red originated in France but is produced today mainly in Argentina, where it’s infused with cocoa and plum.
Five-seven-five: It’s April 17 on Long Island and around the world, and for fans of ancient Japanese poetry (and everyone else), today is National Haiku Day – A celebration, for poets who adore math, watch your syllables! (See what we did there?)
Cheesy, nuts and bananas: We’re not insulting you! Today is National Banana Day, peeling back the skin of the elongated and aromatic sweety (technically, a berry), and National Cheeseball Day, not an homage to the tacky but a bouquet to nut-crusted cheese spreads.
Combine those with Malbec World Day – raising a glass to the champion of Argentinian wines every April 17 – and you’ve got yourself one interesting charcuterie board.
By the tale: From Japan to Argentina to England, where we find “The Canterbury Tales” – masterwork of “father of English literature” Geoffrey Chaucer – read aloud for the first time on this date in 1397 in the Royal Court of King Richard II.
Main event: Also in England, the first boxing “world championship” match took place in Farnborough (just outside London) on April 17, 1860, pitting American John Heenan against Englishman Tom Sayers. (For the record, the bare-knuckles brawl ended in a draw after 42 brutal rounds.)
Fresh spin: The fabled ‘1964 1/2’ Mustang turned heads in Flushing.
Horse power: Also muscling up was the Ford Mustang, king of the “pony cars,” introduced on this date in 1964 at the New York World’s Fair in Queens.
Shea hello: On that same day, right across the street from the World’s Fair, Shea Stadium – beloved home of the New York Mets for more than four decades – hosted its first game (fittingly for the loveable-loser Metropolitans, a 4-3 loss to the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates).
Mock 1: And it was that same exact day – April 17, 1964 – when Ohio housewife and amateur pilot Geraldine Mock did what no woman had done before, completing a solo flight around the world.
It took the mother of three and her single-engine Cessna 29 days, 11 hours and 59 minutes to complete the 23,103-mile trip, which began and ended at Ohio’s Port Columbus Airport and included layovers in Bermuda, the Azores, northern Africa, various Middle East locales, India, Guam, Wake Island, Hawaii and California (21 stops in all).
Economic cornerstone: American financier John Pierpont “J.P.” Morgan (1837-1913) – the investment banker, art collector and philanthropist who spearheaded U.S. Steel, General Electric and other multinational conglomerates and dominated Wall Street from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era – would be 187 years old today.
Attitude adjustment: Piper was a terrific villain but became a “face” by popular demand.
Also born on April 17 were French Catholic nun Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620-1700), who founded the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal and became Canada’s first saint; American “father of modern baseball” Alexander Cartwright Jr. (1820-1892), who wasn’t, precisely, though he did concoct many of the national pastime’s longstanding rules; British geophysicist and mathematician Augustus Love (1863-1940), who shook the world with his seismic wave research; British entomologist Sir Vincent Brian Wigglesworth (1899-1994), who created real buzz over insect physiology; and Canadian professional wrestler and actor Roderick George Toombs (1954-2015), remembered best as all-time heel “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
Boomer generation: And take a bow, Norman Julius “Boomer” Esiason! The American All-Pro quarterback (retired), broadcaster and champion of cystic fibrosis research turns 63 today.
Wish the ex-Jet (but mostly ex-Bengal) well at editor@innovatelit.com, where we love to research your news tips and your calendar events always lead us downfield.
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
Liquidity: Several Long Island projects – including four separate Nassau County efforts – are included in Albany’s latest round of water-infrastructure funding.
The New York State Environmental Facilities Corp. has approved $142 million in financial assistance – including previously announced grants and access to low-cost loans – for shovel-ready water and sewer projects across the state. Among them are a $3 million Water Infrastructure Improvement (WIIA) grant for the installation of a Village of Farmingdale Advanced Oxidation Process treatment system, a $5.4 million WIIA grant for Village of Garden City contaminant-treating equipment, four WIIA grants totaling $31.4 million for AOP systems across Western Nassau and seven WIIA grants totaling $51.2 million for Uniondale Water District projects.
