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How to Go From Being Wanted by the Police to Working for Them

3/23/2022

Marissa Moss
Illuminating Hidden Histories

In the mid-nineteenth century, a young man named Allan Pinkerton fled Scotland with a warrant on his head for his work agitating for labor rights. In the United States, he continued to fight for social justice. Beginning in 1844, he worked for Chicago Abolitionist leaders and his home outside of Chicago was a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was a close friend and ardent supporter of John Brown, helping him get runaway slaves to Canada.

            He was working as a barrel maker when he stumbled on a gang of counterfeiters. His handling of that incident began his career as a crime-solver, and in 1849, he was hired to be the first detective on the Chicago police force. Detective work was considered sleazy at that time—a way of profiting from other’s crimes. Pinkerton gave it a new meaning by making justice his mission. He created careful “detecting methods,” using psychology, logic, and clear thinking. These tools worked, and a year later, Pinkerton was able to set up his own company known as the North-Western Police Agency. This later became Pinkerton & Co. and then the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

            In October, 1856 Pinkerton hired Kate Warne as the first woman detective in the United States. He was so impressed with her skill that he hired many other women (fifty years before any police department in America had female personnel.)

            While Pinkerton insisted that detectives must combine “considerable intellectual power and knowledge of human nature,” he discouraged them from pressuring confessions or taking statements from witnesses who were drunk. Above everything else, he valued the truth.

            Pinkerton ran the new spy agency, the Secret Service, for President Lincoln during the Civil War the same way he'd run his detective agency. He honed the art of “spycraft” and trained his agents the same way for both jobs, detective and spy.

           “The object of every investigation. . .is to come at the whole truth. . .There must be no endeavoring, therefore, to over-color or exaggerate anything against any particular individual, whatever the suspicion may be against him.”

            Pinkerton was working on a national criminal database when he died, but he left behind the legacy of his intelligence agency and a series of popular books about his cases, the first “true crime” stories in America.

Left: A wood engraving of Pinkerton published in "Harper's Weekly" magazine in July 1884, the month of his death. Library of Congress

Below: The Pinkerton Agency's iconic logo—a large, unblinking eye accompanied by the slogan “We Never Sleep”—gave rise to the term “private eye” as a nickname for detectives.

A retouched photograph of Pinkerton (left) with President Abraham Lincoln and Union Major General John A. McClernand on the Battlefield of Antietam, Maryland. Library of Congress

Pinkerton is shown on horseback on the Antietam Battlefield in 1862. Pinkerton served on several undercover missions as a Union soldier using the alias Major E.J. Allen. This counterintelligence work done by Pinkerton and his agents is comparable to the work done by today's U. S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agents in which Pinkerton's agency is considered an early predecessor. Library of Congress

Award-winning author Marissa Moss has written the first children’s book about Allan Pinkerton. Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln, but few know anything about the spy who saved him! Pinkerton had a successful detective agency, but his greatest contribution was protecting Abraham Lincoln on the way to his 1861 inauguration. Though assassins attempted to murder Lincoln en route, Pinkerton foiled their plot and brought the president safely to the capital. The Eye That Never Sleeps is illustrated with a contemporary cartoon style and includes a bibliography and a timeline.

MLA 8 Citation
Moss, Marissa. "How to Go From Being Wanted by the Police to Working For Them."
     Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 23 May 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/
     the-nonfiction-minute/
     How-to-Go-From-Being-Wanted-by-the-Police-to-Working-for-Them.

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Flower Power

3/22/2022

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Alexandra Siy
Science through the lens

Do you know about the “birds and the bees?” If you don’t, don’t worry. You will learn soon enough.

            When it comes to flowers there’s nothing to hide. There’s just no way around it—flowers are sexy. Their colorful, curvy petals are soft as velvet and as fragrant as the most expensive perfumes. Their nectar is as sweet as…well, honey. Besides being pretty, flowers have power. Their pollen is packed with protein. No wonder the birds and the bees, and insects of many kinds, find them so irresistible.

            Pollen may be the perfect food for bees, but it is also the way plants get together. Think about it. Plants can’t walk, crawl, swim, or fly. So, how does boy meet girl?

            In order to reproduce, the pollen from the male has to have direct contact with the female (and I don’t mean texting). Pollen grains are carried on the legs of bees and in the beaks of birds, from one flower to another. A few grains become engaged, hitched, and literally stuck on the sticky female flower part called the stigma. Sugar from the stigma fuels the pollen grain to sprout a tube. This pollen tube grows downward through the female part called the pistil and into the chambers that contain tiny bubble shaped eggs. When the tip of the pollen tube finally reaches an egg chamber it releases a male sperm cell. The sperm and the egg unite, and a brand-new cell is formed. This is the beginning of a seed.

            Picture an apple. Before the apple was a fruit containing seeds, it was a very sexy flower. So the next time someone asks you if you know about the birds and the bees, tell them about flower power. They might be surprised how plants get together to make baby plants, which in scientific terms is an interesting example of the process called sexual reproduction.

