In Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors? The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, author Tanya Lee Stone tells how Elizabeth Blackwell’s dream to become a doctor was finally realized. Elizabeth, the first American female to receive a medical degree was rejected by every medical school she applied to, until…
Elizabeth Blackwell
…the students at New York’s Geneva Medical College, thinking their teachers were only joking when they asked if a woman should be admitted, voted to let Elizabeth in. What a surprise when she showed up. Elizabeth outsmarted the entire class graduating with the highest grades in 1849.
Geneva Medical College
After graduation, Elizabeth was unable to find employment. It seemed that no one wanted to hire a female physician. Elizabeth sailed to Europe for additional training and returned to New York City where she opened her own medical practice.
Elizabeth also ran a free clinic teaching hygiene to poor women and children. With her sister Emily, the third American female to receive a medical degree, Elizabeth opened The New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Elizabeth later opened her own medical school at the Infirmary training woman as doctors.
Elizabeth Blackwell persevered and lived her dream, leading the way for American women physicians.
Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell is a beautifully told picture book biography with engaging illustrations by Marjorie Priceman for children.
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Wilma Rudoph overcame polio as a child to become the fastest female sprinter in the world. She was the first woman to win three Olympic gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
Born premature at 4 and 1/2 pounds, Wilma contracted polio at age four. She wore a brace on her left leg and worked with a physical therapist. Through sheer determination, Wilma walked without the brace by age nine. By age eleven, she no longer needed an orthopedic shoe.
Wilma, one of twenty-two children, loved basketball. With two strong legs, she became a star player at her Tennessee high school. Tennessee State University track and field coach Ed Temple watched Wilma in action. He knew at once that she was a gifted athlete. He first invited her to participate in the Tennessee State summer track and field program. From then on she trained with him.
In 1956, at age sixteen, Wilma became the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team competing in the Summer Games in Melbourne, Australia. She won a bronze medal in the 4 x 100 m relay.
Wilma raced again in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome. She won and set records in the 200 m dash and the 4 x 100 m relay and won the 100 m dash. Nicknamed “The Tornado,” at age twenty, Wilma became the “fastest woman in the world.” She was the first woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games — the first Olympic Games to be televised.
Coach Ed Temple and team, Rome, 1960
“I always had the worst starts in the history of sprinters because of my size [5’11”]. I was the tallest sprinter that ever came from the United States. In my first 35-45 yards, I was never in the race so I was always happy they didn’t have 35-45 yard races. The farther I ran, the faster I became. I could always accelerate at the end and that was the key to the success of Wilma Rudolph, never the start.”
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Jacques Cousteau, a man of many talents, was a scientist, inventor, naturalist, explorer, writer, and filmmaker. He had a profound sense of wonder and curiosity about the world. An expert on sea life, he championed its preservation.
When Jacques was a child in France, he loved movies. He saved his allowance and bought a movie camera. With it, he filmed his own movies. They starred his friends, family, and even himself. Later, Jacques served in the French Navy. With his camera along, he traveled the world filming everything he saw.
In 1936, a friend gave Jacques a pair of swimgoggles. Jacques swam underwater with them. For the first time he saw brilliantly colored fish and fascinating underwater plants and animals. But he could only stay underwater for a brief time. He wanted the ability to breathe and explore freely.
Jacques worked with an engineer and in 1943, he invented Scuba — Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Now he could breathe underwater like a fish. With his camera protected by a waterproof case he filmed the underwater world.
Jacques converted a former Navy mine-sweeper into an ocean going laboratory. He named his ship Calypso. Jacques traveled the world exploring and filming underwater. He captured sea life in over 115 films and in 50 books. He shared his adventures with people everywhere.
Young Carl Sagan looked up at the night sky and wondered, “What are stars?” A question he seemed to ask over and over.
His mother took him to the library for the answer. At first, the librarian misunderstood Carl and gave him a book about the stars in Hollywood. But when he finally had the right book in his hands, it was magic. Carl learned that our Sun is a star. And all stars are suns, but they are so far away that they look like little points of light.
Carl searched the night sky for the planets in our solar system. He wished that he could walk on the surface of Mars, like his hero, John Carter, in the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. And Carl wondered: did life exist outside our solar system? In our galaxy? In other galaxies?
Mars — The Red Planet
When Carl was four years old, his parents took him to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, not far from his Bensonhurst, Brooklyn home. There Carl saw wonders of the future: a mechanical man, a moving map, and even an early television. The possibilities for science and technology seemed endless to him.
