Were the Wright Brothers really the first to fly an airplane? They’re given credit, and they certainly advanced aviation, forming their own company and continuing their research. But there are other claimants. (A good article summarizing those claims is at http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/who-flew-first-290750/?no-ist. And I still consider the Wright Brothers to be first.) James Watt is associated with
If you are looking for a hero, especially if you’re a girl, you might consider Mary Edwards Walker. Born on November 26, 1832, in Oswego, New York, she was a nurse, doctor, woman’s rights activist, abolitionist, prohibitionist, alleged spy, and prisoner of war during the American Civil War. She became the first, and as
Has Martin Luther King, Jr. Day become just another holiday? I suppose it depends on one’s perspective. I’ve occasionally been asked about the civil-rights era when I substitute teach, and during the 1960s I was always on the sidelines. I grew up in an area that was almost exclusively white, and had no real exposure
Did you buy a Powerball ticket? I didn’t, because the odds were not in my favor, and I hate to wait in line anyway. The last time I bought a lottery ticket, I was bored at Kmart, so I decided to educate my neighbor’s children on the evils of gambling. I bought a dollar ticket
If you like obscure anniversaries, on January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced he would start paying his workers $5 for an eight-hour workday, an increase from an average of $2.34 for a nine-hour workday. The resulting reaction was not what you might expect. Some thought he was crazy. The Wall Street Journal editorialized that he
January 4th is the birthday of Jacob Grimm of Grimm Fairy Tales fame, Jacob being the elder. He was born in Hanau, Germany in 1785. According to The Writers”Almanac, He and his brother volunteered to help some friends gather oral folktales for a research project. The Grimms did such a great job that one of their friends suggested
What if the Confederate army had moved on Washington, DC after their victory at the first battle of Bull Run? I could give many examples of how history turned on a snap decision, a quirk, a timely death, a misunderstanding, or just dumb luck. One of my favorite history books is appropriately entitled What If?
Yesterday I mentioned some obsolete words associated with slavery. Today I have another one. It didn’t used to be easy to travel through a segregated country when you were a minority. So in 1936 an enterprising postal worker named Victor Hugo Green began publishing a guide for black travelers. Originally called the Negro Motorist Green Book,
What is a coffle? It’s an obsolete (I hope) word that means a group of enslaved people chained together in a line. It was commonly used by slavers in the 18th and 19th centuries when they moved slaves long distances. Coffle, like slavepen and overseer (person on a plantation paid a wage to organize the work
I’ve been catching up on my reading, and I realized we’ve just passed another interesting anniversary. Ellis Island formally closed on November 12, 1954. I visited the island while chaperoning a middle-school educational trip to New York City about 15 years ago and got to see the museum. More than 12 million immigrants passed through its gates in