This Week in Western Civilization: March 9-15

0:00Welcome to this week in Western Civilization on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Olivia Finch, bringing you snapshots of history in context. Hello everyone. Today we'll be covering one important birth, one important death, and one notable event that happened between March 8th and March 14th in Western Civ. On March 14th, 1879, German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein was born in Olm-Vertemberg, Germany. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, dealing with space-time and gravity, and the mass energy equivalence formula equation E equals MC squared, saying that an object's energy equals its mass times the speed of light squared. It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are put at different

1:01manifestations of the same thing. On March 10th, 1913, American abolitionist and suffragette Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia at the age of either 90 or 91 in the Harriet Tubman home for the aged in Auburn, New York, but she founded to fulfill her dream of opening a home for poor and elderly African Americans. Tubman is best known for escaping from slavery during the Civil War, and either directly helping or providing instructions for escape to up to 130 other former slaves. In her later years after the end of the Civil War, she also traveled to speak in favor of women's right to vote. I've heard Uncle Tom's cabin read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint. What slavery is is I have seen it in the far south. I've seen the real thing, and I don't want to see it on no stage in no theater.

2:06On March 14th, 1794, American inventor Eli Whitney was granted a patent for his invention the cotton gin, one of the key inventions of the industrial revolution. This device would separate the fibers of cotton blossoms from their seeds far more expeditiously than by hand, with the combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks. Oh, things were rotten in the land of cotton until Whitney made the cotton gin. Now, old times there will soon be forgotten for it in the work of a hundred man. You've been listening to this week in Western Civilization, with Olivia Finch on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll see you next week.