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Harriet Quimby: America's First Lady of the Air

3/22/2021

Cheryl Harness
She's historical!

A 1991 United States airmail postage stamp featured Harriet Quimby

  Do you know about Harriet Quimby, Pioneer Aviator? In her time, the early 1900s, flying was still so new and dangerous. Every flier risked death whenever he climbed into a cockpit. I say ‘he’ because flying had mostly been a guy thing. That was especially true in Harriet’s time. People thought only a very bold, unladylike female would sign up for flying lessons. Or travel the world taking photos. Or hang around film studios, writing screenplays for silent movies. Or drive her own car. OR become America’s very first woman to earn a pilot’s license, as Harriet did, on August 1, 1911. Harriet did ALL of those things AND wrote newspaper stories about her adventures!

          Like other early fliers, Harriet showed off her skills at very popular airshows. High above the crowds, pilots swooped through the sky in their tiny aircraft, difficult to manage in the windy air. When Louis Blériot made the first flight from France to England, in 1909, it was in a plane measuring 25 feet, 7 inches, wingtip to wingtip. The wingspan of a small plane today might be 36 feet and it weighs more than three times as much as Blériot’s 507-pounder!

Beautiful Harriet Quimby, in her purple satin flight suit, was famous. But she wanted more: If only she could match Mr. Blériot’s feat, she’d be the first woman to fly across the stormy English Channel. So, she borrowed one of Mr. Blériot’s little wood-cloth-and-wire airplanes and had it shipped to Dover, England. At dawn on April 16, 1912, Harriet soared up into the clouds, heading for France, 22 miles away. No GPS, radar, or radio. Just her watch and a compass. After an hour of freezing fog in her face, Harriet flew down out of the clouds to see France’s sandy shores. When she landed, people came rushing from all directions.

          Alas for Harriet. Alas, alas for those on the doomed Titanic which disappeared under the ocean 27 hours before her flight. The terrible news overshadowed her accomplishment. And how could Harriet know that she had but ten weeks to live? On July 1, 1912, the crowd at a Boston airshow heard her screams as she fell from her little airplane to her death. And alas for us if we let time and tragedy overshadow how cool and brave she was: Harriet Quimby, First Lady of the Air.

Harriet Quimby with the Moisant monoplane in which she learned to fly.

Excited fans carry Harriet Quimby after her successful English Channel flight

Cheryl Harness has written a book about another heroic woman, Mary Walker. She was one of the first women doctors in the country. When the Civil War struck, she took to the battlefields in a modified Union uniform as a commissioned doctor. To find out more about Cheryl's book, click here.

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Malala and Motivation

3/19/2021

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Vicki Cobb
Master Chef of Kids' Hands-On Science

Just the thought of Malala Yousafzai brings tears to my eyes. If you don’t know who she is, you should. In 2015, at the age of seventeen, she was the youngest person to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

From the time she was eleven, she had a single purpose: to fight for the right to an education for every girl and boy on the planet. As a Pakistani, where women live life in the shadows, she has faced many obstacles in expressing her beliefs. In October of 2012, when she was fifteen, she was shot in the head on her school bus, the target of assassination. The Taliban claimed credit for this diabolical act. Miraculously, she survived without serious impairment. But the brutality of the Taliban did not stop her; neither did an earthquake, a flood, or the lack of financial resources. She continued to speak out on behalf of education for all.

I’ve read her memoir, I Am Malala. She is like the child in the fable The Emperor’s New Clothes who speaks unvarnished truth with the impeccable logic of the child who does not understand political correctness.

“If the [the Taliban] come, what would you do Malala? ...If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there will be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others...with cruelty...you must fight others but through peace, through dialogue and through education...then I’ll tell him [the Talib] how important education is and that I even want education for your children as well... that’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.”

Like the, Diary of Ann Frank, you cannot escape the voice of a young girl who cares about her hopes and dreams for her future and that of the troubled world.

“I speak not for myself but for those without voice... those who have fought for their rights... their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with dignity, their right to equality of opportunity, their right to be educated.”

How can we motivate students to fight for their own interests in acquiring an education? How can we inspire them to do the hard work needed? Maybe they need to hear Malala speak.

Here, in the United States we have both the right and the availability to education, yet so many kids don't take advantage of it to make something of themselves. What lesson can we all take away from Malala?

Yousafzai at Girl Summit 2014

Malala shares some quality time with the Obama family.

Vicki Cobb's classic book, Science Experiments You Can Eat has been updated and enlarged and was released in July of 2016. You can also see Vicki's new winking caricature on her website.

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In Your Great Grandmother's Kitchen

3/16/2021

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Laurence Pringle
The Octopus Hugger

Today we are time traveling. So, here we go: back a hundred years, and into your great grandmother's kitchen! O.K., now we're in 1918. You may be thirsty after the trip, so let's see what's in the refrigerator.

Ooh, ooh, I don't see a refrigerator! But there's a tall box-like thing, made of wood. Let's see what's inside. Ah, good, inside this lower part there's a glass bottle of cold milk. Also, meat, eggs and other food. Open the top door and we see: a big square block of ice!

