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Coronation

Imagine you are in a beautiful old church in England.  The year is 1827 and you are at the coronation, or royal crowning ceremony, of a new monarch.  All around you, rich people are dressed in beautiful clothing.  As the music starts, in enters the princess who is about to be crowned queen.  She is only 18 years old and as she enters the room, you can see that she is very short.  But she is poised and calm.  She has the confidence of someone who knew this is her path.  She is Queen Victoria.

Early Life

Queen Victoria was born in 1819 in London, England.  When she was born, her name was Alexandrina Victoria, but she was called “Victoria” as her nickname.  Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent and Strathearn and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who was the sister of the King of Belgium, Leopold the First.  

Sadly, when Victoria was only eight months old her father died. After that, her mother became a domineering influence in her life. Domineering means bossy and controlling She was raised by her mother and her mother’s accountant, John Conroy.  Because her family was wealthy, Victoria had a very privileged childhood.  This means as a child, she had very nice things and lived in luxury. She had the best food, the nicest clothes, everything you’d imagine a princess to have. But Victoria was said to be kind, warm-hearted and lively. She loved dolls and had over 100 of them in her playroom!  

Despite all of her toys and nice things, Victoria was not allowed to play with other children in a normal way, so she had very few friends.  This made her sad.  But her best friend and constant companion was her nanny, Louise Lehzen. Victoria’s nanny taught her at the Royal Palace.  She learned all the subjects that a wealthy child who may one day become queen would need to learn, including languages and politics.  Victoria had a talent for drawing and painting, and Governess Louise encouraged her to pursue these hobbies.  Victoria also really enjoyed journal writing.  She started writing as a child and continued to write in her journal for the rest of her life.

While she was growing up, Victoria’s mother and John Conroy kept a very close eye on Victoria. They knew that she may one day become the queen of England, and they wanted to keep their influence over her to themselves.  Influence means to control and impact.  While she was a child, they never let Victoria be alone without one of them present.  Victoria slept in the same room as her mother until she was 18 so that she wasn’t on her own.  Her mother and John Conroy were worried that if Victoria was left alone, that other people might try to influence her and might turn her against them. 

Despite her mother’s influence, Victoria had a feisty temperament.  This means that she had high energy and was very independent in nature.  She had a big personality but physically Victoria was famously very short.  As an adult, she was only 4 feet 11 inches tall!

At the time of her birth, Victoria was fifth in line to the throne.  But over the course of her childhood and early teenage years, Victoria’s uncles, her father’s three brothers, all died without having living children.  This meant that when Victoria turned 18, in 1837, she knew she would become the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. 

Queen of England

One of the first things that Queen Victoria did after becoming queen was to claim her own control and authority over her life and her rule.  She moved out of her mother’s bedroom into her own room.  She distanced herself from her mother and John Conroy, which means that she broke away from them and their constant advice and influence.  She had seen how much they were controlling her and trying to tell her what to do and she didn’t like it. 

Instead, the young Queen Victoria turned to her friend, the prime minister at the time, Lord Melbourne, to teach her about government and her role as a queen.  A Prime Minister is similar to a President in England.

Lord Melbourne was Queen Victoria’s first prime minister, who served for 7 years from 1834 to 1841. Lord Melbourne helped teach Queen Victoria about the details of being a queen and the role she plays in government at the time.  Lord Melbourne acted as the Queen’s advisor on politics and was the person she could speak to openly and get advice during the early years of her reign.

Marriage

In 1840, Victoria married her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. She met Albert when she was just 16.  Since Victoria was queen, Albert couldn’t propose to her. So she proposed to him on October 15, 1839!

At first, the British public didn’t like Prince Albert because he was not from the United Kingdom, but from Germany.  At first, he was not allowed to be involved in politics at all.  But eventually, people realized that he was a good person and Queen Victoria started to rely on his advice and he helped her to rule. 

During the early part of their marriage, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert fought quite a bit.  They both had strong personalities and didn’t like to be wrong.  However, they loved each other very much and were committed to being successful together. Over time they started to get along better and Prince Albert started to give Queen Victoria advice and helped her make difficult decisions during her reign. And together they had nine children!  Their palace was a busy and noisy place with so many kids. 

