Blog Archives

Proof Positive: Ballyhoo Confirms the Safety of the Brooklyn Bridge

5/31/2022

Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

On May 24, 1883, The Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public. It took 14 years, $15 million and many lives to link Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Before work was begun, its designer, John A. Roebling, was making final surveys of the site. A docking ferryboat nudged a piling near him, driving a dirty nail into his foot. He died of tetanus 24 days later. His son, Washington Roebling took over the engineering project.

To sink the bridge tower foundations down to bedrock, workers excavated river silt inside two open-bottomed 3000 ton iron bases, caissons. High-pressure air pumps kept river water out. As the caissons were dug deeper beneath the river surface, air pressure grew higher; work became more dangerous. When they were digging near seventy feet deep, a few workers walked through the caisson air-lock at the surface, across the street to the tavern, and dropped down dead. The cause: nitrogen embolism—gas dissolved in blood under high pressure expanding rapidly at normal pressure. Scuba divers call it “the bends.” Washington Roebling, himself, was crippled this way but monitored the project through a telescope from his bed upriver. His brilliant wife, Emily Warren Roebling, managed construction on-site. Twenty to 30 bridge workers were killed in construction from nitrogen embolism, being struck by falling material, and by falls from the towers.

It was the longest suspension bridge in the world, with a river-span of 1595.5 feet. Anyone could cross: 1¢ for a pedestrian, 5¢ for a horse and rider, 10¢ for a horse and wagon, 5¢ for cows, 2¢ for sheep or hogs.

Only six days after its opening, the bridge was crowded with walkers when a rumor started that the bridge was collapsing! Strollers stampeded, killing 12, injuring 35 in the panic. Was the great bridge safe?

Months later, May 17, 1884, the great huckster and self-promoter P. T. Barnum set out to prove the solidity of the bridge “in the interest of the dear public.” Across the broad bridge paraded 21 elephants with Barnum’s famous African elephant Jumbo in the rear. They were followed by seven Bactrian camels (two-hump) and ten dromedaries (one-hump). Since elephant and camel fares had never been specified, no tolls were paid. The New York Times reported “…it seemed as if Noah’s Ark were emptying itself over on Long Island.”

If any doubts remained, Barnum’s ballyhoo proof put them to rest.

Bird's-eye view of the grand display of fireworks on the Brooklyn Bridge's opening night. Brooklyn Museum

Jumbo was not forgotten. The cover of a 2004 The New Yorker magazine offers a whimsical picture of a herd of elephants crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.

A Matthew Brady photograph of Phineas Taylor Barnum taken around 1860.

Jumbo, billed as the "Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race," was the pride of P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth.

The elephants and a lot of fearless pedestrians prepare to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on May 17, 1884.

Workers cut away part of the steel fencing allowing panic-stricken citizens to escape from the bridge's promenade to the trolley tracks that went down the center of the bridge.

The story of how Jumbo was brought from Africa to the United States is a fascinating one -- Google it. In the meantime, you might want to have a look at Jan Adkin's fascinating description of how people often have to use brains rather than brawn to move heavy items.

Jan Adkins 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
Adkins, Jan. "Proof Positive: Ballyhoo Confirms the Safety of the Brooklyn
     Bridge." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 7 June 2018,
     www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
     Proof-Positive-Ballyhoo-Confirms-the-Safety-of-the-Brooklyn-Bridge.

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Memorial Day

5/30/2022

1 Comment

Kerrie Logan Hollihan
Teaching the Power of Wonder

Often we think of Memorial Day as a day for parades, picnics, and opening swimming pools, but it’s a lot more than a day for celebrating summer’s beginning. In fact, Memorial Day got its start way back during the Civil War, when women from both North and South decorated soldier graves with flowers. This practice spread across the country, and in 1873 New York State was the first to established Memorial Day as a state holiday.

