CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a sophisticated genetic technology which can engineer changes in the DNA blueprint of plants and animals. History was made in 2023, with the launch of a salad blend made from the first genome-edited plant product using CRISPR. Purple and green mustard greens, naturally bitter to the taste but with a higher nutritional value than lettuce, were gene-edited to remove the bitterness. The result tastes more like lettuce, while retaining its original nutritional content. 

In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first telephone. It took until 1984 for the invention of the first portable cellular phone. The first commercially produced cell phone, the Motorola DunaTAC 8000X, sold for $3,995 – equivalent to nearly $12,000 today.

A parachute landed in the Utah desert last September, carrying the first-ever U.S. asteroid sample (250 grams). NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe was launched in 2016, and collected a sample from the near-earth asteroid Bennu. Analysis will be by the NASA team at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as well as by 200 mission members from thirty-five countries.