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Federal Express was down to its last $5,000, according to Roger Frock’s account. The money belonged to the company. It was the company’s last cash, and none of it was Fred Smith‘s personal money. Smith took it to Las Vegas anyway.

The trip paid for one week of jet fuel. For the rest of his life, Smith refused to call that week the moment that counted.

Smith served in the Marine Corps from 1966 to 1969 as a platoon leader and forward air controller in South Vietnam. He served two combat tours, was honorably discharged as a captain and was decorated with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.

He founded Federal Express on June 18, 1971, using a $4 million inheritance. Operations began on April 17, 1973, with 14 Dassault Falcon jets and 389 employees. On the first day, the company delivered 186 packages across 25 US cities. Over its first two years, it lost $30 million.

According to Memphis magazine, paychecks during this stretch were sometimes postdated, and pilots occasionally paid for fuel with their personal credit cards.

Researchers have developed a small, untethered robot that uses snapping elastic rods to hop across sand, grass, glass-like acrylic and other surfaces, as well as swim in water. According to the study published in Science Advances, titled ‘Geometry-controlled instability pathway selection in elastic helices enables fast, efficient robotic locomotion’, the study describes how superelastic nickel-titanium rods store energy before releasing it in a rapid movement called snap-through. The robot measures 11 centimetres by 8 centimetres by 4 centimetres and weighs 98.2 grams. It reached speeds of 3.21 body lengths per second, with tests showing improved movement across six terrains compared with a rigid-legged control.

In a study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the group led by Hanns-Christoph Nägerl, working with theoretical physicist Alvise Bastianello of the CNRS and Université Paris-Dauphine, describe how to engineer an exotic quantum state known as a “fractional Fermi sea.”

The breakthrough involves pushing ultracold cesium atoms far beyond their normal conditions by repeatedly changing how strongly they attract or repel one another. Rather than simply becoming disordered, the particles rearrange themselves into an unusual configuration that behaves differently from the quantum systems scientists have traditionally studied.

The theoretical findings provide the foundation for recent experimental research conducted by Nägerl’s team at the Department of Experimental Physics.