In 1887, the US government made May 30 a Memorial Day holiday for government workers, and most Northern states followed suit. But in the South, this tradition became known as Confederate Memorial Day, which is still celebrated in some of the states that formed the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1971, Congress declared the fourth Monday in May as Memorial Day, a national holiday.

Well into the 1900s, many called this day “Decoration Day,” and families visited cemeteries to tidy up family graves and plant them with flowers. When American soldiers died during World War I, the celebration evolved from remembering Civil War soldiers to memorialize all our soldiers who fought or died in war. Wherever we are on Memorial Day, we Americans are asked to observe a moment of silence at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, because it is the time when most Americans are enjoying their freedoms on the national holiday

Across the country this Memorial Day, tiny flags will mark soldier graves, and solemn ceremonies will mark their sacrifice. The US President or Vice President will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. Often “Taps” ring out from bugles in memory of the dead.

Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

My grandfather, a World War I bugler, played taps for years at a national cemetery in Illinois with Civil War graves of Northern and Confederate soldiers. Grandpa bugled the “echo” from afar as taps was played to close every Memorial Day ceremony.

Grandpa is buried in this cemetery now, and someone else plays taps on Memorial Day. I live far away, but every year I celebrate this day by remembering him. Are there people you think about on Memorial Day?

In preparation for the Memorial Day ceremony, a captain passes a flag to her son for placement at a headstone in the Rock Island Arsenal National Cemetery in Illinois.(Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Sean Riley),

Kerrie's grandfather blowing taps

The gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery are decorated by U.S. flags on Memorial Day weekend.

Kerrie Hollihan's Theodore Roosevelt for Kids brings to life this fascinating man, an American giant whose flaws were there for all the world to see. Twenty-one hands-on activities offer a useful glimpse at Roosevelt’s work and times. Readers will create a Native American toy, explore the effects of erosion, go on a modern big game hunt with a camera, and make felted teddy bears. The text includes a time line, online resources, and reading list for further study. And through it all, readers will appreciate how one man lived a “Bully!” life and made the word his very own.

MLA 8 Citation
Hollihan, Kerrie Logan. "Memorial Day." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 25
May 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/Memorial-Day.

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The Architect Who Hated Straight Lines

5/27/2022

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Roxie Munro
Visual Thinker

José Batlló’s house in Barcelona, Spain, was looking a little shabby. So, Batlló turned to Antoni Gaudí, the city’s most inventive architect—and got a house that astonished all Barcelona.

Its walls, studded with glittering blue and green shards, billowed like the sea. Some windows were egg-shaped, others had balconies resembling giant masks. The roof was more fanciful. Eerily iridescent, colors shifted from bluish green to golden orange. With scale-like tiles, it reminded people of a dinosaur’s backbone. Because of the oval windows, people called it the House of Yawns. Others, noticing columns that looked like shinbones, christened it House of Bones.

Born in 1852 into a family of coppersmiths, Gaudí grew up in a small town near Barcelona. As a boy he roamed the countryside making sketches, living in his own world of discovery and fantasy. Becoming an architect was his childhood dream.

He quickly developed a style entirely his own, drawing inspiration from nature rather than anything man-made. He was disdainful of straight lines. “They belong to men,” he used to say. “Curved lines belong to God.”

Near Casa Battló stands another Gaudi creation: Casa Mila, a six-story apartment building which, because of its soft swelling shapes, has been likened to human lips, pastries, and a hornet’s nest. Still, many people love it.

Among Gaudí’s accomplishments is what may be the world’s quirkiest park: Park Güell, a kind of fairy-tale fantasy, with two dancing gazelles flanking the entrance, a giant tile-encrusted lizard, and a roof topped with upturned coffee cups.

Deeply religious, Gaudí spent his last twenty years working on Sagrada Familia, a cathedral unlike any other, with eighteen towers symbolizing the apostles, evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and Christ. It became such an obsession with Gaudí that he set up residence at the worksite. Once something of a dandy, he became increasingly careless with his appearance. This neglect may have contributed to his death.

