Karen Hill

Tree stumps! The road was called the National Road. Opened in 1814, it connected the city of Baltimore with the Ohio River. It was a great road for its time. It was covered with gravel and had stone bridges over streams and rivers. But it also had big tree stumps, up to 18 inches thick, … Read more

That’s what the Spacecraft Pioneer was doing. Pioneer was a NASA space machine that has been orbiting the planet Venus since December 1978. NASA scientists wanted to make a map of Venus. The problem is that the planet is always covered by heavy clouds. The surface of the planet cannot be seen by the cameras … Read more

Huge oil tankers are so big that it can take over 38 minutes just to bring one to a full stop. They are bigger than 14 blue whales laid end to end. Fourteen hundred feet long, they are the length of a 130-story building. They are bigger than any building ever built. They can carry … Read more

As wild, weird, and wonderful as it may sound, there is a hotel located underwater. The only way you can get in the front door is to swim. If you decide that you may need extra bathing suits or other items, you’ll have to carry them in a watertight bag and drag them through the … Read more

During the 16th century, in Germany, there was a library that had no books. Instead of books, it had shelf after shelf of boxes. Each box was of book size. The binding of each box was made of the wood of one tree, and the name of the tree was marked on the side of … Read more

It is not New York City, home to the famous Empire State Building. Instead, it is Chicago, the “Windy City.” The world’s tallest building in the 1980s was the Sears Tower. It is 1,454 feet-110 stories high. It is more than 100 feet higher than the World Trade Center in New York, which is the … Read more

There is a 1,000-year-old bridge over the Min River in Sichuan, China, that hangs from bamboo cables. Since the year 1000, Chinese engineers have had the job of adjusting the tension of these mighty seven-inch cables, sometimes tightening them, sometimes loosening them, by turning the great drums around which they are wrapped. Bamboo is a … Read more

The International Nickel Company’s huge chimney at Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, was the tallest chimney in the world in 1972 and was constructed by Inco Limited. It is often referred to as The Inco Superstack. It is also the second tallest structure in Canada. It is only five feet shorter than the Empire State Building. The … Read more

Vikings were probably the very best sailors of their time. They knew the tides and how to use them to take their ships where they wanted to go. They knew how to steer by the light of the stars and by the direction in which the winds blew in different parts of the world. They … Read more

Old “Doc” Pemberton was well known in Atlanta, Georgia, for his “patent medicines,” which people took to cure a variety of ills. One day in 1886, he appeared at the local soda fountain with a new drink. His friends and neighbors liked the flavor of the new drink. It was not too sweet and not … Read more

He pitched ten no-hitters. As a matter of fact, he pitched over 100 no-hit, no-run games during the course of his baseball career. Who was he? Satchell Paige, of course. He was one of the greatest pitchers who ever lived and a great star of both the black baseball leagues and the major leagues. In … Read more

Did you say Babe Ruth? Well, maybe you are right. He’s the man most people would agree on. But there was another player who was pretty good, too. He was not only an expert at getting the wood of the bat to meet the ball, but he was one of the strongest men who ever … Read more

Gliding in motorless planes is even more popular in Europe than it is in the United States. Whether in Europe or the United States the fliers of these silent planes like to see how long they can stay up in the air. Just before World War II, five glider pilots from a German gliding club … Read more

It first happened on August 23, 1977, at a Shafter, California, airport. An airplane powered only by a man pumping away at bicycle pedals flew over a mile-long course. The plane was called the Gossamer Condor, and it was the first man-powered airplane ever to really fly. The pilot pumping the bicycle pedals was Bryan … Read more

No! But the first recording was made on exactly the same kind of wax paper that is used in a kitchen to wrap foods. As a matter of fact, Thomas Edison got the wax paper he used from his kitchen. On July 18,1877, Edison attached a blunt needle to the little vibrator that is part … Read more

Matthew Alexander Henson was the first man to reach the North Pole. He was a member of an exploration team headed by Robert E. Peary, and he was a black man. Henson was 42 years old when, in 1909, he set out with Admiral Peary and four Eskimos for the final leg of the trip … Read more

