Blog Archives

April Fool's Day

3/31/2020

Jim Whiting
Nonfiction is the New Black

Baseball fans were fascinated by an article in Sports Illustrated magazine just before the start of the 1985 major league baseball season. It profiled Hayden Siddhartha “Sidd” Finch, a rookie pitcher who was in spring training with the New York Mets. According to the article, he could throw a baseball at a top speed of nearly 170 miles per hour. That was twice as fast as many other pitchers. Photos accompanying the article showed Finch with his excited teammates. Teams that would be playing the Mets contacted the league office. They feared that their batters would be in danger when Finch was on the mound.

There was, however, a problem with the article. “Finch” in the photos was actually Joe Berton, an Illinois junior high school art teacher. The article’s subtitle provided a clue about its real purpose: “He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga —and his future in baseball.” The first letters spell “Happy April Fool’s Day—ah Fib.”

The issue was dated April 1.

The Sidd Finch saga is one of the best-known hoaxes that occur every year on April Fool’s Day. It’s not clear when the custom of playing tricks on this day originated, or even why. The first clear reference seems to come in 1561, in a work by Belgian poet Eduard De Dene. A nobleman orders his servant to run silly errands on April 1. De Dene was almost certainly making a reference to a custom that was already well-established.

By the end of the following century, it had spread to England. In 1698, a London newspaper reported that “Yesterday being the first of April, several persons were sent to the Tower Ditch to see the Lions washed.” This was a prank that city dwellers played on bumpkins from rural areas. There were no lions, nor was there any washing.

In Scotland, April Fool’s Day actually became two days. The first day was “hunting the gowk” (a gowk was a cuckoo bird, a symbol of fools), sending people on ridiculous errands. Then came Tailie Day, which involved pinning tails or “kick me” signs on people’s butts.

It’s not clear when April Fool’s Day came to the United States. But today Americans love “celebrating” it. So if someone tells you a story that seems like a hoax or a joke, check the calendar. If it’s April 1, someone is probably fooling you.

On 1 April 1957, the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Huge numbers of viewers called BBC wanting to know how to get their own tree

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Needless to say, the legislature received hundreds of calls from around the world.

Taco Bell Corporation took out an ad that ran in six major newspapers on 1 April 1996, announcing it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called in to express their anger.

Crack! It's going, going, it's gone! Professional players make it look easy to hit a home run. But without science, they’d be left in the batter’s box. In The Science of Hitting a Home Run, you can take a closer look at the science that makes a home run possible. Check this and Jim's many other titles out at his website.

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "April Fool's Day." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 30 Mar.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/April-Fools-Day.

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How Horses Revolutionized the Lives of the Plains Indians

3/30/2020

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Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
Nature’s Animal Ambassador

Do you know that the Plains Indians lived in North America for centuries before they got horses? These people were nomads, moving from place to place through the seasons as they sought protection from winter weather and hunted for buffalo, their main source of food. Can you imagine how difficult it was, walking many miles in soft moccasins across the rough prairie ground with only dogs to help carry their possessions? The dogs dragged goods on a travois, a set of wooden poles strapped together. A big, strong dog could manage a load of just seventy-five pounds or less. It took an Indian band a long time to get from one place to another, and the people couldn’t bring very many things along.

Then, in the 1500s, Spanish explorers and settlers brought horses with them to North America. Indian slaves in the Southwest took care of the horses on Spanish ranches but were forbidden to ride them. Of course they figured out how useful horses were, and soon the Apache tribe had horses. In 1680, the Indians rebelled against the Spanish, driving them out of New Mexico and forcing them to leave many horses behind. From then on, horses spread northward and by 1750, tribes all the way into Canada had horses.

These powerful animals revolutionized Indian culture. With horses, the Indians could ride instead of walk. They could bring along more goods, as a horse could drag a travois load of three hundred pounds. Just five horses could transport everything needed by a family, including enough buffalo hides to make a big, comfortable tepee. Old or sick family members could be carried along on a travois as well.

Just as the Indians were embracing the horse, European Americans were moving into Indian lands, forcing some tribes to move westward onto the prairie and adopt the horse culture. Within a generation, Indians became supreme horsemen and used horses to hunt buffalo and to wage warfare. They fought against one another as well as against the U.S. Army, which was trying to clear the way for white settlers to make their homes on the prairie. By the late 1800s, the Plains tribes had been beaten and forced to live on reservations.

The Indians still value their horses, competing with them in rodeos and races as well as for recreation and transportation.

