AUGUST 26/ELUL 13

1827:

Czar Nicholas I of Russia issued the Cantonist Decrees. Jewish communities had to supply 4 “recruits” for every 1,000 people who were forcibly conscripted at age 18 for 25 (!) years. By the time the decree ended in 1856, over 60,000 Jews were torn away from their families, half of whom converted to Christianity.

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1882:

Birthday of James Franck, German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics “for the discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom.” Though Franck participated in the Manhattan Project, he also compiled the Franck Report, which recommended not using atomic bombs on the Japanese cities without warning.

1906:

Birthday of Albert Sabin (Abram Saperstejn), developer of the “live” form of the polio vaccine which does not require refrigeration and can be taken on a sugar cube. This development eliminated the need for needles or sterilization facilities, thereby making world-wide immunization possible. Sabin refused to patent his vaccine or profit from it, so that the low price would guarantee a more extensive spread of the treatment. He also developed vaccines for encephalitis and dengue fever.