50, 100 and 150 Years Ago; July 2000; Scientific American Magazine; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

LANDMARK TOBACCO REPORT-"Tobacco has often been suspected of complicity in the great increase in lung cancer since 1900. But the evidence has been fragmentary and conflicting. A well-documented report in the Journal of the American Medical Association presents what appears to be the strongest evidence thus far that smoking may cause cancer. Ernest L. Wynder and Evarts A. Graham of the Washington University School of Medicine found in a national survey that among 605 men with cancer of the lung, 96.5 per cent had smoked at least 10 cigarettes a day for many years; whereas in the general male hospital population without cancer only 73. 7 per cent were regular smokers."

PLUTO-"The outermost planet of the solar system has a mass 10 times smaller than hitherto supposed, according to measurements made by Gerard P. Kuiper of Yerkes Observatory, using the 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain. On the basis of deviations in the path of the planet Neptune, supposedly caused by Pluto's gravitational attraction, it used to be estimated that Pluto's mass was approximately that of the earth. Kuiper was the first human being to see the planet as anything more than a pinpoint of light. He calculated that Pluto's diameter is 3,600 miles, and its mass is one tenth of the earth's. It leaves unsolved the mystery of Neptune's perturbations, which are too great to be accounted for by so small a planet as Pluto."