April 24 in History: Quantum Leaps, Brilliant Birthdays, and Unbelievable Firsts

On April twenty-fourth, 1914, two physicists named James Franck and Gustav Hertz presented an experiment that proved the universe is fundamentally… lumpy. Not smooth and continuous, but built out of discrete, indivisible packets of energy. They zapped electrons through mercury vapor and showed that atoms could only absorb energy in specific, quantized amounts. It was a pillar of a new, strange physics, and a century later, we are just now beginning to build the world it promised. Yesterday, we talked about endings and beginnings colliding on April twenty-third.

And today, April twenty-fourth, feels like that same energy turned up to eleven. It’s a day of staggering contrasts. It’s a day that holds one of the foundational moments of quantum mechanics, the birth of cultural titans, and the beginning of a genocide that still casts a long shadow. Looking back from what we know now, the twenty-fourth of April isn't just a date on the calendar. It’s a convergence. A day where the past, present, and future seem to be happening all at once. Let’s start with that lumpy universe. The Franck-Hertz experiment was beautiful in its simplicity.

It was one of the first direct, experimental proofs of quantum theory. Before that, the idea of quantized energy levels was just that — an idea, proposed by people like Max Planck and Niels Bohr to make the math work out. But Franck and Hertz gave it physical reality. They showed that an atom is like a vending machine that only accepts exact change. You can’t give it a little less or a little more energy; it’s all or nothing. This discovery won them the Nobel Prize in 1925, and it laid the groundwork for… well, for everything. For lasers, for transistors, for the entire digital age.

And now, one hundred and twelve years later, it’s the reason for the news that broke just yesterday. Cisco announced their Universal Quantum Switch. A prototype, yes, but a prototype that does something absolutely critical. It routes quantum information between different kinds of quantum systems, at room temperature, over standard fiber. This has been one of the biggest roadblocks to a quantum internet. It’s like inventing a universal translator for languages that haven’t been fully discovered yet. And the physics that makes it possible… it all goes back to that 1914 experiment.

To understanding that information, at its most fundamental level, is lumpy. It exists in discrete quantum states. What was a baffling laboratory curiosity in 1914 is, in 2026, the blueprint for the next communications revolution. We’re finally building the machines that think in the language Franck and Hertz first overheard. But the same day that gave us a new way to see the universe also gave us new ways to see ourselves. Because April twenty-fourth is also the birthday of two women who completely reshaped the landscape of performance. Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine.

Born in 1942 and 1934, respectively. It's almost unfair to the calendar to have both of them arrive on the same day. Think about it. Shirley MacLaine wins an Oscar for Terms of Endearment, writes books about spirituality that send a whole generation searching for answers, and becomes this emblem of fierce, unapologetic intelligence. She wasn’t just an actress; she was a seeker, and she invited everyone along for the ride. Then you have Barbra Streisand. What is there to even say? She looks at the entertainment industry, which has a very specific idea of what a female star should look and sound like, and she just… ignores it.

Completely. She uses that once-in-a-civilization voice to become one of the best-selling artists of all time. She directs her own films, wins every award imaginable — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony — and becomes a powerhouse producer and activist. These weren't just careers. They were statements. They were arguments for a new kind of stardom, one based on overwhelming talent and a refusal to be put in a box. The world we live in now, where artists are expected to have a point of view, to have an identity beyond the roles they play… Streisand and MacLaine helped build that world.

They didn't just entertain us. They expanded the definition of what a woman on screen, or on stage, or in the director's chair, was allowed to be. And here is where the day turns. Because the same twenty-four hours that hold the seeds of our quantum future and the birth of cultural icons… also holds one of history’s deepest wounds. On April twenty-fourth, 1915, one year after Franck and Hertz revealed a new physical law, the leaders of the Ottoman Empire set in motion a plan to break a human law. On that day, known as Red Sunday, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, politicians, and community leaders in Constantinople were arrested.

They were deported, and most of them were murdered. This was not random violence. It was the deliberate first step in a systematic, organized campaign of extermination. The "decapitation," as historians call it. By removing the leadership, the Ottoman authorities intended to leave the Armenian population helpless and without a voice. What followed was the forced displacement, the death marches into the Syrian desert, the mass killings… the deaths of an estimated one-point-five million people. It was the first genocide of the twentieth century. For decades, the world struggled with how to name what happened.

The word "genocide" itself hadn't even been coined yet. It would take a lawyer named Raphael Lemkin, haunted by the story of the Armenians, to create the term in the 1940s. And the echoes are terrifyingly present. Just this year, Michigan’s Governor Whitmer issued a proclamation for the Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. And she drew a direct line from 1915 to the violence we saw in Nagorno-Karabagh in 2020. She said, "The failure to learn from the past allows history to repeat itself." That is the historian’s burden, and the historian's purpose.

To insist that we look. To insist that we remember. Because history isn’t a story that’s over. It’s a force that is still acting on us. The events of 1915 are not confined to the past. They are present in the political map of the Middle East. They are present in the ongoing struggle for recognition and justice. They are present in the very legal frameworks we use to try and prevent such horrors from ever happening again. To remember April twenty-fourth, 1915, is not about dwelling on a tragedy. It is an act of vigilance. It is an acknowledgment that civilization is fragile, and that the same darkness that descended over a century ago requires our constant, active opposition today.

So what do we do with a day like this? A day that gives us quantum physics, and Barbra Streisand, and a genocide. It feels like a paradox. A cosmic joke, almost. But maybe it’s not. Maybe this is what history actually is. It’s not a neat timeline of progress. It’s… everything, all at once. It’s messy and contradictory and deeply, profoundly human. On a single rotation of the Earth, we can find the spark of a technological revolution, the birth of artists who teach us how to feel, and a crime so vast it requires a new word to describe it. One day holds the highest aspirations of the human mind and the deepest failures of the human heart.

Looking back, we see that the real lesson of April twenty-fourth isn't about any single event. It’s about the capacity of a single day to contain multitudes. It’s a reminder that the world is never just one thing. It is always, simultaneously, a place of wonder and a place of warning. Our job is not to pick one and ignore the other. Our job is to hold the full, complicated, and often painful truth of it all. The past is not a foreign country. It’s the soil beneath our feet, nourishing the roots of the world we are building, and burying the bones of the world we failed to save.