Pollen is contained in the anthers, which are the six slipper shaped sacs at the end of the stamens. The female stigma is the rounded tip located at the top of the style. The pollen tube is a microscopic tube that grows through the style and into the ovary, which is hidden inside the base of this flower. Hanging down, at the lower right side of the photo are the remains of another flower. The petals and stamen have fallen off revealing the entire pistil: the stigma, style, and the ovary (green structure), which holds the eggs. Photo credit © Alexandra Siy

A bee feeds from a daisy, which is composed of many miniature tube shaped flowers growing together as a central disk. This family of flowers are the most numerous on earth. Photo credit: © Alexandra Siy

Colorful petals enclose the sexual parts of the flower. This close-up shows several of the male stamens growing from the center of the flower. Photo credit © Alexandra Siy

Why not watch some web-spinners do their thing with the help of this stunning and superlative book by Alexandra Siy? You can read more about it here.

Alexandra Siy 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

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The Real Life Legendary Trung Sisters of Ancient Vietnam

3/21/2022

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Cheryl Harness
She’s historical!

Way, way back in the year 111 BCE (Before our Common Era), thousands of Chinese warriors armed with fine iron swords and lethal crossbows, rode and marched south to conquer the little kingdom of Nanyue. To the people living there, the little kingdom was Nam Viet. To us, faraway in their unimaginable future, their land is northern Vietnam.

After the invaders came all sorts of Chinese colonizers. They would build roads and temples plus new trading ports on Nanyue’s coast, where the Red River empties into the South China Sea perfect for China’s merchant ships, on their way to or just returned from India. The Chinese brought their culture, language, and top-down style of government too. It would all be for the glory (and increased wealth) of the empire and for the betterment of the conquered barbarians. You’d think they’d appreciate it!

Not necessarily. Over the next thousand years or so, the ancient Vietnamese would get fed up with their heavy taxes and harsh treatment. They’d rise up more than once to challenge their Chinese overlords. One particular revolt would inspire stories ever after. It took place around the years 39-43 CE. Who led this famous revolt? Two daughters of a military ruler; they lived in the vicinity of the modern city of Hanoi.

The women of ancient Vietnam enjoyed much more social equality than Chinese women. Females worked in business, as public officials and they could inherit property. They could become proficient in the martial arts, as did Trung Hac and her younger sister, Trung Nhi. With their knowledge of armor and swords and with their fury, they raised up an army of 80,000 soldiers! Other women, including their mother, were generals, mounted on war elephants at the head of the Trung Sisters’ army! They liberated fortresses, battled the Chinese, and drove them out of Vietnam!

Alas, this is not the end of the Legend of the Trung Sisters. The warriors of wealthier, more powerful China returned to defeat them in the year 43. And rather than surrender, the sisters took what was for them the more honorable action: They took their own lives. Some stories say they drowned themselves in a river. Some say they disappeared into the clouds. Whatever did happen, the Trung Sisters are remembered in plays, poems, and songs to this very day, as Heroines of Vietnam.

The Trung Sisters, warrior-queens of northern Vietnam, ride into battle on war elephants, circa 41 CE. Painting by Bac Ninh via Wikipedia

Trung Hac and Trung Nhi

Even though the Trưng Sisters' revolt against the Chinese was almost 2,000 years ago, its legacy in Vietnam remains as they are seen as symbols of Vietnamese resistance and freedom. To this day, the people of Vietnam perform memorial ceremonies for the sisters every year at a Hanoi temple named for them. This is a statue of the Trung sisters in Ho Chi Minh City.

In a 1776 letter cautioning her husband to "remember the ladies," Abigail Adams made one of the earliest pleas for women's rights in America. How could she have known, in the years to follow, just how many strong and independent women would step forward to forge new paths in their fight for equality?
From Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman to the less well-known but equally important Belva Lockwood and Maya Ying Lin, Remember the Ladies spans the centuries to provide an engaging look at one hundred outstanding women who have helped shape our great nation. Click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Harness, Cheryl. "The Real Life Legendary Trung Sisters of Ancient Vietnam."
Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 22 May 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/
the-nonfiction-minute/The-Real-Life-Legendary-Trung-Sisters-of-Ancient-Vietnam.

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Music That's Out of This World

3/18/2022

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Amy Nathan
Stories that Surprise and Inspire

When musicians play a lively tune, they often find themselves spontaneously tapping their toes and moving about to the pulsing beat. But when Ellen Ochoa played her flute at work one day in 1993, she couldn’t be spontaneous at all. If she hadn’t made careful plans, she could have been blown about the room, just by playing one long note on her flute. That’s because she was an astronaut working on the U.S. Space Shuttle as it circled Earth more than a hundred miles out in space.

      Gravity is so weak far out in space that astronauts—and any of their gear that isn’t fastened down—will float about inside a space craft. Blowing air into her flute could have created enough force to actually send Ochoa zipping about the space shuttle cabin. So, to keep herself in place as she played, she had to slip her feet into strong loops attached to the floor.