Prince Albert also brought a number of German traditions to the United Kingdom that became popular for the British people.  This included the tradition of putting up a Christmas tree at the holidays.  Prince Albert had put a Christmas tree up for a celebration at their royal home and a picture was taken of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their children in front of the tree.  The picture was in a popular newspaper at the time and afterward many people in the UK and other parts of the British Empire started putting up Christmas trees. 

Victorian England

Life in Britain during the 19th century was known as Victorian England because of Victoria’s long reign and the stamp it and her personality placed on the country. 

During Queen Victoria’s reign, Great Britain grew its industry more than ever before.  They built railways, bridges, underground sewers and power or energy networks throughout much of the empire. This is also known as industrialization. 

During her reign, Britain also expanded the size of its territories, doubling in size and taking over Canada, Australia, India and a number of other places in Africa and the South Pacific. The Queen loved the British Empire and felt that it was for the good of the world that Britain grew to take over so much of it. Because Britain controlled so many different parts of the world during her reign, people started saying a famous expression: “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

During Queen Victoria’s reign, she also supported scientists to do research and learn more about the world.  There were great advances in science as a result, including Darwin’s theory of evolution, the telegraph, and the popular press, or common newspapers. The main cities in England grew very large and more and more people learned to read. The “Victorian-era” was a great time of development for the British people. 

However, not everyone always liked the decisions that Queen Victoria made.  During her life, there were seven assassination attempts made on Victoria’s life.  This means that her enemies tried to kill her so that she would no longer be in charge. But they did not succeed in their attempts.

After several years of suffering from a sore stomach, Victoria’s beloved Albert died of typhoid fever in 1861 at the age of 42. Victoria was very sad.  She had a plaster cast made of his hand and she kept it by her side for the rest of her life.  She also went into a 25-year seclusion, which means hiding on her own.  For the rest of her reign, she wore black.

Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901.  When she died, she had been the longest-reigning woman monarch in the world.

Conclusion

While Queen Victoria was queen her country saw great cultural expansion, advances in industry, science, and communications, and the building of railways and the London Underground.  And the expansion of the British Empire during her reign continues to have a great impact on the world and the cultures of the various places that were British colonies under her rule. 

Can you imagine being born into a royal family and knowing that you will one day be queen or king?  This would be a great amount of pressure for a child.  Even though she had nice things and was very wealthy, she still cared about other people. She took great pride in her country and wanted to use your power to do good things. With all of her money, she could have just had a good time, but instead she rose to the challenge to be a great queen to her people.

If you were the king or queen of a country, what are some of the things that you would focus on?  Where you live, what are some of the things you would do to make it better?

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Everyone spends time learning what they like, and what they’re capable of. Sometimes, they learn that what they are capable of isn’t what they like, and something else is calling them. That happened to Sally Ride.

Early Years of Sally Ride

Before we can get to what happened though, let’s go back to Southern California in the year 1951. This was the year Sally was born to Dale and Carol Ride. As a child, Sally’s dream job was to play baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers. She was athletic, and was often chosen first for baseball teams. Of course, no women played major league baseball at the time, but this didn’t matter to Sally. Dale and Carol raised her and her sister, who was nicknamed Bear, to explore and try anything that interested them. To Sally, this meant playing sports and stargazing through a telescope with her father. Her favorite constellation was Orion. Many people in the 1950s thought of these as “boy” things, but Sally knew they were also girl things.

Sally Ride and Tennis

When she was nine, Sally’s family traveled to Europe. Between seeing the amazing sites, Sally played tennis for the first time on the trip. Just like that, Sally was hooked. Tennis became the center of her life. When they got back to the United States, Dale and Carol got Sally a tennis coach and she began competing. Before long, she was ranked in the top 20 players under 12 in Southern California! 