On a spring evening in 1926, taking one last loving look at a newly completed Sagrada Familia tower, he stepped off the sidewalk and was hit by a streetcar and knocked unconscious. Because of wretched clothing he was taken for a tramp and not immediately brought to a hospital. Gaudí was finally recognized, but was beyond help and died three days later.

The surprisingly different exterior of the Battló house. Art by Roxie Munro

Antoni Gaudi in 1878. Wikimedia

The roof (left) and the interior of the Battló house reflect the architect's unique ideas. Art by Roxie Munro

Gaudi's Park Güell is one of the most famous sights of Barcelona. welcoming more than 4 million visitors a year.
Art by Roxie Munro.

The tile-encrusted salamander in Park Güell has become a symbol of Gaudí's work. Wikimedia

Check your favorite bookstore for Roxie's latest book coming out on February 6th. Rodent Rascals has already garnered three starred reviews with Roxie's fabulous actual-sized artwork accompanied by fascinating facts about 21 rodents who share our world.
Roxie is a member of Authors on Call where she can visit your classroom and show you her work herself. Read more about here here.

MLA 8 Citation
Munro, Roxie. "The Architect Who Hated Straight Lines." Nonfiction Minute`, iNK
Think Tank, 31 Jan. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
the-architect-who-hated-straight-lines.

7 Comments

Flat Paper Flight

5/26/2022

1 Comment

Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

Since he was a boy, John Collins has been fascinated by paper airplanes. Who isn’t? Most of us have folded the familiar dart-shaped classroom airplane. Good fun. And it’s science.

Big and small aircraft depend on the same four principles: weight (of the craft), drag (wind resistance over the craft), lift (upward force from air passing over the craft’s flight surfaces), and thrust (what pushes the craft). A 747 Jumbo Jet and a paper airplane depend on the same forces.

     Collins wanted to fold this aeroscience into paper. But how to build (fold) complex principles into something so small?

     He found the ancient Japanese art of origami and used its sculptural tricks. He created paper aircraft that do astonishing things. One comes back in a horizontal circle, like a boomerang. Another flies up, turns over and comes back vertically. One actually flaps its wings as it glides slowly. To John, they’re all working science experiments: every flight leads to some knowledge and to new ideas for tweaking the aircraft so it flies better.

     John Collins became “The Paper Airplane Guy.”  He believes that scientific research happens everywhere, every day. He says, “It doesn’t take computers, lab coats, microscopes and the like. It takes a hunger to know. Science is just the structured way we find stuff out. The science you can do with a simple sheet of paper is no less important than what can be done with an electron microscope.”

     On February 26, 2012, John and Joe Ayoob stood in a big, windless aircraft hangar with John’s best-so-far flyer, Suzanne. (He named it after his wife.) Joe was a professional football quarterback who learned to throw Suzanne hard but steady, not like a football but like a delicate piece of origami. Joe threw Suzanne up, up, and it dived down to fly – really fly – 226 feet and 10 inches, the Guinness World Record for distance thrown.

     John wanted paper airplanes to welcome young people into science. He started a National Paper Airplane Contest called the Kickstarter Project with a big prize for anyone who throws Suzanne farther than Joe. Or you could throw your own better, more aeronautically elegant paper airplane. It was a simple, scientific task. Every paper airplane and every flight would be a new experiment, just as important as the Wright Brothers’ Kittyhawk flight. Science isn’t just geeks and labs; we’re all part of it. The project didn’t get support and ended. John would like to direct people to  www.TheNationalPaperAirplaneContest.com. Air and Science museums across the country will be hosting events. The museums get three Fly for Fun Days; STEM education days that teach basic flight concepts and skills for the national contest.

Some of John's amazing folded planes

If you would like to build your own championship plane Suzanne, begin here with the step of step instructions.

John Collins with one of his planes whizzing past him.