      Dr. Ochoa, now the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, was the first U.S. astronaut to bring a flute on a space mission, but she wasn’t the first to make music in space. Nearly thirty years earlier, in December 1965, two astronauts onboard the Gemini 6 space craft played a musical joke on mission control officials down on Earth. Those astronauts—Walter M. Schirra, Jr., and Thomas P. Stafford—told mission control that they saw an unusual object near their spaceship, a satellite perhaps, moving from North to South. They said they would try to pick up some sound from this mysterious object. Then they used the harmonica and bells they had secretly brought with them on that December mission to surprise folks listening down below by playing “Jingle Bells.”

      In recent years, other astronauts have brought musical instruments on space missions to help lift their spirits, especially those who spend many months on the International Space Station. Like Dr. Ochoa, these astronaut musicians have to make adjustments, such as using a bungee cord to attach an electronic piano keyboard to a pianist’s leg.

Some astronauts have composed music in space, including Canadian Chris Hadfield. On May 6, 2013, he sang the song he wrote—called “I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)”—in a live TV broadcast from the space station as thousands of Canadian schoolchildren sang along with him down on Earth. Click here for a recording of that space-to-Earth performance

Dr. Ellen Ochoa playing her flute on board the U.S. Space Shuttle. Courtesy of NASA

Walter M. Schirra, Jr. Courtesy of NASA

Thomas P. Stafford. Courtesy of NASA

Chris Haddfield. Courtesy of NASA

Learning to play an instrument can be fun and, at times, frustrating. Amy Nathan's lively book helps young people cope with the difficulties involved in learning a new instrument and remaining dedicated to playing and practicing. Teens from renowned music programs - including the Juilliard School's Pre-College Program and Boston University's Tanglewood Institute - join pro musicians in offering practical answers to questions from what instrument to play to where the musical road may lead. For more information, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Nathan, Amy. "Music That's Out of This World." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think
Tank, 11 May 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
Music-Thats-Out-of-This-World.

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Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter

3/17/2022

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Sarah Towle
Putting the Story back in History

Have you ever heard the proverbial saying, “every cloud has a silver lining”? Well, this was certainly the case for the accidental paleontologist, Mary Anning.

Mary Anning was born May 21,1799 to a working-class family living on the southern coast of England. Life was tough for the Annings. Short of food and creature comforts, they also suffered through frequent storms so severe they sometimes had to climb out the second-floor windows of their home to escape flooding.

The Annings weren’t the only things displaced by the angry sea. Over the centuries, rain and wind had washed away layers of earth on the cliffs near their home, exposing petrified bones as well as animal skeletons imprinted in stone. At just 12 years old, Mary found a four-foot skull. Within months, she’d uncovered the entire creature. It turned out to be the fossilized remains of an Ichthyosaur and when a London collector bought it for 23 pounds (more than $2K today!), she was hooked.

Mary even prospected for fossils in winter, when storms raged. It was dangerous work. She narrowly missed being crushed by landslides many times. (Sadly, her trusty terrier Tray was not so lucky.) She found fossils of ammonite and belemnite, which she sold to summer tourists, possibly inspiring the tongue twister, “She sells sea shells by the sea shore.”

But it was Mary’s keen eye for the unique and remarkable that caused her reputation to grow. She constructed the first complete Plesiosaurus as well as a flying reptile called Pterosaur. Despite her limited education, she kept up with all the scientific journals and often wrote to them, challenging findings she did not agree with. Famous archaeologists and paleontologists from Britain and Europe flocked to her Dorset doorstep. But being a woman and working class, Mary never gained acceptance within the all-male, upper-class scientific circles of her day.

Though she did not receive the recognition due her in life, Mary Anning is regarded today as one of the most influential women in the history of science. Her contributions to the field of paleontology remain unsurpassed.

It is said that every cloud brings a silver lining. And, indeed, the wind and rain brought fortune and fame to this accidental female scientist and fossil hunter of the Victorian era.

Mary Anning with her dog, Tray, painted circa 1842.

Above: Letter and drawing from Mary Anning announcing the discovery of a fossil animal now known as Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, 26 December 1823. Right: Lyme Regis, where Mary lived, was once under water, 200 million years ago. That is why there are so many pre-historic fossils of underwater creatures found there. Wikimedia Commons

This is a fossil of a Plesiosaurus, an extinct marine reptile which lived approximately 135 million to 120 million years ago – from the Early to the Middle Jurassic Period. It was first discovered in the winter of 1823 by Mary Anning. It was named the following year by William Conybeare. The name of this reptile means “almost lizard.”

This YouTube will share some of the interesting information Mary Anning was able to learn by the study of dinosaur poop!

Sarah Towle is an award-winning digital storyteller of immersive tales for educational tourism. With her latest project for secondary school students—the History Hero BLAST—she puts the Story back in History, bringing a fictional flair to factual tales of inspirational figures from around the world and throughout time. A blog and future podcast, the HHBLAST welcomes the participation of published and aspiring authors, including young writers. Click here to find out more about how to bring the HHBLAST—and Sarah—to your school!

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How to Go From Being Wanted by the Police to Working for Them

Flower Power

The Real Life Legendary Trung Sisters of Ancient Vietnam

Music That's Out of This World

Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter

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