October 28th

Bill Gates, the former resident of Albuquerque, is 60 today.

Julia Roberts is 48 today.

The developer of the first polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk was born on this date in 1914.

He created the vaccine at the height of a polio epidemic in the mid-1950s, when parents were so worried about their children that they kept them home from swimming pools in the summer. Salk’s discovery was that a vaccine could be developed from a dead virus, and he tested the vaccine on himself, his family, and the staff of his laboratory to prove it was safe. The vaccine was finally released to the public in 1955, and the number of people infected by polio went down from more than 10,000 a year to fewer than 100. Salk was declared a national hero.

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

If like I you were around for the 1950s polio scare, you’d realize what ignorant fools today’s anti-vaxxers are.