The interior of an early television at the 1939 World’s Fair
When Carl grew up, he never stopped asking questions about space and its mysteries. He became a scientist with a PhD. in astronomy and astrophysics. He participated in the Voyager program that sent two unmanned spacecrafts on a journey to distant parts of our solar system. Voyager I and Voyager II sent back pictures and information to Earth that helped us learn more about the planets in our solar system.
Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan taught us about space with his many books and his PBS television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. He told us that, “The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.” This vastness inspired Carl’s curiosity as a child about planets and stars and galaxies that he later shared with all of us.
A wonderful book for children: Star Stuff: Carl Sagan and theMysteries of the Cosmos by Stephanie Roth Sisson tells the story of Carl Sagan full of curiosity and wonder who reached for the stars.
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On an August day in 1963, under the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial gospel singer Mahalia Jackson told Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to “Tell them about the dream Martin. Tell them about the dream.”
Mahalia Jackson Sings At The March On Washington
Mahalia Jackson was a close friend of Dr. King and an important voice for the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King had spoken to Mahalia about his dream that all Americans would someday be judged by their character and not the color of their skin. On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Mahalia sang the spiritual, “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned,” a favorite of Dr. King. When she had finished, Dr. King spoke.
Dr. King Speaking Before A Crowd
Dr. King read from the speech he had prepared with the help of speech writer Clarence B. Jones. At about eleven minutes into his speech, Mahalia asked him to tell the people about his dream for America, the one she remembered hearing. Dr. King stopped reading, paused for awhile, and then spoke the words we know as his “I Have A Dream” speech — one of the most powerful and influential speeches in American history.
In their book, Martin & Mahalia: His Words, Her Song, Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkey tell the story of how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahalia Jackson’s friendship changed the course of history.
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Listen to Dr. King speak at the March on Washington. At about 12:00 minutes into the video, you will hear a long pause and then Dr. King will begin the “I Have A Dream” portion of his speech.
Galileo Galilei, lived in Pisa home of the tall leaning tower — just right for an experiment challenging Greek philosopher Aristotle.
View of Pisa from the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Aristotle said that a heavier object falling from the same height, at the same time, would travel faster than a lighter object. Galileo disagreed. He said both objects would reach the ground about the same time.
It is said that at the top of the tower, Galileo dropped two spherical objects, one heavier than the other, perhaps a cannonball and a musketball. Both hit the ground at about the same time, disproving Aristotle’s law of gravity. Whether this actually occurred, or it was instead a thought experiment, Galileo wrote about it in his book, On Motion.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
In Pisa, disproving Aristotle did not win fans for Galileo, and he was no longer asked to teach at the university there. But he wasn’t done challenging Aristotle. This time the challenge took place in the sky above.
The Dutch invented a telescope that made faraway objects appear closer. Galileo knew he could improve the Dutch telescope. When he did, he discovered that he could see the actual surface of the moon. It was not at all as Aristotle described it — completely smooth. Instead, the surface had peaks and valleys.
Galileo and his telescope
With his telescope, he also discovered the largest of Jupiter’s four moons. He published his discoveries in his book, Starry Messenger. Europeans learned about Earth’s moon and Jupiter’s moon, and Galileo became famous. He was invited by the Grand Duke of Tuscany to live in Florence and spend his days searching the sky for new discoveries.
What he discovered again challenged Aristotle. Aristotle said that our solar system was Earth centered. The sun and other planets revolved around the Earth.
What Galileo observed through his telescope made him realize that Aristotle was wrong. The sun was at the center of our solar system and the earth, like the other planets, revolved around it.
Unfortunately, disputing Aristotle again won him no fans. And finally landed him under house arrest for the rest of his life. But later scientists proved him right, the sun is the center of our solar system.
When I visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I was amazed that I had no sensation of leaning once inside the tower. Even at the top, it felt as if the tower stood perfectly straight.
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Award winning author, Katherine Applegate, tells the story of Ivan, a western lowland gorilla. Ivan lived alone in a shopping mall’s concrete enclosure for twenty-seven years. Her book, Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla is beautifully written and illustrated.
Ivan was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (known then as the Belgian Congo) in 1962. Poachers captured Ivan when he was about six months old. He and a young female gorilla were sent to the U.S. in 1964. At first, Ivan and the female gorilla, named Burma, lived with a family in Tacoma, Washington. Soon, Burma died of pneumonia.