Your great grandma uses an ICE BOX to keep food cold, and safe from spoiling. She doesn't have a home refrigerator. In 1918 there is no such thing! Instead, all over the United States, nearly every house, apartment, hotel, and restaurant uses an ice box. Everyone depends on ice. Cutting ice, storing ice, and delivering ice is a big, vital business.

If you saw the movie "Frozen," you may remember how it started, with dramatic scenes of men using saws to cut ice, and lifting heavy ice blocks with iron tongs. In the early 1800s, that is how ice was harvested in the U.S. In the 1820s, horse-drawn saws were invented. As the ice business grew, each winter countless thousands of men and horses worked on frozen ponds, lakes, and rivers.

Millions of tons of ice were stored in huge, windowless ice houses. They were insulated to keep melting to a minimum, so ice was available year round. Ice from the United States was even carried by sailing ship as far as India, China, and Australia. Of course, what mattered to most people was resupplying ice in their home ice boxes. Ice is probably brought to your great grandma's street in a horse-drawn wagon. Then an iceman carries a 60 pound block of ice into the kitchen to replace the ice that has mostly melted.

People depend on their ice boxes. But sometimes a warm winter ruins the harvest. Ice companies are desperate. They scramble to get ice from northern, colder places. An ice famine is scary. In the early 1900s, inventors tried to make something more reliable. Their work led to the kind of refrigerator you have in your kitchen today.

When we go back to 2018, you might see an icebox in an antique shop. Maybe it was once in your great grandma's kitchen.

The ice trade around New York; from top: ice houses on the Hudson River; ice barges being towed to New York; barges being unloaded; ocean steamship being supplied; ice being weighed; small customers being sold ice; the "uptown trade" to wealthier customers; an ice cellar being filled; by F. Ray, Harper's Weekly, 30 August 1884 via Wikimedia Commons.

Women delivering ice from an ice wagon during World War I. Wikimedia Commons

Ice being stacked inside a warehouse at Barrytown, NY on the Hudson River. Wikimedia Commons

In his book Ice! The Amazing History of the Ice Business, Laurence Pringle discusses northern areas of the East and Midwest that were sources of ice and gives details of ice harvesting and storage by focusing on one lake--Rockland Lake, "the ice box of New York City." And he writes of those vital but sometimes controversial workers who delivered the ice to customers. Laurence Pringle worked closely with experts and relied on primary documents, including archival photographs, postcards, prints, and drawings. For more information on the book, click here.

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Henry Ford Grows a Car

3/2/2021

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Peggy Thomas

Curiosity Queen

Henry Ford is famous for founding the Ford Motor Company in 1903. He built the Model T and changed America from a horse-and-buggy country to a nation of paved roads and honking cars. Yet most people don’t realize that Henry also transformed American agriculture with his work with soybeans.

            During the Great Depression of the 1930s many farmers lost their farms or left crops to rot because they cost too much to harvest. Henry thought this was a waste, so he began to look for ways that common crops could be used in industry. He built a laboratory at Greenfield Village, and studied the chemical makeup of every fruit, grain and vegetable. After two years, Henry found the: the soybean! It was the perfect crop to use in his factories because it was packed with oil and protein.

            The oil made a paint that was glossier, less expensive, and dried to a harder finish than other coatings. By 1934, every new Ford boasted a coat of soybean paint. The soy protein, mixed with a chemical resin, created a sturdy plastic. Soon cars had soybean plastic gearshift knobs, light switches and horn buttons. Ford claimed that every car contained a bushel of soybeans.

            But Henry wanted a car that was all soybeans. To do this he had to make large plastic panels, which took longer to perfect. The first panels cracked. But eventually Henry had a plastic trunk lid attached to his car so he could show people how sturdy it was. He even hit it with an ax and didn’t make a dent.

            Henry affixed fourteen plastic panels to a steel frame, and showed off his new car on August 13, 1941. Unfortunately the car was never manufactured. Four months later America entered World War II. The soybean plastic car rolled into storage, its steel frame recycled in the war effort. Henry died shortly after the war, and no one continued his work on the plastic car.

            But his soybean research did spark a movement to use soy in manufacturing, which made soybeans the second largest crop grown in America. Furniture, flooring, candy, crayons, and all kinds of food contain soy. And even though we don’t drive soybean plastic cars yet, there are still plenty of beans in every Ford. All their seats are stuffed with soybean plastic foam.

            See Henry’s car here.

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American captain of industry and a business magnate, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production.
By Hartsook, photographer via Wikimedia Commons

The world's first car made of what was called agricultral plastic is shown in February 1942. The plastic was a strong material combining soy beans, wheat and corn. Although the car never caught on, it was lighter and therefore more fuel efficient than the standard metal body. Wikimedia Commons

Despite the practical benefits of a car made out of food products (fuel efficiency and the conservation of steel that was scarce during World War II), the idea was the source of a lot of good-natured humor. From the Collections of The Henry Ford

Peggy Thomas is the author of such award-winning titles as Farmer George Plants a Nation, and For the Birds, the life of Roger Tory Peterson. Her newest book is Full of Beans: The Story of How Henry Ford Grew a Car, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. Vicki Cobb reviewed it.

For more information about Peggy, check out her website: www.peggythomaswrites.com

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Harriet Quimby: America's First Lady of the Air

Malala and Motivation

In Your Great Grandmother's Kitchen

Henry Ford Grows a Car

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