Eyeglasses are one of the most astonishing and important inventions in history. We know that they were invented by one single individual who lived and worked in the town of Pisa, Italy, in the year 1286. We know that this individual was a craftsman who worked with glass, but we do not know his name. … Read more

Believe it or not, Colonel William Rankin did exactly that. As far as anyone knows, he is the only man who has ever bailed out of a plane directly into a thunderstorm and survived. Rankin was flying over the coast of North Carolina in a Marine Corps single engine jet fighter, when his engine failed. … Read more

The first time anybody floated from coast to coast was in May 1980 when Maxie Anderson and his son Kristian flew one of the largest manned balloons ever built from California to northeast Canada. They launched their balloon in sight of the Pacific Ocean and saw the Atlantic Ocean before they landed. Kitty Hawk was … Read more

Many people think the bravest men who rode for the Pony Express were the well-known heroes Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. But those who really know tell of a rider whose name was Billy Tate. He was 14 years old and an orphan when he joined the Pony Express as a rider. His … Read more

Using the very latest methods, it is possible to print a book not on the head of a pin but on its point. How is it possible? New electron microscopes can make even the tiniest of things, such as an atom, appear to be large when we look at them on a screen. This “enlarging” … Read more

The new Scanning Electron Microscopes are huge, many times larger than even the most powerful standard microscopes. Nobody minds that they are so big, however, because they are very powerful. The Scanning Electron Microscope “sees” 10,000 times more than even the finest standard micropcope. By gathering light and focusing it with a system of mirrors … Read more

Alexander Graham Bell invented a way to talk on a beam of sunlight. The year was 1880, and he called his strange device the photophone. While Bell’s telephone had to have wires connecting one caller with another, his photophone needed no such wires. It transmitted sound through the air on a beam of light using … Read more

Fifty years before the invention of the telegraph and almost 100 years before the telephone, the government of France was able to send messages to many parts of Europe at speeds of 1,500 miles an hour. From Paris, the emperor of France could send instructions to his generals on the Rhine River 150 miles away, … Read more

They were a father and son act: Sir Malcolm Campbell and his son, Donald. Racing 30 years apart, each was a champion on both land and sea. During his racing career, Sir Malcolm set new land-speed records nine times between 1924 and 1935. He was the first person to drive an automobile over 300 miles … Read more

One woman did it five times. Her name was Victoria Woodhull, and she led a very interesting life. As a young girl, she traveled across the country with her family, who ran a fortune-telling and medicine show. She later became involved in faith healing and wound up in New York City, where she met the … Read more

William James Sidis, born in 1898, was widely regarded as the most intelligent person in the world. His father, a psychologist, believed he could teach James to be a genius. When he was 3 years old, James studied very difficult math, the kind most people study in college. When he was 5, he wrote a … Read more

It was back in 1929, and he was probably the greatest ball carrier of his day. He played for the Chicago Cardinals. What was his name? Ernie Nevers. In a game against the Chicago Bears, Nevers carried the ball for six touchdowns, as the Cardinals beat the Bears 40 to 6. Two other ballplayers, Dub … Read more

In the 1980s, it was just over six miles deep, 31,911 feet, to be exact. This was a drill hole made on the Kola Peninsula in Russia by workers looking for oil. This hole is 2,909 feet deeper than Mount Everest is high. The Russians are not alone in going to such depths to get … Read more

Before the invention of the refrigerator, in 1800, a fresh chicken would spoil in just four hours in the summertime. Milk would spoil even faster. People knew that you could stop all this spoiling if food was kept cold, but ice was very expensive. It came in large pieces, and nobody had yet figured out … Read more

Thomas Edison wasn’t a bad boy, he just wanted to see “what would happen if.” That’s how the little fire he started in his father’s barn became a big one. It was all an experiment. He got into so much trouble experimenting, that his mother used to keep a special birch branch behind the old … Read more

