As humans, we tend to get pretty boastful about our status on this earth. We put people on the moon, we treat and cure diseases, we invent weapons just in case we want to blow each other into oblivion one day. Clearly, it is our enormous brain power that sets us apart from the pack - or is it? Are we that much smarter than other animals?

A program airing tomorrow night on PBS entitled “Ape Genius” explores that notion, offering a challenge to our cranial cockiness. The show investigates all the different ways our ape cousins - Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orangutans and Bonobos - have demonstrated amazing intelligence, both in the wild and in captivity and, judging by the preview, you should prepare to be humbled. There’s the chimpanzee group just chilling in a pond after a busy day of hunting with homemade spears and the bonobo who can “talk”, among others.

“Ape Genuis” couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. Just recently, gorillas were caught doing very human things in the Republic of Congo, a few years after studies confirmed they also use tools. All this from an ape thought to be “less human” than chimpanzees, even. Clearly, there are fewer differences between us and the dwindling ape species of Africa than once thought, but perhaps what is more interesting is that even as we lose ticks in the column of distinctly human traits, we’re still separated from apes by an intelligence gulf miles wide created by just a few tiny dial-turns in our DNA. So what DOES make us human?

Some people don’t even live to 63. That’s how many years Hyman Rickover served in the US Navy (the longest stretch of active service in US military history), before retiring at the ripe old age of 81 in 1982. Saturday the 27th would have marked his 106th Birthday. So why do we toast him, besides for his incredible employee-of-the-century dedication?

Because without Mr. Rickover, there would be no Harrison Ford submarine thriller “K-19: The Widowmaker.” Rickover was the “Father of the nuclear Navy,” responsible for putting the first nuclear-powered submarines into action and scaring the pants off the Russians at the height of the Cold War. Convinced that nuclear reactors were the way of the naval future, he spearheaded the launch of the USS Nautilus in 1955 and personally oversaw the development of the US Naval reactor program, as well as the first nuclear power plants established on dry land. Rickover’s ships had an examplary safety record, unlike the Russians (see Harrison Ford reference, above) and other competitors.

Today, nuclear power generates almost 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to the US Census Bureau.

This week 15 years ago, scientists took a big step in understanding some of the driving forces of everyday weather on earth by heading into space. A satellite launched from the space shuttle Discovery identified huge windstorms in the upper atmosphere, some clocked at up to 200 miles an hour, flowing in masses 6,000 miles wide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Not to be outdone, the highest wind gust ever recorded on the earth’s surface gusted at an amazing 231 miles an hour. That was in April, 1934, at the peak of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, making those “This Car Climbed Mount Washington” bumper stickers sound significantly more impressive.

Among U.S. cities, the highest annual average winds are not, as you might expect, in Chicago, but in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at almost 13 miles an hour, the Census Bureau affirms.

Find out what else happened on this day in history.

Author’s Note: Please excuse the non-sciency (technical term) angle of this post. Just something I thought was worth noting here regardless. And Happy Halloween all…keep safe!

Eleven years ago today, exactly at this hour, I was biting my fingernails into non-existence. October 30, 1995 was the night Quebeckers (a largely French-speaking province within which I am considered a minority) were deciding whether we wanted to split from Canada and form our own nation. The ‘No’ side prevailed–fortunately, from my perspective–by a sliver tinier than the bits I’d just chewed off: 50.5% to 49.5%.

The point of this story, beyond the Coles Notes history lesson, is what I remember happening on October 31. Absolutely nothing. Despite the contentious vote, there were no riots. There was no violence. Quebeckers, English and French, got back to doing what we usually do that time of year: Trick or Treating, watching hockey and complaining about politics over beers at the pub.

I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if we’d lived somewhere else. Maybe you do too. What if, after the debacle that was the 2000 Presidential election (and, come to think of it, the one in 2004 too), people responded the way they have recently in Somalia or Nepal?

My point is: after these upcoming midterm elections, be grateful whether your candidate wins or loses. Two weeks later, your Thanksgiving turkey will taste the same, the football games will be played as scheduled and you’ll probably complain about politics over beers at the pub too (some things are universal).

The way history seems to work is that, ten or eleven years down the road, you won’t really remember who won or lost, just whether life went on the same.

When some major world event happens - a natural disaster, terrorist attack, political maneuvering - I always wonder how long it will take before that moment becomes “history”. Not in the strict timeline sense, but in the way that the event, at some intangible tipping point, ceases being fresh and newsworthy and drifts into the sterile zone of TV retrospectives, in-depth book analyses and (my personal favorite) history class lectures.

There is no need to discuss the whos and whats of today’s somber anniversary - you already know the facts down to their last detail. What I want to know is when will 9/11 become “the past”? In 2001, my guess was later rather than sooner, and most other journalists tended to agree. But now, five years later, there are stirrings: some are ambivalent about commemorating the day, others are stripping away at the previously untouchable varnish of its heroes, still others are disillusioned with what unfurled after America was attacked. On all fronts, people seem less afraid to look at 9/11 with a critical eye, dissect what happened and how it’s changed the country and the world, for better or for worse.