Horses made life much easier for the Plains Indians. People could ride the horses at the same time the horses pulled the travois that carried their goods. Moving camp, Edward Curtis, courtesy Library of Congress

The annual Crow Fair draws twenty to thirty thousand Indians from Canada and the U.S. to eastern Montana to celebrate and compete. Every morning, a parade of Indians showing off their beautiful costumes and horse gear passes through the camp. Wm. Munoz

These Crow chiefs proudly show off their costumes and beadwork for photographer Edward Curtis, who documented many Indian cultures during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Edward Curtis. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Every winter, a group of young Indians show their pride in their cultural traditions by challenging themselves to repeat the frigid 287-mile ride of Lakota Chief Big Foot and his band to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where they were massacred by the U.S. Army in December, 1890. Indian Teens, Wm. Munoz

Dorothy Hinshaw Patent says about her book, The Horse and the Plains Indians: "This book was truly a labor of love and respect. Within a few years of acquiring horses after the Spanish brought them to America, Indians became among the greatest horsemen in the world and created vibrant new horse-related aspects to their cultures. I wanted to communicate these achievements to young people and to show them that despite all they have suffered at the hands of European American culture, the Indians heart and soul attachment to horses endures." For more information, click here.

Dorothy Hinshaw Patent is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Patent, Dorothy Hinshaw. "How Horses Revolutionized the Lives of the Plains
     Indians." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 5 Mar. 2018,
     www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
     How-Horses-Revolutionized-the-Lives-of-the-Plains-Indians.

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Mary E. Lease, Queen of the Populist Tornado

3/20/2020

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Cheryl Harness
She’s historical!

The United States, in the 1880s, had become an industrial power in the world, but factory workers could hardly feed their families. Miners spent long days down in the dangerous dark, digging a wealth of coal out of the earth, yet they were dirt-poor. Farm families were going broke too. They barely had the money to pay rich bankers the interest on loans they took out to buy seeds or to pay what the railroad charged to ship the crops that hadn’t dried up in a drought or got gobbled by hungry grasshoppers. Many a broke homesteader went back east. Lettered on the covers of their wagons: “IN GOD WE TRUSTED. IN KANSAS WE BUSTED!”

               Mary E. Lease, a Pennsylvania schoolteacher, went to Kansas, but she stayed there. And she was among the multitudes, who wondered why so many Americans were so poor in a country that was so rich? Where was the money going? Judging from what she read in the papers and heard down at the general store, the money seemed to be in the pockets of men who owned the mines, factories, railroads, and banks. And rather than pay people decent wages, they seemed to be paying politicians to make laws to help them stay rich and get richer. Sound familiar?

In the early 1890s, folks got together and formed their own “People’s (or Populist) Party.” What did they want? Fairness, more government regulations, less silver, and more printed paper money. It wouldn’t be worth as much; but at least there’d be more of it to go around! And right in the middle of this uprising was fiery Mrs. Lease.

               At rallies around the Midwest, the South, even at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, Mrs. Lease whipped up the crowds, crying out, “We are for humanity against the corporations – for perishing flesh and blood against the money bags!” People called her a “Patrick Henry in petticoats,” after the great Revolutionary War speechmaker. “Wall Street owns the country. When I get through with the silk-hatted easterners, they will know that the Kansas prairies are on fire!”

               Oh, they knew it all right, for a while anyway. While it raged, this political tornado blew nine Populists into Congress. But the people’s movement fizzled out in the early 1900s. At least old Mrs. Lease lived to see some populist dreams come true. In the early 1930s, when so many Americans hit bottom, Franklin D. Roosevelt became President. Under FDR’s “New Deal” policies, the people got help from their very own government and the Wall Street banks and businesses were reined for a considerable time. Ah, but they’ve regained much of their former power and Mary E. Lease lies restless in her grave.

Mary Elizabeth Lease, “the Kansas Pythoness”

The perfect browsing volume for Women's History Month, Cheryl Harness's Rabble Rousers offers short, spirited profiles of twenty women who, like Mary E. Lease, impacted life in America by speaking out against injustice and fighting for social improvements. The folksy, friendly narrative introduces such fascinating figures as Sojourner Truth, abolitionist preacher; Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War physician; Margaret Sanger, birth control pioneer; and Doris Haddock, a ninety-two-year-old champion of campaign-finance reform. The book spans over two hundred years of American history and includes time lines for such important social movements as abolition, woman suffrage, labor, and civil rights. Readers inspired by these fiery women can use the civil action tips and resources in the back of the book to do some of their own rabble-rousing. For more information, click here.
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MLA 8 Citation
Harness, Cheryl. "Mary E. Lease: Queen of the Populist Tornado." Nonfiction Minute, iNK
Think Tank, 12 Apr. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
mary-e-lease-queen-of-the-populist-tornado.

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The Ship Disguised as an Island

3/18/2020

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Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

The United States entered World War II after December 7, 1941, when Japanese carrier-based aircraft destroyed our warships and airfields at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At the same time, they attacked United States, British, Dutch and Australian targets all over the western Pacific Ocean with overwhelming force.

