What is written on your license plate? Do you know why?

When I first time had a car in the United States in the state of New Jersey, the license plate had a legend which said 'Garden State'. I assumed that it could be a reference to the gardens and parks which the state has but, as I now know, my assumption was naive and incorrect. Then when I moved to Texas, the legend on the license plate changed to 'The Lone Star State'. However I didn't think much about it and it didn't arouse much curiosity in me.

But recently when I was travelling to North Carolina the tag on the license plates had me thinking. It mentioned 'First in Flight'. Now this had me thinking. Why was it that every state had a different legend on the license plate and what each of them meant? As usual did some online research and below are the results.

The story of Insulin - the first genetically engineered therapeutic agent

The importance of insulin cannot be overstated to any person who is himself a diabetes patient or has a family member suffering from that. And it's lifesaving value cannot be attributed to the price tag. India is often called the diabetes capital of the world with about 9% of its population suffering from the ailment. India has more than 70 million adult diabetes patients and some studies indicate diabetes reaching the scale of a potential epidemic in India.

Diabetes results when our pancreas don't produce the insulin hormone (Type 1 Diabetes) or if the produced hormone doesn't function in the expected manner (Type 2 Diabetes). To counter these situations today we have externally synthesized insulin shots which can be taken to supplement body's need for the hormone. However this was not achieved over night.

How was life of a diabetic patient before insulin was discovered? Considering the fact that even in 2015 we had 1.6 million deaths directly attributed to diabetes, it can easily be understood the importance of insulin. Before the discovery of insulin shots, the only known way to treat diabetic patients was to put them on a low calorie diet. However, that often led to death by starvation. Children diagnosed with diabetes rarely lived; more than 80% died within 10 years of first detection. Having Type 1 Diabetes was effectively a death sentence.

The discovery of bio-synthetic insulin currently in use is a process which took more than 100 years to achieve its ultimate objective. It contains years of hard work and toil from hundreds of researchers working across the world. As many as 4 Nobel prizes were awarded for work directly related to discovery of insulin and many more with indirect association.

The famous Cattle Drive Sculptures at Pioneer Plaza, Dallas

Texas is famous for it's long horn cattles first introduced to the New World by early European settlers. Texas has a long tradition of these cattles being driven from the south to railroads and business centers in the north. Shawnee Trail was the Eastern most and earliest of these trails which passed through the current area of Dallas, Austin and Waco. Drovers used to drive hundreds of cattles collected from this area along the trail to northern rail heads. Shawnee Trail was in use before and after the American Civil War but gradually declined because of protests from farmers of the territory through which the trail passed. Later on Friday other trails to the west developed and Shawnee Trail was gradually closed down.

A trip to Frisco Heritage Museum - Glimpses into the History of Frisco

Frisco is one of the many cities in the Dallas Fort-Worth Area and is one the fastest growing ones. We recently visited the Frisco Heritage Museum and having gone through some of the artifacts over there followed by some reading over internet could well appreciate the fact that Frisco's history dates back more than 150 years. And railways has got a central to play in this history.

The early settlers came down following the Preston Trail, current Preston Road, and settled in the area around 1840s. The first community to be formed was called Lebanon as some of the settlers had their roads in Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1902 a line of the St. Louis - San Francisco railroad was built through the area and they had a watering stop for the steam engine around 4 miles west of where the community was setup initially. Many of the Lebanon community moved to around this new location. The dwellers of this new town called it Frisco City after the name of railway line; later shortened to Frisco. The city even derives it's current coat of arms from the logo of St. Louis - San Francisco railroad. The Frisco Heritage Museum preserves a part of that history. It is a nice small museum where you could spend couple of hours browsing through Frisco's history.

Jachymov's unique place in the history of science

While reading books at times you come across anecdotes which turn out to be quite interesting. And your mind wants to look out for more. You search internet, read through articles and skim through Wikipedia to investigate further.
I encountered one such interesting anecdote while reading this book on the origins of quantum physics.

A visit to Fort Worth Zoo, Texas

Forth Worth Zoo is a 64 acre zoological garden situated in Fort Worth, Texas. Opened in 1909 the zoo is more than 100 years old now. It is the second largest zoo in the DFW area just behind Dallas Zoo. We recently visited the zoo and here are some pictures of the Zoo inmates. It is definitely worth a day's visit if you are in town. Children would specially find it enjoyable.

There are many more animals in the zoo apart from the ones captured below. But for rest of them the pictures available are not of good quality. All pictures are taken by the writer using Huawei Honor 4x.