STEP2-Diagonal fold

STEP 3-Unfolded

STEP 5 – Unfolded

STEP 4- Diagonal the other way.

STEP 6 - Fold side to the diagonal

STEP 7 - Fold other side to the diagonal

STEP 8 - Fold across center of diagonal

STEP 9 - Fold the crease

STEP 11 - Fold in half

STEP 13 - One wing done

STEP 10 - Fold the other crease

STEP 12 - Top edge and inner touch for wings

STEP 14 - Both wings done

Step 15 - Done! Note accuracy and dihedral ( good word to research!)

Jan Adkins 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
Adkins, Jan. "Flat Paper Flight." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 9 Apr.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/flat-paper-flight.

1 Comment

America's Rarest Pine Tree

5/25/2022

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Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
Nature’s Animal Ambassador

When we think of endangered species, we are likely to think “cheetah” or “grizzly bear” or some other big, familiar, and in-the-news animal. But unfortunately, just about any sort of living thing can enter the list of endangered life. Scientists fear that the continuing elimination of habitat by humans and the changing climate could result in the loss of a million or more species in the foreseeable future.

The Torrey pine, native to the coast of southern California, is on the endangered list. Before the city of San Diego and its suburbs developed, woodlands featuring this species thrived along the nearby rocky coast. The frequent cool afternoon fog helped the trees tolerate a climate where rain is scarce during the summer months.

Now, largely because of human development, this beautiful tree with open, spreading branches is critically endangered. There are just two areas left where these trees grow in the wild. Fewer than 5,000 individual trees live on tiny Santa Rosa Island off the Santa Barbara coast and in the Torrey Pines State Reserve on the San Diego coastline.

In addition to having an ever-shrinking natural habitat, the Torrey Pines have recently struggled to survive an onslaught of the five-spined engraver beetle, which bores through the bark and lays its eggs in the cambium layer of the tree. The beetle attack can result in shutting off the supply of water and nutrients to the tree, killing it. Healthy trees may be able to survive, but drought can weaken a tree, making it vulnerable to attack.

Torrey pines do not replenish themselves easily. They take their time to produce seeds. The male flowers develop in February as clusters of reddish finger-like structures on lower branches. Their pollen fertilizes the female blossoms, which look like tiny red cones. It takes about 3 ½ years for the cones to grow and the seeds to develop fully. Then the cones release seeds, but some may remain until the cone itself drops from the tree as long as ten years after pollination.

The Torrey Pines State Reserve works hard to protect these rare trees, but it may be too late. The increasing heat and dryness brought about by climate change could weaken the remaining wild trees, resulting in beetle damage and early death. Let’s hope these hardy beauties find a way to survive these difficult challenges.

The Torrey Pines State Reserve features a dramatic red-rock coastline where the Torrey pines nestle among the cliffs. Courtesy of California State Parks, 2019

You can see the abundant clusters of male pollen-producing “flowers” on these branches. Photo by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent photo

These dead branches are the result of a beetle attack on a Torrey pine in the Reserve. The Reserve has been successful at easing the attacks by luring the beetles into pheromone traps. Courtesy of California State Parks, 2019

The Torrey cones are stout and heavy, typically 3 to 6 inches long and broad, and contain large, hard-shelled, but edible, pine nuts. Photo by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent.

In The Call of the Osprey, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent's engrossing narrative nonfiction and William Muñoz's dramatic photos offer a stunning exploration of the mercury pollution in Montana that causes harm to humans and ospreys alike.
"Patent's lucid prose and Muñoz's clear color photos work together to document the efforts of the Montana Osprey Project... An exciting addition to a stellar series."
—School Library Journal

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Proof Positive: Ballyhoo Confirms the Safety of the Brooklyn Bridge

Memorial Day

The Architect Who Hated Straight Lines

Flat Paper Flight

Jan Adkins 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.

America's Rarest Pine Tree

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