On this day in ...... 1869 (140 years ago today), at the 2d hour of the afternoon at Promontory Summit, Utah, a golden spike was driven into a rail, marking the completion of the 1st transcontinental railroad in the United States. Built in large part, as we've posted, by immigrants from China and Ireland (left) and other European countries, as well as freed former slaves and veterans of the Civil War, the railroad connected the East and West Coasts of the ever-growing country. (photo credit)
... 1946, Dr. Biruté Galdikas (below right) was born in Wiesbaden, Germany. She would grow up in Canada, and then earn a Ph.D. in anthropology frm the University of California at Los Angeles.
She, along with Dian Fossey (transnational foremother of IntLawGrrls' guest/alumna Annecoos Wiersema) and Jane Goodall -- known together as the "angels" of their mentor, paleontologist Louis Leakey -- were among the most renowned researchers of the great apes. (photo credit) Galdikas is an expert in primatology, and has spent much of her life studying the endangered orangutan that inhabit the tropical rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra, both islands of Indonesia. She has written a memoir, Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo (1996).