When Ivan grew too large to handle, he was moved to the shopping mall. He lived in an enclosure at the B&I Circus Store near a few other wild animals. Ivan, the only gorilla, became B&I’s most popular attraction.
Ivan could not interact with other gorillas. He did not have a natural habitat to live and play in. Ivan only had a tire swing, a TV, and a window to watch the visitors staring back at him. Ivan lived this way for twenty-seven years. Until…
…a National Geographic documentary titled The Urban Gorilla showed how Ivan lived. That’s when a change began. People stood up. They protested the conditions that Ivan lived in. They talked to the media. They wrote letters to government officials. And it worked — along with the bankruptcy of the B&I Circus Store.
Finally, Ivan had his freedom. He was moved to Zoo Atlanta in 1994, to a natural habitat with other gorillas. For the first time since he was moved to B&I, Ivan experienced the outdoors. It took him awhile to adjust to his new life. But when he did, Ivan loved to play with the female and younger gorillas there.
Ivan lived at Zoo Atlanta for eighteen years. He died in 2012, at fifty years old, a long life for a gorilla.
Statue in Tacoma, Washington
Images of Ivan, Courtesy of Wiki Commons
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First in flight — a sheep, a rooster, and a duck flew as the first passengers in a hot air balloon. Traveling a bit more than two miles, the balloon drifted along for eight minutes and reached a height of 1,500 feet. The three intrepid fliers were later found unharmed, but it is unknown if they asked for a second trip.
The creators of the hot air balloon, French brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier were amateur inventors who advanced human flight. After several experiments showing that hot air would lift envelopes of taffeta, a silky material, the brothers constructed a balloon that they believed would fly when air underneath was heated by burning straw and wool.
Before a crowd in the town of Annonay, on June 4, 1783, their balloon flew to a height of 3,000 feet and landed a mile and a half away. With the success of the flight, came a request from French King Louis XVI for a demonstration at his home, Versailles.
But a storm damaged the balloon, and the king insisted that the brothers make a new one — fast! Construction took four days and sleepless nights to complete.
Joseph and Etienne chose passengers for the flight — a sheep, similar to humans in physiology; a rooster, a flightless bird; and a duck as their control animal. Now they could test the effect of altitude on the sheep and rooster. The duck, of course, had no problem with altitude.
On September 19, 1783, a sunny day in the Versailles gardens, King Louis, his wife Marie Antoinette, the American Ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, and a crowd of enthusiastic Parisians watched the animals float away in the balloon making history.
Now, Joseph and Etienne were ready to try a manned flight. On November 21, 1783, two daring men sailed off in the brothers’ balloon traveling twenty minutes over five miles. But it was a sheep, a rooster, and a duck, with the help of the Montgolfier Brothers, who first led the way to human flight.
The Montgolfier Brothers Balloon
(KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA) London Science Museum
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A Book for Kids:
Hot Air: The Mostly True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride
Hachiko, an Akita dog waited at the Shibuya Station in Tokyo, Japan, for his owner, Professor Hidesaburo Ueno, to return each day from the University of Tokyo. On May 21, 1925, Hachiko waited to greet the professor, but he did not return. He had died that day at work.
Hachiko, eighteen-months-old, lived now with new owners. But every day, he waited in the same spot at the Shibuya Station for Professor Ueno to arrive by train. He waited for over nine years.
In 1932, one of Professor Ueno’s former students, Hirokichi Saito, learned about Hachiko. He wrote articles about the dog’s loyalty to the professor. When a Tokyo newspaper published one article, Japanese children and adults read about the faithful dog. They brought him treats and petted him while he waited at the station.
In April 1934, Hachiko watched the unveiling of a statue erected at Shibuya Station — a statue of him. He died on March 8, 1935. His grave sits beside that of Professor Ueno. He is known in Japan as chuken Hachiko meaning faithful dog. On April 8th each year a ceremony is held at Shibuya Station to honor him.
Hachiko’s statue at Shibuya Station, a favorite meeting spot
A second statue replaced the original one, melted down during WWII. The son of the original artist designed the statue that stands today. A third statue was dedicated at the University of Toyko on March 8, 2015, the 80th anniversary of Hachiko’s death. It shows Hachiko greeting Professor Ueno — together again.
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