Tennis also opened doors for Sally. A private high school gave her a scholarship to play for their team. In high school, Sally rediscovered her love of science. One teacher, Dr. Elizabeth Mommaerts, helped her see that there were opportunities for her in science. At the time, there weren’t many women who got advanced degrees in science, but Dr. Mommaerts had a PhD in human physiology. Sally was amazed by how smart and curious her teacher was, and how she approached every problem carefully and methodically, like a puzzle. 

After high school, tennis again helped Sally find a place at school. She headed to Swarthmore College to study physics and play on the tennis team. Soon after arriving though, Sally’s mind began to wander to new possibilities. She was excelling at tennis: she won all her college matches, and even became the Eastern Intercollegiate Women’s Singles champion! Sally decided she wanted to try to become a professional tennis player. She packed up her bags and left Pennsylvania to return to Southern California. 

Back in sunny California, Sally practiced every day for hours, year-round. But soon, she realized that she’d need to train even more in order to make it as a pro. Her body ached. She was tired. Playing tennis wasn’t as fun when she had to do it eight hours a day in order to compete. Sally decided to return to college full time. 

Collegiate Life of Sally Ride

Sally headed to Stanford University, about a six hour drive from Los Angeles. There, she reacquainted herself with her other childhood passion: science. She studied physics: how stars and planets work, and even lasers! 

This time, Sally was sure she’d made the right choice about her future. In fact, she stayed at Stanford an extra five years to earn her PhD in physics. 

But even as Sally focused more on physics, she was still open to new opportunities. One morning in 1977, shortly before she finished her PhD, a huge opportunity stared her in the face when she opened her morning paper. It was the kind of opportunity that made all her past hobbies and interests fall into place. Even though she never could have known this opportunity would come along, it was perfect for Sally’s background as a sports-loving physicist. 

It was an ad. NASA was recruiting new astronauts to fly in the space shuttle program. And for the first time, they were accepting applications from women. Sally had expected to get a job as a college teacher. But the chance to be an astronaut doesn’t come along every day, and Sally was excited by the possibility of actually visiting space, after studying the stars and planets and gazing up at Orion on so many nights. And, astronauts need to be in great physical shape too. All her years of playing tennis would be an advantage too. 

NASA was a bit overdue in sending women to space. In fact, all the astronauts until this time had been white men, mostly Air Force pilots. Russia had sent a woman to space in 1963! Now, in addition to recruiting pilots, NASA was opening the astronaut program to anyone with training in science or engineering.  They got thousands of applications! Out of all those applicants, Sally and five other women were chosen to train as astronauts! Not only were the first women chosen to be part of the space shuttle program, the class of 35 men and women included the first Asian American and African American astronauts.

Sally at NASA

Sally began her training in 1979. NASA was impressed by Sally. She was athletic and strong, committed and smart. Years of playing competitive tennis had taught her how to keep cool under pressure. 

But even though Sally had the right stuff to be an astronaut, there was a lot to learn! She had to know space shuttle systems inside and out. She learned about geology, oceanography, and computer science, since she would need to perform all sorts of experiments in space. The astronaut candidates learned to fly supersonic jets, though most of them wouldn’t actually need to fly the shuttle–NASA still used professional pilots for that–it was important to know how it worked in case there was ever an emergency. 

Off to Space for Sally Ride!

Finally, in 1982, after years of training and working on projects and shuttle missions from the ground, Sally got the call that all astronauts are eager for. NASA had assigned her to a mission. She would go to space in 1983 as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Challenger. 

Sally would have a whole year to prepare for the mission. As part of her work on the ground for NASA, Sally had helped design a robotic arm that would move things like satellites in and out of the space shuttle’s cargo bay. On her mission, Sally would use the arm to place a satellite outside in space. It would fly alongside the shuttle for a few hours, taking pictures and doing experiments. Then, Sally would use the robotic arm to grab the satellite and pull it back into the shuttle.

It was an exciting project for Sally, but she was disappointed to find that news reporters weren’t very interested in it. Instead, they always asked her questions about what it would be like for a woman in space. Would she wear makeup in space? Would she be able to have children after going into space? Would she cry if she made a mistake? Understandably, Sally found these questions annoying at best, even insulting. Why couldn’t reporters ask her about the actual mission–the science she’d be doing, or the amazing robotic arm she’d designed–instead of obsessing over her gender? 

