The second meteor shower in as many weeks will dazzle the eyes of stargazers around the globe, but the light show will be battling against the glow of a nearly full moon when it reaches its peak.
The Eta Aquarids is an annual meteor shower in early May, and this year, reaches its climax on Monday night and the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday morning.
The city went on an international contest to select the design for Boston’s “New City Hall.” After receiving a total of 256 entries, a panel of judges picked the winning design, a collaboration between Gerhard Kallmann, Noel McKinnell and Edward Knowles, in May 1962.
Admirers of the Swiss-French architect known as Le Corbusier and his modernist designs, such as La Tourette monastery in France, the trio’s exposed concrete, nine-story design — with the City Council Chamber and Mayor’s Office both projecting out over the plaza — was constructed almost exactly according to plan, said Foley, “which is pretty rare.” In their decision, the judges raved about their “daring yet classical architectural statement” that went above and beyond their criteria for the project and clearly defined “the areas of heavy public contact and the areas devoted to ceremonial functions.”
“Kallmann, McKinnell, and Knowles did have an idea that this would be a very democratic building,” Pasnik said. “They saw it as open. There’s very large columns that allow you to enter into the building in multiple ways. It doesn’t work like that anymore, but that was the original idea of that.”
Upgrades to the lighting and interior of the historic Boston City Hall will make it a landmark for generations to come. Buildings like Boston City Hall aren't being built any more. While the style had fallen out of popularity in recent decades, it's important to preserve our history, because they don't make buildings like it anymore.
An unusually chilly spring is about to turn even more shocking as cold air, moisture and a visit from the polar vortex team up to trigger way out-of-season conditions for mid-May across portions of the Northeast. AccuWeather meteorologists anticipate the upcoming pattern to bring snow that defies the norms for so late in the season and freezing conditions.
The weather late this week to this weekend and beyond may seem unreal and downright nasty after the warmest weekend of the season so far. After the temperature in New York City failed to climb to 70 degrees Fahrenheit during April for the first time in 80 years, since 1940, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), the high soared to 80 on Sunday.
Saturday's high is normally 67 degrees. The mercury will struggle to break 46 degrees that day. That is 19 degrees below normal. It was colder in 1977 though, when the mercury only reached 43 degrees.
Fifty years ago today, the Ohio National Guard fired on Kent State University students as they protested against the Vietnam War. Four students were killed. Nine were injured. The incident on May 4, 1970, now known as the Kent State massacre, dramatically changed the nation.
It prompted a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to shut down. Life magazine and Newsweek dedicated cover stories to the incident. The New York Times famously showcased the now-iconic photograph of a young woman screaming as she knelt over the body of a Kent State student.The shootings turned the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War, and some political officials even argued that it played a role in the downfall of the Nixon administration. Today, the incident symbolizes the political and social divides brought on by the Vietnam War.
New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut are all states where $600 has relatively lower purchasing power and where COVID-19 has had the largest impact, from a public health and/or economic perspective. Meanwhile, other states severely hit by the pandemic reap a much higher purchasing power from $600, such as Ohio, Louisiana, Georgia, and Michigan. To further explore this discrepancy, let's compare Ohio and New York, the states from the table where $600 has the highest and lowest purchasing power, respectively. UI claimants in Ohio experience a 30 percent larger benefit from their UI supplement than claimants in New York. Take two workers who became eligible to receive UI benefits the first week of April4 and who will remain unemployed until July 31. Over the course of these four months (18 weeks) the purchasing power of an Ohio claimant's total UI supplements5 would equal $12,150 ($675 x 18), while that of a New York claimant's would equal $9,324 ($518 x 18), a difference of $2,826, which is over four times the nominal weekly amount of $600.
This comparison raises the question of whether the equal distribution of the $600 per week UI supplement is an equitable distribution across states. It raises the same question in response to the $1,200 relief checks being distributed to many households across the United States. Certainly, anyone receiving financial aid will be better off than they would be without it; but the argument could be made that individuals who face higher prices for housing, food, and other essentials should receive higher UI supplements, particularly those who face a "double jeopardy" with regard to higher prices and more severe pandemic conditions.
However, setting the uniform $600 per week supplement also has its advantages. First, the constant nominal amount of $600 invokes the notion that this is a fair policy; all UI claimants are receiving the exact same amount. Additionally, having a flat supplement amount likely expedites the transfer of benefits to unemployed workers, many of whom need the aid as soon as possible.6 Moreover, the CARES Act is a large and detailed piece of legislation that needed to be passed quickly to provide relief to many factions of the economy; setting the UI supplement to a uniform amount may have mitigated debate surrounding the appropriate amount from region to region, enabling the act to be passed in short order.