Three WIIA grants totaling $4.5 million have also been earmarked for the Suffolk County Water Authority, targeting clean-water efforts in the towns of Babylon, Huntington and East Hampton. “New York continues to make clean and healthy drinking water a top priority,” noted New York State Health Commissioner James McDonald. “This financial assistance can be the difference between a well-intended plan … and actual shovels in the ground.”
Respect your elders: Ronald Fatoullah and Co.’s lengthy elder-law experience will be a boon for Meltzer Lippe.
Elder planning: A leading full-service Long Island law firm has absorbed a Great Neck-based practice specializing in elder law.
Mineola-based Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone announced this week that Ronald Fatoullah & Associates, which has established itself as a premier Greater New York elder-law practice with a 35-year-plus legacy, has entered the fold. Namesake Ronald Fatoullah has been named chairman of Meltzer Lippe’s Elder Law Practice Group effective immediately, with five additional attorneys and three paralegals from the Great Neck office along for the ride, spread across the new mothership’s Private Wealth & Taxation, Trusts & Estates, Estate Litigation and Elder Law Litigation practice groups.
The expanded talent pool “uniquely situates us to be able to provide wealth-preservation planning and advocacy to clients of all ages and needs … during some of life’s biggest challenges,” according to Meltzer Lippe Managing Partner David Heymann, while Fatoullah noted he was “thrilled” with the collaboration. “This merger represents a significant milestone in our journey toward providing even greater value and expertise to our clients,” the new chairman added.
TOP OF THE SITE
All in: With three lucrative downstate casino licenses blowing in the wind, Suffolk OTB is doubling down with an aggressive $210 million expansion plan at Islandia’s Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel.
The wait is (almost) over: Get excited! “Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast” returns next week with all-new one-on-ones highlighting the Island’s most intriguing innovators. To get you ready, here are nearly four dozen enlightening and entertaining conversations, wrapped and ready.
VOICES
What do the British Royal Family’s media-relations mess and Meta’s political-content cutbacks have in common? The same challenges facing everyone looking to balance privacy and social media privilege in the difficult, dangerous Digital Age, according to ZE Creative Communications Executive Vice President and Voices Media Anchor David Chauvin, who has some clear ideas on how to proceed.
STUFF WE’RE READING
Secret sauce: A volatile market may be the best fuel for corporate innovation. Forbes revels in adversity.
Garden of evil: Think your taxes are too high? Be glad you don’t live in New Jersey. Newsweek embraces the horror.
Forty winks: The memes fly as the “Sleepy Joe” trumpeter nods off in court. The Daily Beast grabs a nap.
RECENT FUNDINGS
+ CleanFiber, a New York City-based sustainable building materials manufacturer, raised $28 million in Series B funding led by Spring Lane Capital, Climate Innovation and Tokyu Construction/Global Brain.
+ Arcadia, a Washington-based utility-data and community-solar platform, raised $50 million in funding led by Macquarie Asset Management, Energy Impact Partners and BoxGroup.
+ Magnetic Insight, a California-based magnetic particle-imaging innovator, received a $3 million NIH SBIR Phase II Grant.
+ Seaport Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based clinical-stage biopharma focused on novel antidepressants and clinically validated anxiolytics, raised $100 million in Series A funding co-led by Arch Venture Partners, Sofinnova Investments, Third Rock Ventures and PureTech Health.
+ Cyera, a NYC-based data security provider, raised $300 million in Series C funding led by Coatue, Spark Capital, Georgian and AT&T Ventures.
+ Summer, a NYC-based end-to-end solution for workplace student loans, raised $9 million in funding led by Rebalance Capital, SemperVirens and Partnership Fund for NYC.
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 (Apple Of Our Eye Edition)
Fruit loop: Eating one of these every day can help you lose weight.
Falling Apple: Chinese sales propel Samsung to the top in global phone sales.
Keeps the doctor away: An apple a day may be your best defense against overeating.
Bittersweet: The rise and fall (and rise) of American hard cider.
How do you like them apples? Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including Stony Brook University Economic Development, a vast orchard of creativity and commercialization always ripening on the vine. Check them out.
