This week in Cornell history


Courtesy of Aerofiles
1915 biplane designed by Thomas Brothers Co.

Feb. 25, 1915 A large biplane soars over campus and the lake almost every day, according to the Cornell Alumni News. The Thomas Brothers Co. had recently completed the military plane at their Ithaca factory and were testing it, using the frozen surface of Cayuga Lake for take offs and landings. The Alumni News reported that "the sight of a flying machine in the air over Ithaca is not yet so common but students on the campus stand and gaze."

Feb. 24, 1871 A letter to the editor in The Cornell Era, a student weekly, calls for students to choose a "college color." "Our alma mater is certainly up to some of her older sisters in many things; why should she be lacking in this? Dartmouth having chosen the appropriate color of green we are deprived of that, but we certainly should be able to select [a color]. We need it for our boat-clubs, baseball suits, college badges, marshals and parades."

Feb. 22, 2002 For the first time, biologists can estimate how many roots a plant has underground just by looking at its stems and leaves, regardless of species or habitat, thanks to research by Cornell professors and their colleagues. Their article in Science shows for the first time that the mass of a plant's leaves and stems - from weeds in the desert to tropical trees - is proportionally scaled to that of its roots in a mathematically predictable way.