October 1982. Los Angeles. Ghouls rise from a fog-fingered graveyard and join a zombified Michael Jackson in one of history’s most iconic bits of choreography in the watershed “Thriller” video, a mini-horror flick built around the eponymous hit song.
Right after Theodore Maiman (EngrPhys’49) successfully developed the laser in 1960, newspapers reported that a Los Angeles scientist had invented a death ray.
In 1968 Spencer Silver (PhDA&S’66), a senior chemist at 3M’s Central Research Labs, developed a peculiar adhesive. Made out of tiny bubbles, it was strong enough to hold papers together but weak enough that they could be pulled apart.