But Sally kept her focus on training and ignored the rude questions. She made sure she knew every step of every task she needed to do during launch, in space, and on landing. On June 18th, 1983, Sally was ready to lift off! 

The mission was a success: the crew performed experiments, and the robotic arm worked beautifully. But besides conducting experiments and gaining experience in space, Sally realized something far more profound. As she looked out the space shuttle window for the first time, she noticed something that astonished her: 

“…it looked as if someone had taken a royal blue crayon and just traced along the Earth’s horizon. And then I realized that that blue line, that really thin royal blue line, was Earth’s atmosphere, and that was all there was of it. And it’s so clear from that perspective how fragile our existence is.” 

Challenger Mission

Sally flew on another mission two years later, again on Challenger. Sally hoped she’d be able to fly again after her second mission, but in 1986 a terrible tragedy threw her hopes, and the whole shuttle program, into doubt. The space shuttle Challenger, which Sally had flown on twice, exploded a few minutes after lift-off. Seven astronauts were killed, including some Sally had trained with. Sally was devastated, but she was also one of the best people to help figure out what went wrong. NASA canceled all its space shuttle missions for years while Sally and a committee of other experts investigated the accident. They found that cold weather that morning in Florida caused a part to break during the flight. 

By this time, Sally realized she would probably never fly on another mission. She stayed at NASA another year after the investigation, helping them plan for the future. But in 1987, she realized it was time to leave. 

Sally went back to Stanford University to work as a physics professor. She also reconnected with a childhood friend, Tam O’Shaugnessy. The two fell in love, and would spend the next 27 years together. Tam was also a scientist–a biologist–and she loved sports and exercise too. Sally and Tam also shared a passion for encouraging children, especially girls, to explore science and technology. They wrote books and started a foundation together that offered science summer camps and science festivals. Sally even started a program that let kids in middle school control a satellite launched into space on the shuttle, taking pictures of earth from hundreds of miles above the ground. 

Sally’s Death

In 2011, Sally learned she had pancreatic cancer. After battling the disease for over a year, she passed away at home in California. A year later, President Obama awarded Sally a Presidential Medal of Honor for her accomplishments. Tam accepted the award on her behalf.

People change their minds sometimes about what they want to do. New dreams take hold. But the most important thing to do if you want to make a dream come true is to act. Find out what you need to do to actually make that dream a reality and do it! You may find that you don’t like the doing as much as the dream, just like Sally Ride did with pro tennis. But, like Sally, if you try enough things, eventually you’ll find the right thing for you. And you never know when an opportunity will come along that requires your unique combination of talents, skills, and knowledge. So keep exploring!

Sources

https://rvsallyride.ucsd.edu/legacy/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride

Abawi, Atia (2021) She Persisted: Sally Ride. Philomel Books, New York.

Macy, Sue (2014) Sally Ride: Life on a Mission. Aladdin, New York.

The post History of Sally Ride for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Have you ever been given a chore to do, but found yourself doing something very different to get through it? Sometimes, jobs you have to do can be a bit boring. But you can make them fun by playing little games while you do them. Maybe you arrange your shirts into the colors of the rainbow when you put them away, or pretend to play hockey while you sweep. Maybe you’ve even found better ways to do some of these things because you were “playing around” while you did them. 

Benjamin Banneker was one of those kids who could turn any chore into a game, and those games often helped him learn something or make the task easier. Benjamin was born in 1731 in Maryland, before the United States was even a country. Back then, Maryland was still a colony of Great Britain. Benjamin was black, and most black people in the colonies at the time were enslaved. But luckily, Benjamin was born free. His grandmother, Molly, was a former indentured servant from England, who had married an enslaved man from Africa. An indentured servant was someone who works for someone in order to pay back money they borrowed. It was a lot like slavery, but after a set amount of time, you get to be free again. Molly’s daughter, Mary, was Benjamin’s mother and his father, Robert, was a freed slave. 

