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Friday, October 9th. On this date in 1873, a sturdy and somber-looking building opened its doors to admit 17 long-term residents. Then it promptly closed and locked those doors. With the opening of the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls in Indianapolis, the country had its first maximum-security penitentiary built for and managed by women. Formerly, female convicts were imprisoned in male facilities where they suffered abuse from male guards and inmates. The reformatory remains locked for business to …

For many generations, weekday mornings have meant a routine of preparation, and then facing an ever-lengthening round-trip commute to work. However, a small but growing number of Americans are not in that situation — and that’s why tomorrow begins National Work From Home Week. Available mostly to so-called white-collar occupations, employers all over the country have found that technology has enabled grateful and motivated employees to perform necessary work without their physical presence in an office setting. There are more …

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” This quote is widely attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but whatever the source, many people agree with the sentiment. One advance in such moral progress occurred on this date in 1868, when the first collegiate veterinary department in the U.S. began its instruction at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The country’s first veterinary doctorate was awarded in 1876 to Daniel Salmon, …

October is a special month in the history of handling data. In a month that holds the anniversaries of the first adding machine and the tentative birth of the Internet, October is also when the first all-electronic calculations were performed on an experimental computer. John Vincent Atanasoff was an associate professor in mathematics and physics at Iowa State College. Beginning in September 1939 with a $650 grant from the school, and with the help of a top engineering student, he …

National Hispanic Heritage Month continues, and much media prominence given to this 55 million-strong community centers on the growing heft of the Hispanic vote in elections. Already 17 percent of America’s population, it is projected to number nearly 129 million by the year 2060. In the 2012 election, over 11 million Hispanics, or 48 percent of those eligible, cast ballots. This is a decline from 2008, when just less than 50 percent of eligible Hispanics voted. But the 2012 figure …