It’s still early in the game, but I bet the 9/11 survey courses will start popping up at American universities after this fifth anniversary has faded from view.

Our nation’s oil addiction - is Uncle Billy Smith to blame?

Much is being written of late about the nation’s dependency on oil and the daily need to fuel our cars, trucks, railroad locomotives, ships and jetliners. Well, it all goes back to this day in 1859, when Uncle Billy Smith saw a dark film floating on the water of a shaft he was digging near Titusville, Pennsylvania. Soon, the nation’s first commercial oil well was pumping out crude oil.

Today, there are 520,000 oil wells in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau, producing more than 2-billion barrels of crude oil a year. But to meet our needs, we still need to import over 3.5-billion additional barrels annually, the majority of which comes from Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Department of Energy says. That means that every day, Americans use more than 15-million barrels of petroleum products. Oil addits, indeed. One has to wonder what date will bookend this one, as scientists are already pondering just how long the dwindling supplies will last.

Thanks, Uncle Billy…I think.

A few months back I wrote a story about the unveiling of an early 15th-century map that, some historians claim, seems to support the notion that the Chinese were the first explorers to reach the New World. Many experts wrote the map off as a fraud and the theory’s main supporter, Gavin Menzies, as a bit of a kook. Regardless of the ideas he presented in his book “1421: The Year China Discovered America”, a lot of the criticism lobbed at Menzies had to do with his less-than-impressive credentials as an amateur historian.

Enter Paul Chiasson, a one time professor of historical architecture at Yale and real, live academic. Looks like Menzies has at least one friend in high places.

Currently milling on some bestseller lists, Chiasson’s recent book entitled “The Island of Seven Cities” describes his discovery of a wall and road remnants on his native Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Chiasson claims the ruins predate John Cabot’s 1497 “discovery” of the island and were, in fact, leftovers from a once-thriving Chinese settlement.

Are these the first murmurs of a historical movement, I wonder, or is thinking the Chinese got here first just the latest “trend” that will eventually trickle away into oblivion (see: New World, Italian discovery of; New World, Polynesian discovery of…etc.)??

One of the most notorious criminals in U.S. history — John Dillinger — was killed on this day in 1934, in a shootout with FBI agents outside the Biograph movie theater in Chicago. His trail of bank robberies, murders and jail escapes throughout the Midwest had made Dillinger the first official “public enemy number one.”

The events of that hot July night have been described as the beginning of the end of the era of famous gangsters. Today, there are more than 400,000 robberies a year across the U.S., including 10,000 bank robberies, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Can you name any one of those? And though Dillinger may have been able to make a living from his gun-toting ways, turns out crime doesn’t pay any longer. The average bank robbery nets only some 4,800 dollars, says the Census Bureau.

What else happened today?

The course of commercial aviation witnessed a major change on this day in 1954, when the prototype of the nation’s first production jetliner, the Boeing 707, lifted off a runway near Seattle for its maiden flight. The 707 quickly replaced propellor-driven aircraft and served both airlines and the military for many decades, logging 30 million flying hours and carrying more than half-a-million passengers in its many passenger and cargo versions by the time its production ceased, says the U.S. Census Bureau.  

Could those pioneering folks at Boeing have been able to predict what was to come? Now, jet airliners take off nearly 31,000 times a day, carrying close to 2 million passengers to their destinations around the country, according to the Census Bureau. Super-jumbo planes like the beleaguered Airbus 380–with seating for over 550 and capable of flying Chicago to Sydney non-stop–have taken over the skies, alongside debates over everything from airline food to security measures against terrorism. Most airlines are cramming more and more passengers into tighter spaces (even crassly proposing to make a few stand) while, ironically, at the same the demand for super-luxury in the world of commercial flight has spurred the creation of uber-comfy (and expensive) sections offering a select few lucky passengers more room than some New York City apartments.

So what’s next? Oh, right: commercial space travel.

The residents of Bellfontaine, Ohio, had a lot to talk about this week in 1891 — an eight-foot wide section of Main Street, where horses were hitched, had just been paved with concrete by engineer George Bartholomew. This was the first use of concrete as a road surface in North America, says the U.S. Census Bureau. This experimental section not only proved to be sturdy, it was in use for more than a century and is a historical site today.

The country was a different place back then: when the road in Bellfontaine was paved, America moved by horse and buggy, and just about every road in the nation was unpaved. Now, there are nearly four million miles of roads crisscrossing the country, including more than 46,000 miles of interstate highway, according to the Census Bureau.

Before all you road warriors give a shout out to Mr. Bartholomew for providing a smooth path home from work tonight, remember you can thank him for pot holes and road rage too.

What else happened on July 10s of old? Find out here.