The British battleship Prince of Wales and the heavy cruiser Repulse were destroyed three days later. A ragtag fleet of smaller Allied warships was crushed at the Battle of the Java Sea on February 27, 1942. Scattered and discouraged, remaining Allied ships retreated south to Australia.

The Dutch minesweeper Abraham Crijnssen (CRANE son) was a little boat: 184 feet long, 25 feet wide (56m X 7.5m). She mounted a small cannon and a few machine guns, and she was slow—not a match for any Japanese warship or airplane. Her captain, Commander Anthonie van Miert, called “all hands” for a meeting. Rather than scuttle the boat and surrender, he meant to escape. The chances were slim. He wanted only a crew of volunteers and allowed most of the crew to leave.

Two other minesweepers set out to escape before him as his volunteers covered the Crijnssen with camouflage netting. He caught up with them next morning but they weren’t camouflaged, and van Miert steamed on to another anchorage. A wise choice: both minesweepers were spotted by Japanese aircraft. Neither survived.

Van Miert couldn’t be caught in the open! His crew repainted the hull to look like shore rocks. Before dawn each morning they pushed up against a jungle island to cut fresh tree branches and foliage. They tied the greenery to the masts and stuck it into the netting. They sat through the day disguised as an innocent island. When night came the little vessel steamed south. She rushed through dangerous, narrow straits then slowed down to save fuel. No lights, all her portholes covered, her lookouts sharp and worried. Toward morning, they found a new island and rigged a new disguise.
For eight days the lonely little ship steamed at night and became an island during the day. On March 15, 1942, she docked in Geraldton, Australia. The Crijnssen escaped and survived World War II.

Commander van Miert and nine crew members received the Dutch Navy’s Cross of Merit for courage, and for imagination. Today you can visit the tough little island . . . er, ship, at the naval museum in Dan Helder, Netherlands.

The Dutch minesweeper Abraham Crijnssen (CRANE son) was a little boat: 184 feet long, 25 feet wide (56m X 7.5m). This is what she looked like before she became an island.

This is how she looked when disguised as an island. Pretty cool

Adkins' latest book is about the first drive in an automobile. The wife of the inventor took her kids to see their grandparents. Learn more about it here.

The author/illustrator is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

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"Ride, Sally, Ride!"

3/12/2020

1 Comment

Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

In 1983, shortly before she became America’s first female astronaut to participate in a mission, Sally Ride faced a press conference. Reporters raised questions they would never have asked a man. “Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?” one inquired. “Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?” queried another. A third wondered, “Will you wear makeup and a bra in space?” Tonight Show host Johnny Carson joked that the flight was delayed because Sally had to find a purse that matched her shoes.

It wasn’t just U.S. media. The Soviet Union had already sent two women into space. When one of them arrived at the space station, a male cosmonaut (the Soviet term for astronauts) said, “An apron is waiting for you in the kitchen.”

By this point, Sally had mastered parachute jumping, water survival, coping with weightlessness and the massive G-forces from a rocket launch, and other highly demanding skills. She flew jet planes. She had a Ph.D. degree in physics from Stanford, one of the nation’s top universities. She helped develop a robotic arm for use on the space shuttle. She was a nationally ranked tennis player who decided not to turn pro because she preferred science.

The general public seemed more accepting. On launch day at Florida’s Cape Canaveral, thousands of people wore “Ride, Sally, Ride!” T-shirts, from the lyrics of the pop song “Mustang Sally.”

The mission went flawlessly, and Sally flew again the following year. She was scheduled for a third flight in 1986, but it was scrubbed when the Challenger space shuttle blew up.

Sally left the space program soon afterward. She was passionate about encouraging young people—especially girls—to become involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). Here are some of the things she did toward that achieving that goal.

She originated the Sally Ride EarthKam project, in which middle school students request that astronauts take photos of any point on Earth. Students research features in the images to provide additional material for subjects they are studying.
Her company Sally Ride Science offers programs encouraging STEM studies.
Sally Ride Science Camps for Girls provide week-long immersions in science.
Sally Ride Science Festivals bring hundreds of students together in day-long celebrations of science.
She wrote seven children’s books about the Earth and various aspects of space travel.

Sadly, Sally Ride died of cancer in 2012 at the age of 61. Shortly afterward, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is the nation’s highest civilian honor.

On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space as a crew member on space shuttle Challenger. Here she communicates with ground controllers from the flight deck during the six-day mission. U.S. National Archives

Sally Ride while promoting the Sally Ride Science Festival at UCSD in 2006. Wikimedia

To find information on many of Jim Whiting's books, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "'Ride, Sally, Ride!'" Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 14 May
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/Ride-Sally-Ride.

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April Fool's Day

How Horses Revolutionized the Lives of the Plains Indians

Mary E. Lease, Queen of the Populist Tornado

The Ship Disguised as an Island

"Ride, Sally, Ride!"

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