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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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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Remembering the Christmas Truce of 1914, Albert Moran of the 2nd Queen’s Regiment wrote: “It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere; and…there were those lights — I don’t know what they were. And then they sang Silent Night, Stille Nacht. I shall never forget it. It was one of the highlights of my life.”
From: Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub.
The lights shining on the parapets — the tops of the German trenches — were candles. Up and down the lines of the Western Front, stretching from the shores of Belgium through France, soldiers sang Christmas carols and exchanged Christmas greetings across No Man’s Land. This was the Christmas truce of 1914, four months after the start of World War I.
German and Allied Soldiers Together
The truce began with the Germans. They lit candles on the parapets and on their Christmas trees. They sang Silent Night. Their Christmas spirit inspired the Allies. The British, French, and Belgian soldiers responded first by shooting flares into the sky and then singing Christmas carols.
Christmas Day Football
Signs went up. The British wrote “Merry Christmas.” The Germans wrote “Happy Christmas.” Men left the trenches and crossed No Man’s Land to greet each other. They exchanged gifts of chocolate, cakes, and tobacco and played games of football together. For a brief time, the joy of Christmas brought peace again to the men in the trenches on the Western Front.
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Ben Franklin was the first person to invent and test swim fins.
Growing up in Boston, Ben loved to swim. He wanted to find a way to make swimming easier. When he was eleven, he built a set of wooden swim paddles for his hands, similar to the fins of a fish. The paddles worked, but swimming with them eventually hurt his wrists.
Ben went back to work and made a second set for his feet. He then tried out both sets together. Unfortunately, he found that he could swim better without the paddles. He later found that floating in the water could be easily accomplished when holding onto a kite.
Today, we use flexible swim fins based on the same principle Ben used. We can swim faster and easier with them.
Read about his swim fins in:
Ben Franklin’s Big Splash
By Barb Rosenstock, Illustrated by S.D. Schindler
As an adult, Ben continued inventing practical objects. He invented the Franklin Stove, bifocals, the lightning rod, a musical instrument called the Glass Armonica, the Long Arm for reaching books off a high shelf, the library chair, the second hand clock, and the odometer — only the Glass Armonica is rarely used today.
Read about his inventions in:
Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin
By Gene Barretta
And of course — he discovered that electricity is the same as lightning.
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In January 1925, only a dog sled run could stop a diphtheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska. The necessary medicine was over 600 miles away in Nenana, Alaska. Sled teams raced in relays passing the serum from one team to the next.
Sixty-seven miles from Nome, musher Gunnar Kasson and his dog team led by Balto, took the serum and tried to wait out a blizzard. When the blizzard continued, he had no choice. Gunnar took off heading for the next team, thirty-four miles away. They crossed the Topok River in winds reaching eighty miles an hour. Gunnar couldn’t see. It was up to Balto to find the way. He raced in whiteout conditions, over ice, and in darkness with the temperature falling to -36 degrees.
When they reached the relay station there were no lights on and their replacement team was asleep. Exhausted, Gunnar, Balto, and their team had to keep going. They had to reach Nome, twenty-one miles away.
On February 2, Balto led the team into Nome bringing the lifesaving serum. He and Gunnar Kassen became heroes overnight. Newspapers across the country told their story the next day.
A statue stands in Central Park in New York commemorating Balto and the 1925 serum run. On the plaque are these words: Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxins 660 miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief stricken Nome in the winter of 1925.
Images Courtesy of Wiki Commons
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During the Great Depression, Americans needed cheering up. They found Seabiscuit, the little racehorse with the big heart.
Seabiscuit, born in 1933, was the grandson of Man o’ War, one of the greatest racehorses. His original owners expected that he would be a winning Thoroughbred too. But he was small for a racehorse, had a bit of a bad temper, and preferred sleeping to running. He lost his first seventeen races, eventually winning some, but was inconsistent. Then, Charles and Marcela Howardbought him and hired the right trainer, Tom Smith.
Tom Smith
Tom Smith treated him gently. He let him sleep when he wanted to, fed him better quality hay, and talked to him in a quiet voice. Tom even moved, Pumpkin, a yellow horse, Pocatell, a spotted dog, and, Jo Jo, a spider monkey into Seabiscuit’s stall. The animals seemed to calm him. Then Tom found just the right jockey, Red Pollard.
Red Pollard
Seabiscuit liked Red right away. With Red aboard, he won big races. Soon, he was featured in popular magazines and movie newsreels. Americans loved him. He was like them, overcoming obstacles to succeed. When he won a race, Americans felt they were winning too.
Seabiscuit’s greatest challenge came in 1938, when he faced the tall, sleek Thoroughbred racehorse War Admiral. In 1937, War Admiral won horse racing’s highest honor, the Triple Crown. Seabiscuit, a four-year-old that year could not compete against War Admiral in the Triple Crown events, only for three-year-olds. But Americans wanted to see the two horses race.
They met on November 1, 1938. Red Pollard was injured and could not ride that day. He advised, George Woolf, his replacement how best to ride Seabiscuit. His advice worked. After running head to head for a good part of the race, Seabiscuit sped away from War Admiral to win in an exciting finish.
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Watch them in action in this exceptional video from PBS’s American Experience:
President Franklin Roosevelt’s Scottish terrier, Fala, appeared in newspaper photos around the world. He was so well-known that the Secret Service gave him the code name “The Informer.” When people spotted him,they knew the president was close by. Fala traveled everywhere with the president by ship, train, and car.
Posing for photographers
Fala was born on April 7, 1940. A gift to President Roosevelt, he moved into the White House in November that year. The president named him Murray the Outlaw of Falahill after a Scottish ancestor. But the puppy was too small for such a big name. The president immediately shortened it.
An exceptionally friendly dog, Fala received lots of attention. He liked to show off his tricks to White House visitors: rolling over, jumping up, speaking, lying down, and his favorite, begging. But he never let the attention go to his head. He was a down-to-earth dog.
Fala liked to dig holes in the White House lawn, burying and digging up his bones. And he was always ready to chase the White House squirrels. At night, he slept beside the president’s bed. In the morning he enjoyed a dog biscuit when the president ate his breakfast.
He received lots of fan mail, especially from children. He starred in two short films produced by MGM. His biography, The True Story of Fala was published when he was only two years old. He was also named an honorary army private. And he was given the title President of Barkers for Britain. He had campaigned to have American dog owners donate money to help the British people in World War II.
At Hyde Park with the president and a caretaker’s daughter
Fala died on April 5, 1952. He is buried in the rose garden at Hyde Park. In 1997, a memorial to President Roosevelt was dedicated near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. A statue of Fala is forever at President Roosevelt’s side.
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.
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