According to the historian Davis Logsdon, who has been sifting through mounds of photographic evidence at the University of Minnesota, the nation apparently once held the view that investing in science and even math could yield accomplishments that would be a source of national pride.

While Logsdon has not developed a complete theory to explain the United States' pro-science stance during that era, he attributes some of it to the liberal views of the President at that time, Richard M. Nixon.

The news: A game-changing condom that kills almost all sexually transmitted infections, including herpes, HIV and HPV is one step closer to hitting the market. The Australian market, that is.

Ansell, the Australian prophylactic company, will manufacture a condom laced with the antimicrobial VivaGel lubricant. Australia's version of the Food and Drug Administration, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, gave the product a Conformity Assessment Certification, meaning that it could be on the market within months. The gel is proven effective in killing 99.9% of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

There once were two planets, new to the galaxy and inexperienced in life. Like fraternal twins, they were born at the same time, about four and a half billion years ago, and took roughly the same shape. Both were blistered with volcanoes and etched with watercourses; both circled the same yellow dwarf star—close enough to be warmed by it, but not so close as to be blasted to a cinder. Had an alien astronomer swivelled his telescope toward them in those days, he might have found them equally promising—nurseries in the making. They were large enough to hold their gases close, swaddling themselves in atmosphere; small enough to stay solid, never swelling into gaseous giants. They were "Goldilocks planets," our own astronomers would say: just right for life.