Benjamin’s Begins Counting

There was one book in Benjamin’s house growing up: the Bible. Molly put that book to good use, and taught Benjamin and his sisters to read with it. Benjamin learned quickly. He became fascinated with numbers, noticing how the Psalms in the bible were numbered and learning to count without even trying. Soon, he was counting everything: fingers, toes, his siblings’ teeth. 

He even used counting to make his chores more interesting. The Bannekers owned a tobacco farm. There are always jobs to do on a farm, and everyone had to help. Benjamin would count things while he went about his duties: clouds, pigs, slugs he picked off tobacco plants. Numbers and math just seemed to click with him. Benjamin not only taught himself basic arithmetic, but more advanced types of math, like geometry and statistics. 

The curiosity of Benjamin Bannekers

Benjamin didn’t just amuse himself with numbers though. He was curious about everything around him. He wondered about the stars, moon, and sun, how they moved and changed throughout the year. As he grew older, he became a tinkerer as well. When something was broken, he could always figure out how to fix it. Usually, he’d find a way to make it work better too!

When he was a young man, Benjamin inherited his parents’ farm. Although running a farm is a lot of work, Benjamin still found ways to improve things and make his job a little easier. At this time, most farmers relied on the rhythms of the natural world to tell them when to do things. Day and night, the position of the sun in the sky told them when to get up, do chores, eat meals, and go to bed. The weather, stars, and plants told them when to plow, plant crops, and harvest. But Benjamin thought it would be easier if he had a clock. 

Clocks weren’t common back then. Almost no one had one in their house. Benjamin thought his tinkering skills might help though. He borrowed a friend’s pocket watch. This friend must have had a lot of confidence in Benjamin’s tinkering skills too, because Benjamin took the watch apart, carefully taking notes, measuring, and sketching gears as he did. When he was sure he knew how it worked, he began to cut and carve his own gears, axels, and pins. He made his version bigger–something that would sit on a table, rather than in your pocket. And, he added a bell on top that would strike on the hour. Clocks were so unusual that neighbors came by to marvel at it. In fact, Benjamin’s clock may have been the first one in the colonies!

Friends with Quakers

When Benjamin was a young man, the Ellicott family moved in down the road from his farm. The Ellicotts were building a mill, and one day they came to ask Benjamin’s mother about buying supplies. At first, she was suspicious, because most well-off white people in the area owned slaves, but soon the Bannekers learned that the Ellicotts were Quakers, Christians who believed slavery was wrong. Benjamin soon befriended a member of the family, George Ellicott. 

George and Benjamin had a lot in common. Both loved math and were curious about the world around them. They studied astronomy together, observing the stars through George’s telescope and learned the positions of the planets and constellations at different times of the year. George lent Benjamin books and tools to use in his studies. Soon, Benjamin was hard at work calculating when a solar eclipse would occur. He showed George his work. His calculations were very good, and George helped him refine them.

Benjamin enjoyed this hobby so much, he decided to do something big with it. He decided to write an almanac. Other than the bible, an almanac was the book you’d be most likely to find in a farmer’s home in the 18th century. Almanacs gathered a wealth of information that was important to a farmer: tables showing cycles of the moon, sun, and tides; calendars of when to plant different crops; weather predictions, and more. Benjamin got to work calculating the data he would need to include in his almanac for 1791: when the moon would wax and wane, sunrise and sunset times, high and low tides for every day of the year.  

But sometimes, opportunities come up, and we have to take advantage right away, or lose the chance. Another member of the Ellicott family, Andrew, offered Benjamin a job helping to survey the land for the new United States capitol, Washington DC. A surveyor tries to figure out how things can be built on the land. They measure distances and slopes, make maps and find the best spot to build a new road or building.  It’s a very math-heavy job, and Benjamin couldn’t refuse. 

Benjamin worked on his almanac whenever he could. As 1790 came to an end, he still hadn’t found a publisher though, so he wouldn’t be able to put out the 1791 almanac in time. He had to start over and write a version for 1792. With the survey work over, Benjamin worked day and night on his almanac. A man from Pennsylvania named James Pemberton helped him find a publisher. This would not be easy, since many publishers didn’t think a book written by a black person would sell. But Pemberton was an anti-slavery activist, and commited to helping Benjamin overcome these challenges. 