Walter Hunt was not a famous inventor. He certainly was no Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell. In fact, he made only one small contribution as an inventor. But anyone who has ever been pricked by a pin knows how important Hunt’s invention is. One day in 1849, as Hunt sat in his New York … Read more

Believe it or not, it has been done at least twice. On June 6, 1896, two oyster fishermen from New Jersey began a voyage that ranks as one of the world’s greatest sea going feats. George Harvo and Fred Samuelson climbed into their 18-foot rowboat and began rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, traveling from New … Read more

The Flying Tea Kettle was the nickname given to the Stanley Steamer, a steam-powered automobile, after it raced at an astonishing 127 miles an hour in January of 1906. This speed was better than 20 miles an hour faster than anything that had ever been driven before. Driving on regular roads was done much more … Read more

They were two men who had never met yet, like identical twins, began to do exactly the same things at exactly the same time. For almost 100 years, men had been trying to produce the white metal aluminium. The best they could do involved a process that made such small amounts it cost as much … Read more

The official world record for long distance soaring is 1,015 miles. It was set on May 9, 1977, by glider pilot Karl Striedieck. Imagine flying like a bird, with no engine and no noise, from dawn to dusk over a distance of 1,000 miles. In setting the record, Striedieck took off from a small airport … Read more

Certain people like to tell a tale according to which the potato chip was invented by two down-on-their-luck prospectors during the gold Rush years in California. Don’t believe it. The birth of the potato chip actually took place near Saratoga, New York, not long after that town became a favorite vacation spot for the rich. … Read more

“Fulton’s Folly” was the name given to Robert Fulton’s steamboat by newspapers in 1806. At that time, few people in the United States believed that it was possible to build a workable steamboat, and many people made fun of the idea. One year later, in 1807, Fulton proved how wrong they all were. In August … Read more

She became so famous that a Broadway musical and a Hollywood film were based on her life. She became a very good shot at an early age, and by the time she was 10, she was shooting enough to feed her family and provide extra money. She sold so much game that she was able … Read more

In 1853, a man named E. G. Otis invented the first elevator safe enough to be used for passengers. After he had invented the elevator, Otis couldn’t find anybody who wanted to buy it. In 1853, office buildings were only three or four stories high, and everybody walked up and down stairs. A few buildings … Read more

Charles Hires did right after he and his wife returned from their honeymoon on a New Jersey farm in the early 1860’s. While on the farm, the farmer’s wife served them a drink she had mixed up of 16 different wild roots and berries. Included in this mixture were juniper, spikenard, wintergreen, hops, pipsissewa, and … Read more

Charles Goodyear invented the process of turning raw rubber into a usable product. Before Goodyear’s invention, rubber melted, decomposed and became sticky in heat. The process Goodyear invented, called vulcanization, solved these problems and created a major world industry. Goodyear was the first American to vulcanize rubber, a process which he discovered in 1839. Unfortunately, … Read more

Willis Carrier took the heat out of the desert by inventing air conditioning. Without his invention, many of the hot, dry areas of our country, such as, parts of New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Florida, would be too hot for most people to live in. Whole cities might never have grown up if it weren’t … Read more

He was a traveling salesman. He had always wanted to invent something, but he didn’t know what to invent. He once sat down at a desk and went through the alphabet from A to Z trying to figure out what he might invent that people needed. It was no help. He still didn’t know what … Read more

Before the invention of packaged breakfast cereals, American families ate big breakfasts that included such foods as steak, fried potatoes, corn meal mush or oatmeal, thick slices of bread with molasses, and maybe a piece of pie. A man named Will Kellogg changed all that and put cold corn flakes, or some other cold cereal, … Read more

A man named Lee De Forest invented the vacuum tube in the year 1907. It was a little glass-and-wire device that could send the sound of the human voice out on the airwaves so that it could be picked up and listened to on the radio. Until De Forest’s invention, radio could send and receive … Read more

It blew up. Believe it or not, the first traffic light was put up long before there were cars. The first traffic signal was installed in 1868 in London, England, on a corner outside the British Houses of Parliament. It had a set of arms that were used during the day. These arms were small … Read more

