Bringing It All Back Home

An upcoming biopic starring Timothée Chalamet has put singer-songwriter Bob Dylan back in the spotlight. Dylan’s influence on popular culture is impossible to overstate. His early success in folk music, coinciding with the U.S. civil rights movement, led to Dylan’s being branded “spokesman of a generation.” The film, A Complete Unknown, details Dylan’s rise and polarizing pivot—his electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, a landmark event in popular music history.
His Back Pages: A Life in Pictures
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The Amp Heard Around the World: When Dylan Went Electric
© Alice Ochs—Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The Life and Times of Bob Dylan, by Al Kooper
Rowland Scherman—U.S. Information Agency/NARA

Anti-Virus

Forty-five years ago today, smallpox was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization, which had started a global program to wipe out the virus some 10 years before. The program’s success was another milestone in the ongoing story of virus eradication, a history that began with the smallpox virus.

Jenner’s discovery

In 1796 English surgeon Edward Jenner discovered a vaccination against smallpox, marking the world’s first successful vaccine. Jenner used doses of cowpox to inoculate people against smallpox, giving rise to the term vaccine, rooted in vacca, the Latin word for cow. The death rate from smallpox plummeted, and Jenner received worldwide recognition and many honors. But he made no attempt to enrich himself through the discovery and in fact devoted so much time to the cause of vaccination that his personal finances suffered severely.

Influenza

The influenza pandemic of 1918–19 was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. Outbreaks occurred in every inhabited part of the world, and about half of all deaths were among 20- to 40-year-olds, an unusual mortality age pattern for influenza. An accurate worldwide death toll is difficult to arrive at, with estimates ranging from 25 million to as many as 50 million deaths. It would take decades until an influenza vaccine was discovered, thanks to research led by Jonas Salk and Thomas Francis. Jr., both of whom would soon tackle another major health crisis.

Polio

In the mid-20th century, polio—an acute viral infectious disease of the nervous system that could cause paralysis—struck hundreds of thousands of children every year. In 1947 Jonas Salk began working on a polio vaccine and by 1952 he was conducting field tests of an early version. In 1954 Thomas Francis, Jr., conducted a mass field trial, which proved the vaccine’s efficacy. On April 12, 1955, the vaccine was released for use in the U.S., and in the following years the incidence of polio fell from 18 cases per 100,000 people to less than 2 per 100,000.

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Why do these animals hibernate?
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