Benjamin and Thomas Jefferson

When he’d finished most of the almanac, Benjamin wrote to Thomas Jefferson, sending a copy of the book along too. Jefferson had written the United States Declaration of Independence, which contains the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Benjamin wanted to know how Jefferson could write those words, yet still hold captive “so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression.” Brethren means “brothers.” Benjamin was asking Jefferson how he could justify enslaving other people, people with skin like his. According to Jefferson’s words, these people had rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  At this time, Jefferson was Secretary of State, a high office in the US government.

Benjamin would not have been surprised if Jefferson had ignored his letter. But Jefferson actually wrote back! He complimented him on his almanac and said he wished that someday slavery would end. While Benjamin was surprised that Jefferson wrote back at all, he may have wondered how he could hope for slavery to end, but not do anything to stop it.

In the meantime, Pemberton had found a publisher for the almanac, a man named William Goddard. Goddard promised to pay Benjamin generously, and advertised the work as “BENJAMIN BANNEKER’S highly Approved ALMANAC.” Benjamin had been studious in his calculations, and the book was deserving of approval. It contained calendars for planting crops, tables showing phases of the moon and other astronomical events, home remedies and herbal medicines. 

Benjamin did not forget his brethren either, people like him who were forced to work and live as property of others. He included excerpts from powerful antislavery essays and speeches. He also included an essay by his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush that suggested a Peace Office in the United States government. Scattered throughout were meditations on how to live a good and just life. The almanac sold out quickly, and Benjamin published a new version each year until 1797.

Benjamin Banneker’s Latter Years

By that time, Benjamin Banneker was an old man. He could look back on his long life and accomplishments with pride. But he never forgot that such accomplishments were out of reach for most black people in the United States. As a surveyor, almanac writer, and astronomer Benjamin used a lot of numbers and math in his work, but he also spoke out for what he believed in whenever he could. Benjamin valued freedom and fairness, and he knew that everyone had a responsibility to stand up for those values.

Benjamin passed away in 1806, at home in his log cabin. The clock he had built over fifty years before still chimed each hour, marking out his days–his rising, his work, his rest. A fire destroyed the cabin just days later, along with many of his papers, tools, and the clock. It would never ring out again. But nothing could silence the brave words and knowledge that Benjamin had sent out into the world. And even though slavery wouldn’t end for another 60 years, nothing could silence the voices of those speaking out for freedom and fairness. 

Sources

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

https://web.archive.org/web/20170130044246/http://www.xyht.com/professional-surveyor-archives/feature-benjamin-banneker/

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h71.html

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h68.html

https://transcription.si.edu/project/8045

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Banneker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

Pinkney, Andrea Davis. (2012) Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America. Disney, New York.

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Have you ever wondered why your hair is curly like your mother’s, or you have freckles like your father? Or maybe your parents say you smile like your uncle, who you don’t even see that much. All these things are related to your genes. Genes are the stuff inside your body that tell your cells how to build YOU. You get your genes from your mom and dad, and they got them from their parents. Genes are made out of a substance called DNA, which is short for deoxyribonucleic acid. Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember that!

But, you might also wonder, what exactly does DNA look like? 

Rosalind Franklin wondered about that question too, and as a scientist, she helped answer it. It wasn’t an easy question to answer, because DNA is much, much too small for people to see. Knowing how DNA is put together would help other scientists learn more about how it works, and eventually make all kinds of other medical advances possible. And Franklin did end up discovering what DNA looks like! 

But before we get to that, we need to go back to London, in 1920, where Rosalind Franklin was born. Franklin was part of a well-off Jewish family, who had been involved in politics for a long time. One uncle served in the British government. Another uncle and aunt were activists for women’s voting rights, which Britain granted in 1918. Her mother did charity work, and her father was a banker and a teacher. During World War II, the Franklin family took in Jewish refugee children who had escaped from Europe. 

