IN: Casablancas was born in New York City to business mogul John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management, and Jeanette Christiansen, a Danish former model and Miss Denmark (1965). When Casablancas was eight, his parents divorced. He once stated that he wanted to be closer to his father, and this, "translated into teenage rebelliousness." His mother subsequently married painter Sam Adoquei.

Casablancas met guitarist Nick Valensi and drummer Fab Moretti and played together at the Dwight School in Manhattan. He reconnected with guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. when the latter moved to New York. The band was formed in 1998 when Hammond was accepted into the band, with Casablancas as the lead vocalist and main songwriter.  The band began rehearsing a fourteen-song set which included "Alone, Together", "Barely Legal", "Last Nite", "The Modern Age", "New York City Cops", "Soma", "Someday", "Take It or Leave It" and "This Life" (an early version of "Trying Your Luck"). Most of these songs now feature different lyrics. A demo sent to the newly reformed Rough Trade Records in the UK sparked interest there, leading to their first release via the website of the UK magazine NME who gave away a free mp3 download of "Last Nite" a week prior to the physical release as part of The Modern Age EP in 2001. The EP sparked a bidding war among record labels, the largest for a rock and roll band in years. Shortly after, The Strokes' critically acclaimed debut album Is This It was released.  After the release of two other albums Room on Fire and First Impressions of Earth and several major tours, the band took a 5-year break before returning with their fourth album Angles in 2011. This was followed by several headlining appearances at musical festivals, including Reading, Coachella, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.  The band released Comedown Machine in 2013, as their last album under the contract with long-time label RCA, for which they did no promotion. The band released an EP, Future Present Past, on Casablancas' own label Cult Records in 2016.

Who else was in the band?

OUT: Casablancas met guitarist Nick Valensi and drummer Fab Moretti and played together at the Dwight School in Manhattan. He reconnected with guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.


IN: Jonas Edward Salk (; October 28, 1914 - June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Born in New York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician. In 1939, after earning his medical degree, Salk began an internship as a physician scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital.

In 1947, Salk became ambitious for his own lab and was granted one at the University of Pittsburgh, but the lab was smaller than he had hoped and he found the rules imposed by the university restrictive. In 1948, Harry Weaver, the director of research at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, contacted Salk. He asked Salk to find out if there were more types of polio than the three then known, offering additional space, equipment and researchers. For the first year he gathered supplies and researchers including Julius Youngner, Byron Bennett, L. James Lewis, and secretary Lorraine Friedman joined Salk's team, as well. As time went on, Salk began securing grants from the Mellon family and was able to build a working virology laboratory. He later joined the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis's polio project established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Extensive publicity and fear of polio led to much increased funding, $67 million by 1955, but research continued on dangerous live vaccines. Salk decided to use the safer 'killed' virus, instead of weakened forms of strains of polio viruses like the ones used contemporarily by Albert Sabin, who was developing an oral vaccine. After successful tests on laboratory animals, on July 2, 1952, assisted by the staff at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children, Salk injected 43 children with his killed-virus vaccine. A few weeks later, Salk injected children at the Polk State School for the retarded and feeble-minded. In 1954 he tested the vaccine on about one million children, known as the polio pioneers. The vaccine was announced as safe on April 12, 1955.  The project became large, involving 100 million contributors to the March of Dimes, and 7 million volunteers. The foundation allowed itself to go into debt to finance the final research required to develop the Salk vaccine. Salk worked incessantly for two and a half years.  Salk's inactivated polio vaccine was the first vaccine for the disease; it came into use in 1955. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system.

When did Salk do polio research?

OUT: In 1948,


IN: Batman is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, and first appeared in Detective Comics #27 (1939). Originally named the "Bat-Man", the character is also referred to by such epithets as the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, and the World's Greatest Detective.

Batman was one of the few superhero characters to be continuously published as interest in the genre waned during the 1950s. In the story "The Mightiest Team in the World" in Superman #76 (June 1952), Batman teams up with Superman for the first time and the pair discover each other's secret identity. Following the success of this story, World's Finest Comics was revamped so it featured stories starring both heroes together, instead of the separate Batman and Superman features that had been running before. The team-up of the characters was "a financial success in an era when those were few and far between"; this series of stories ran until the book's cancellation in 1986.  Batman comics were among those criticized when the comic book industry came under scrutiny with the publication of psychologist Fredric Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. Wertham's thesis was that children imitated crimes committed in comic books, and that these works corrupted the morals of the youth. Wertham criticized Batman comics for their supposed homosexual overtones and argued that Batman and Robin were portrayed as lovers. Wertham's criticisms raised a public outcry during the 1950s, eventually leading to the establishment of the Comics Code Authority, a code that is no longer in use by the comic book industry. The tendency towards a "sunnier Batman" in the postwar years intensified after the introduction of the Comics Code. Scholars have suggested that the characters of Batwoman (in 1956) and the pre-Barbara Gordon Bat-Girl (in 1961) were introduced in part to refute the allegation that Batman and Robin were gay, and the stories took on a campier, lighter feel.  In the late 1950s, Batman stories gradually became more science fiction-oriented, an attempt at mimicking the success of other DC characters that had dabbled in the genre. New characters such as Batwoman, Ace the Bat-Hound, and Bat-Mite were introduced. Batman's adventures often involved odd transformations or bizarre space aliens. In 1960, Batman debuted as a member of the Justice League of America in The Brave and the Bold #28 (Feb. 1960), and went on to appear in several Justice League comic series starting later that same year.

What kind of science fiction elements were added?

OUT:
Batman's adventures often involved odd transformations or bizarre space aliens.