TRIVIA NEWSFRONT

• Martin Couney was born in 1869 in Poland. He was interested in medicine, and studied under Dr. Pierre Budin, who was France’s only expert in saving premature babies. Budin promoted the use of the world’s first incubators, and asked Couney to display them at the 1896 World’s Fair in Berlin. Couney told Budin that they would attract more attention if the incubators contained actual premature babies.

• The display, called “Kinderbrutanstalt,” meaning “child hatchery,” drew great interest, allowing Couney to earn enough to pay for his passage to the U.S. and bring the incubators with him. He was in his mid-twenties at the time.

• In America, he displayed the incubators with babies at Expos and Fairs before settling permanently at Coney Island, amid the roller coasters and hot dog stands. While definitely not a clinical setting, Couney knew it was a high-traffic area producing thousands of curious visitors each day, and there he stayed.

• For 25¢ people got a tour of his immaculate miniature hospital. A guide explained that coils heated from a boiler kept each incubator at the desired temperature using a thermostat, and the air was purified and exchanged every five seconds. Nurses on duty were encouraged to pick the babies up and cuddle them as often as possible, contrary to modern hospital rules which thought that touching babies might lead to infection. Couney believed that breast milk was superior and hired a number of wet nurses, as well as chefs to keep everyone healthy. He searched area hospitals for “preemie” babies to fill his incubators, sending his own ambulance to collect and transport them.

• Couney set up a second exhibit at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1933. Here he met wellknown pediatrician Dr. Hess, convincing him of the value of incubators. Hess helped turn the tide by endorsing the incubators. Pediatricians soon began collaborating with Couney.

• During the World’s Fair, some 1,250,000 people visited the incubator exhibition. When the police arrested fan dancer Sally Rand, whose show was next to Couney’s display, she complained that the babies wore fewer clothes than she did.

• Because of the sideshow setting in which he operated, Couney’s career was controversial. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children repeatedly accused Couney of exploiting and endangering the babies. None of the complaints was sustained, and by the 1930s, Couney was finally being taken seriously as a medical pioneer.

• The smallest baby Couney handled weighed a pound and a half (.7 kg). At one point, he had four infants weighing less than two pounds (.9 kg); all of which lived. Over the course of his nearly 50-year career, Couney took in around 8,000 babies, of whom about 85 percent survived.

• When Dr. Couney’s own wife, who had previously been one of his nurses, bore their daughter prematurely, the three-pound (1.4 kg) infant spent the first three months of her life on exhibit in an incubator. She grew up to become a nurse assisting her father.

• When Cornell’s New York Hospital opened the first center for premature infant care in the city, Couney shut down his exhibition forever, retiring in 1943. He died seven years later at the age of 80. Couney himself never attained a medical degree, but was nontheless equally commited to his work. □

1. GEOGRAPHY: Where is Mount Fuji located?

2. MOVIES: What is the material used in Captain America’s shield?

3. MUSIC: Who wrote the lyrics to the 1961 “West Side Story” movie?

4. SCIENCE: Which color has the longest wavelength?

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6. TELEVISION: Who played the leading role in the legal series “Ally McBeal”?

7. AD SLOGANS: Which fast-food chain tells customers that “We have the meats”?

8. LITERATURE: What is the setting for the “Divergent” novel series?

9. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Which animal represents the 2023 Chinese zodiac year?

10. ANIMAL KINGDOM: What is a group of butterflies called?

Answers

1. Japan.

2. Vibranium.

3. Stephen Sondheim.

• Incubators were basically unheard of at hospitals back then. The prevailing belief was that there was no way to save the babies, so it was best to simply let them die. Monitors and IVs did not yet exist. Couney collected all the preemies he could find, regardless of race or economic background. He charged their mothers nothing for their care, financing expenses through the admission fees.

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• Couney hired barkers to stand outside his exhibit to draw customers in. One of the barkers, Archibald Leach, later went into show business under the stage name of Cary Grant.

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Volcanoes: (from page one)

• The reason potatoes grow so well in Idaho today is because Mt. Mazama erupted 6,600 years ago, spreading mineral-rich ash over the entire area. Today Mt. Mazama is known as Crater Lake. When the volcano was exhausted, the empty magma chambers collapsed upon themselves, and the deep volcanic crater filled with water.

• “Magma” is molten rock that’s still underground, while “lava” is molten rock that’s been expelled and is above the surface.

Cataclysmic Eruptions

• On April 5, 1815, the Lieutenant Governor of Java in Indonesia heard what he thought was loud, booming cannon fire coming across the ocean. Thinking a ship might be in distress, he immediately dispatched two ships to search the Java Sea to find out what could have happened. He also ordered a detachment of troops to march into the city just in case rebels were attacking a nearby outpost. The ships found nothing during their search and no rebels appeared in town. Days later news reached Java that the volcanic mountain of Tambora, on an island 750 miles away, had exploded and destroyed itself. The enormous sound had traveled that far.

• The gas and dust from the Tambora explosion soon circled the entire globe, causing extreme weather and unusual cold worldwide. A 19-yearold woman named Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was vacationing in Switzerland that summer. Since the sunshine was blocked making it too cold to go outside to enjoy the mountains, she stayed inside instead and began writing a novel she called “Frankenstein.”

• When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, global temperatures fell by an average of half a degree Fahrenheit. The volcano released some 30 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The highly reflective particles bounced sunlight back into space. The sulfates circulated for about a year before eventually dissipating.

• On August 26, 1883, Mt. Krakatoa erupted in a massive explosion on the coast of Indonesia. It’s thought that an earthquake opened a rift in the side of the volcano which allowed cold sea water to rush into the hot magma chambers. This resulted in a series of cataclysmic eruptions and catastrophes that lasted all day, all night, and into the next day. The blast was equal to 10,000 Hiroshima-size atom bombs, and some 20 times more powerful than the 1981 Mount Saint Helens blast. Sailors at sea more than 60 miles away suffered permanent hearing damage from the intense concussion. It’s said to have been the loudest sound ever heard on Earth in human history.

• In El Salvador, the mountain called Volcan Izalco had been erupting almost constantly for years. The government decided money could be made by opening the place to tourists. So they declared it a national park, paved a road, built a hotel, a bar, and a restaurant, and announced the grand opening. As the ribbons were being cut, the volcano stopped erupting. It has been dormant ever since.

Fire And Ice

• In 1973, the Helgafell volcano off the coast of Iceland began erupting. The 5,300 residents of the island were evacuated, but 300 determined people stayed to try to save the town from the slowly advancing lava. The huge 120-foottall, 1,000-foot-wide wall of creeping lava threatened to completely seal off the town’s only harbor, ruining many industries that depended on access to the ocean, and destroying the town’s commercial value.

• In desperation, their fire engines pumped water on the advancing flow. Small tongues of lava solidified under the steady barrage of water, and a small dam built up, slowing the flow. Then a sand dredger with Iceland’s most powerful pumps started spewing tons of sea water onto the flow. Workers found that by piping the water to a point behind the flow’s front, a series of small dams formed internal barriers in the flow. Plastic pipes laid on top of the hot rock would not melt as long as the cold seawater continued to flow through them.

• 19 miles of pipes and 43 pumps were used to continuously pump water for nearly four months straight. Finally the volcano settled

Volcanoes: Turn to page 15

Quiz Bits

1. On average, how many volcanic explosions occur worldwide in a year?

2. How many people have been killed by volcanoes in Hawaii, which has the most active volcanoes in the world?

(Answers page 16)

2.What