Rosalind’s obsession wasn’t politics though. She did care about people, but she was fascinated by science. As a child, Rosalind’s aunt described her as “alarmingly clever–she spends all her time doing arithmetic for pleasure, and invariably gets her sums right.” Rosalind didn’t really spend every moment of her childhood doing math. She was good at most other subjects too. She learned German, French and Latin, but did not do well in music!  Even though she was an excellent student, she also enjoyed sports, travel, and hiking.  But by the time Rosalind was a teenager, she knew that she wanted to be a scientist. She realized that this, too, could be a way to help people.

When it was time to go to college, Rosalind won a scholarship to pay for it. Since she didn’t really need it, she decided to donate her scholarship to a deserving refugee student.  Because of World War II, many people were trying to escape Europe. Many came to England, and did not have much when they arrived. A scholarship to go to college would have been a huge gift.

Franklin studied chemistry at Newnham College, a women’s college that is part of Cambridge University. After she finished her studies, she worked in a lab at Cambridge, but didn’t feel she was respected there. Also, World War II was still raging, and Franklin hoped to do something to support the war effort. So, she left Cambridge to work at the British Coal Utilization Research Association. Studying coal might sound very boring, but it was actually very important work. Coal was critical to the war effort because it was used in gas masks that soldiers wore. These masks filtered out harmful gasses and particles that might otherwise make them sick. Rosalind made several discoveries that helped improve gas masks.

After the war, a friend helped Franklin get a job in a lab in France. Rosalind loved France – the language, the food, and the people. In her new job, she learned to use X-Ray crystallography, which allows scientists to take pictures of microscopic structures, things far too small to be seen with your eyes, and even too small for most microscopes. She became an expert in using this technology, and it would help in her later work on DNA.

In 1950, a professor named John Randall asked Franklin to build an X-ray crystallography lab at the King’s College in order to study DNA. However, Dr. Randall didn’t inform Maurice Wilkins, a scientist who had also been working on DNA at King’s College, that he had hired Rosalind to be in charge of the lab. This upset Wilkins, who thought he would be in charge. The two did not get off to a good start, and never really got along. 

Even so, Franklin launched into her work in the lab with the help of an assistant named Raymond Gosling. She improved the X-ray camera, which allowed her to take much clearer images of microscopic structures. This would allow her and Gosling to make their  big breakthrough. 

But before we get much further, we need to go back a little and talk about what DNA is and why scientists were so excited about it in the 1950s. 

DNA is the instructions for building you. Not just you, but any plant, animal, or other living thing. You are made of billions of cells that are too tiny to see with your eyes. There are many types of cells, but each one contains a copy of all your DNA. 

Think of each cell in your body as a Lego set. You have lots of pieces that can be used to make different parts of your body. Your cells also have machinery for building those blocks into the parts of your body, like fingernails, muscles, or eyes. DNA is like the instruction booklet: it tells your cellular machinery which blocks to use and how to put them together to make the different parts of your body. 

People knew DNA existed before the 1950s. They’d known about it for almost 100 years, and knew something about the chemicals it was made of. But they didn’t know the details of how those chemical pieces were put together. Remember, the pieces that makeup DNA are WAY too small for anyone to see with their eyes, or even with the microscopes that existed at the time. 

One more important discovery about DNA came just a few years before Franklin began working on it. Remember when we talked about genes in the beginning of the episode? 

They’re how parents pass traits–like brown hair, big feet, or freckles–on to their children. In 1944, a scientist named Oswald Avery first showed that DNA is what makes up genes. Before that, no one was sure what was inside living things that did this. He showed that DNA was that thing, which made people very eager to learn more about it! 

So by the 1950s, several scientists were trying to figure out exactly how DNA was put together. Using her upgraded X-Ray crystallography camera, Franklin and Gosling took a photo of DNA. Taking this photo wasn’t like snapping a picture on your cell phone. It took hours of work and careful planning. Franklin called it Photo 51, and it was the key to understanding how DNA is put together. Photo 51 looks like a circle with an X made of little dashes in the middle. 