Flowers was how the ice-cream cone was invented. It all happened at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904. Charles E. Menches, young ice-cream salesman, gave his girlfriend an ice-cream sandwich and a bouquet of flowers. The girl took the lid off the sandwich and rolled it into a cone to hold the … Read more

Mark Twain was 12 when his father died. He left school and began working at the first of a series of many different jobs. He started as a printer’s helper and had soon learned enough to become a full-fledged printer. One of his very earliest dreams came true in 1857 when, at the age of … Read more

In 1893, Chicago, Illinois, decided to have a World’s Fair. The people in charge invited inventors from all over America to send in their ideas for something that would make the fair a great success. One American came up with a wonderful idea. He built a huge wheel that was 25 stories high. He had … Read more

Lew Wallace had a marvelous career. It began when he raised a company of infantry for the Mexican War. When the Civil War began, he organized troops and, in 1862, led Union forces in Virginia and Tennessee. In 1864, he successfully blocked a raid on Washington, D. C. After the war, Wallace served on the … Read more

Not the way you might think. Hurricane hunters is the name given men who have the very dangerous job of flying directly into the eye of newly forming hurricanes. Hurricane hunters are the crew of the planes that are sent out by the air force, the navy, or the Hurricane Center of the Environmental Science … Read more

The very first professional baseball team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The very first year they played together, 1869, they won 65, tied 1, and lost 0. How is that for winning baseball? Of course, they were the only pro team around. Every other baseball club was supposed to be amateur, although some of the … Read more

The little slide fastener we know as a zipper was never officially called a zipper. When it was first invented, in 1891, by Whitcomb L. Judson, it was called a “clasp locker or unlocker.” It was unsuccessful. Judson had invented his device with the idea that it might be used on boots and other articles … Read more

The Incas lived in the Andes Mountains of South America, and their civilization was at its peak in the 1400s. Their civilization was destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores who followed Christopher Columbus. These amazing people built 10,000 miles of roads throughout the mountains from what is now Argentina to Colombia. These roads were all exactly … Read more

Yes, it’s possible. An artist named John Banvard did it. He began by traveling up and down the Mississippi River, making thousands of sketches. When he had sketched enough, he went home and, on separate pieces of canvas, painted a continuing picture of the scene along the great river. Eventually, the picture was three miles … Read more

It doesn’t look like a typewriter. It doesn’t sound or feel like a typewriter. It doesn’t even work like a typewriter, but it does the same job. And it does it just as fast. It is easier to learn how to use. And, perhaps best of all, it will be cheaper. Besides all of that, … Read more

Most people don’t like to poison rats and mice. They’d rather just chase them away. Edward Markoff and Joseph Barad of Providence, Rhode Island, were certain they had found the perfect answer to household rats and mice when they invented a new trap in 1908. This “better mousetrap” was very special. When a rat or … Read more

Mankind has come a long way in only 100 years. In 1887, an inventor from Paris, France, was certain that we could use the power of eagles to help us fly. He patented an invention that was a balloon that was pulled upward, forward, or downward by a team of eagles. If eagles were not … Read more

It was a special scarecrow designed to scare away coyotes. It was invented by John S. Barnes of Idaho, a farmer whose sheep and chickens were always being eaten by local coyotes. The scarecoyote wore a suit of farmer’s clothes but had a special surprise for all the coyotes in the area. Just before sundown … Read more

Thirteen times men have climbed into the cockpits of balloons and tried to be the first to float across the Atlantic. The first attempt was made in 1873 in a balloon called Daily Graphic. Its crew of three managed to sail only 45 miles from their starting point. Most of the balloonists ditched their balloons … Read more

It was only sixteen feet long and was shaped like a needle or, better still, a dragonfly. On board, it had a tiny steam engine that could deliver one horsepower to the wooden propeller. It was a lazy day in the month of May, 1896, when it was launched by catapult from the deck of … Read more

Her name was Ann Bassett, and she and her sister, Josie, grew up on a ranch in Utah. They both learned to ride, shoot, and hunt like a man. They could rope a steer as well as any cowboy, and that’s what Ann always said she wanted to be when she grew up, a cowboy. … Read more

