First cooking school opens

August 23, 1902

ON this day, pioneering cookbook author Fannie Farmer, opens Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston.

Fannie revolutionised the way Americans prepare food by supporting the use of standardised measurements in recipes.

In addition to teaching women about cooking, Farmer later educated medical professionals about the importance of proper nutrition for the sick.

In 1896, she published her first cookbook, The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, which included a wide range of straightforward recipes along with information on cooking and sanitation techniques, household management and nutrition, and which soon became a bestseller by introducing a novel culinary concept at the time.

Voyager reaches Neptune

August 25 1989

ON this day, the unmanned Voyager 2 spacecraft sent back the first close-up pictures of Neptune and its satellites.

Neptune is over two billion miles from Earth — the most distant planet in our Solar System.

Scientists at Mission Control in Florida called it the “culmination of the greatest journey of exploration this century”. Voyager 2 had already sent back pictures and information from Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.

But its trip to Neptune provided the most spectacular so far. The pictures showed a storm, the size of Earth, hovering over Neptune and a clear blue hue of Neptune that is mainly the planet’s methane atmosphere. Six new moons were also identified.

Man gets ‘bionic’ heart

August 26, 1994

THIS day, a man was given the world’s first battery-operated heart in a pioneering operation in Britain.

The patient, an unnamed 62-year-old from the south of England was operated at the Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire. He had only months to live when doctors offered him the chance of being tested for the new titanium and plastic device, manufactured in America.

Known as the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), it was not a replacement for the human heart. It was essentially an electrical pump which did most of the work of the pumping chamber of the heart, the left ventricle.

During the four-hour operation, the LVAD was placed in the wall of the man’s abdomen and connected to his heart. The pump was powered by a battery pack which the patient had to wear on his belt.