A Japanese explorer named Naomi Uemura succeeded in doing the impossible. On March 6, 1978, he set out alone with seventeen sled dogs on an eight-week trip that ended in his victory at the North Pole. In temperatures of 49 degrees below zero, he fought his way across 600 miles of Arctic ice to reach … Read more

The biggest airport in the world in the 1980s was the Atlanta, Georgia, airport, which was officially called the William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport. Its building covers 2.2 million square feet, enough space for seven 31-story office buildings. It has a subway, 13 newsstands, 12 gift shops, 17 snack bars, and 138 airplane gates … Read more

You can dance that long if you happen to be a 13 or 14 year old Apache girl. The Sunshine Dance, as it is called, is a dance that goes on for four days and is danced only by one person. It is done by a dancer who is celebrating the fact that she is … Read more

The United States has Kojak, Dick Tracy and the F.B.I. England has Sherlock Holmes and Scotland Yard. However, these greats can’t, compare with the Japanese when it comes to solving crimes. The Japanese police solve 96 percent of all the murders committed in their country. The West Germans and the Austrians are close behind. The … Read more

Otto von Lilienthal and his brother Gustav and were fascinated by the huge storks that came to rest on the roof of their house in Germany. They watched as the great birds took off, circled, and landed. The two brothers decided to become “storks” themselves. They wanted to fly. This was during the 1890’s, when … Read more

His enemies may have thought he was an infant, but actually he was a midget, less than two feet tall. His name was Richebourg, and he worked for the Duchess of Orleans. When the French Revolution began, the little fellow was living and working with the duchess’s family outside Paris. The duchess wanted to send … Read more

It is only a myth that the Mayflower’s Pilgrims were welcomed to the New World by Indians. Three months after they landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they were surprised to see their very first Indian. He calmly walked into the village they called Plymouth and announced that his name was Samoset. The Pilgrims were surprised to … Read more

It is hard to believe, but the first stagecoach robbery in the United States was done by a gang headed by a doctor. Tom Bell, whose real name was Tom Hodges, was a California doctor. He decided that robbing stages would make him more money, and was a lot more fun, than practicing medicine. In … Read more

That is what many people wondered. There is an Irish legend that has been around for 1,400 years. It says that an Irish monk explorer named St. Brendan sailed over 2,600 miles of open sea and through all sorts of stormy weather in a leather boat. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, recently, Timothy Severin, a teacher, … Read more

It was dangerous work, for 10,000 years ago the bison were one-third larger than those killed by Buffalo Bill during the late 1800s. But early Americans had little choice, as the bison provided them with food, blankets, tools, clothing, and the materials from which many of their homes were built. They could not kill the … Read more

Henry Newton Brown arrived in Caldwell, Kansas, in 1882. He applied for a job as assistant city marshal. At the time, Caldwell was a very rough place for a lawman, and the town fathers were glad to have someone apply for the job. The newspaper editor wrote that Brown was going to make a great … Read more

On October 15, 1978, a team of ten women succeeded in climbing one of the highest mountains in the world. It was Annapurna 1, 26,504 feet high and the tenth highest mountain in the world. Just a few miles south of this great mountain is Mount Everest. Although women climbing with men have reached the … Read more

You’ve probably heard about Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. They were the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of the three regiments raised in 1898. They were also the only ones of the three that saw action. When Roosevelt formed his famous cavalry regiment to fight in the Spanish- American War, he selected 1,000 of the … Read more

All of the really deep mines are gold mines, and the deepest of them are found in South Africa. These are mines in which men, not just machinery, work. The record for depth is held by the Western Deep Mine in South Africa, which has reached a depth of 12,600 feet. The deepest mine outside … Read more

Emily Dickinson is considered one of history’s greatest poets. From the age of 24, she never left the walls of her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. She completed her education at a woman’s seminary in 1848, and until 1854 her life was uneventful. After a visit to Philadelphia with her family in that year, she … Read more