But this wasn’t the end of Franklin’s work. Remember, a photo shows something only from one angle. This was going to be kind of like trying to figure out what a building looks like by looking at a picture of its roof. Franklin got to work using the photo and her knowledge of the chemistry of DNA to try to figure out what the whole structure was put together. In a few months, she had worked out that DNA was shaped like a double helix. To imagine what a double helix looks like, picture a rope ladder. You’re holding the ropes on one end and a friend holds the other end. If you twist the ropes on your end, you’ll get a double helix!

Unfortunately, Franklin wouldn’t be the one to show the world what DNA looked like. Maurice Wilkins got a hold of Photo 51 and showed it to his friend James Watson. Pretty soon, Watson and his coworker Francis Crick were using the photo to try to figure out DNA’s structure. They also worked out that it was a double helix. Watson and Crick wrote a paper and quickly published it, just weeks before Rosalind Franklin had planned to publish her own paper.

Franklin didn’t realize that Watson had seen her photo, so she thought they had done all the work and made the discovery on their own. She had also started a new job, and was glad to be out of the tense environment at King’s College. At her new lab, she and her coworkers made important discoveries about a virus that affects plants, called tobacco mosaic virus. Franklin was glad to feel appreciated and respected again.

Rosalind Franklin would never know that her photograph had helped Watson and Crick decipher the structure of DNA. Unfortunately, she passed away of cancer only a few years later. Watson and Crick would go on to win a Nobel Prize for learning the structure of DNA. It’s unfair that Franklin didn’t get the credit she deserved while she was alive, but strangely enough, it was James Watson who eventually revealed her role in the discovery of the double helix, in a book he wrote in 1968. 

Even though she didn’t get credit for her DNA discovery while she was alive, Rosalind Franklin knew she had made important contributions to science. She felt that science was the best way not only to explain life, but to improve the world. She knew that her work on coal, x-ray crystallography, and plant viruses had done this, so she was proud of her work. In the end, Franklin was more concerned with learning and improving lives with science than she was with being first to do something. She spent her life trying to answer important questions, and even though it’s a little late, people do celebrate that now. I hope you pass along what you’ve learned about Rosalind Franklin, so more people can celebrate her achievements!

Sources

Berger, Doreen. “A Biography of the Dark Lady of Notting Hill.” The United Synagogue, Dec. 3, 2014. https://www.theus.org.uk/article/biography-dark-lady-notting-hill 

Borgert-Spaniol, Megan (2018) Rosalind Franklin: unlocking DNA. Abdo Publishing, Minneapolis.

Maddox, Brenda. “The double helix and the ‘wronged heroine.’” Nature 421, 407–408 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01399 

Pray, Leslie A. (2008) “Discovery of DNA Structure and Function: Watson and Crick.” Nature Education 1(1):100. https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/discovery-of-dna-structure-and-function-watson-397/ 

Oswald Avery. Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Avery  

Rosalind Franklin. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin 

The post History of Rosalind Franklin for Kids & Families appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Has your curiosity ever gotten you in trouble? Maybe you took something apart or made a mess while you were trying to find out how it worked, or maybe you’ve asked a grown-up a question they didn’t know how to answer. If so, don’t feel bad about yourself! You have something in common with some of the smartest and most innovative people in history, including the subject of today’s episode, Grace Murray Hopper. 

Grace was born and raised in New York City, and she was a very curious child. Her family had a large summer home, which they shared with her many cousins. Each of the seven bedrooms in the house had an alarm clock, and every evening, Grace’s mother would set each alarm clock. This was the early twentieth century, so these weren’t the kind of alarm your parents might have on their phone, or even a digital alarm clock. These were old-fashioned clocks with gears in them and two bells on top. When the alarm rang, a small hammer would go back and forth, quickly hitting the bells and making a loud, high-pitched ring. This kind of ringing was impossible to sleep through! If you imagine what an old-fashioned fire alarm might sound like, it would be similar to that. 

Grace was fascinated by the alarm clocks, and wanted to know how they worked. So she took one apart! But looking at the pile of gears, springs, and hands, in front of her, she still wasn’t sure. 

So she took apart another. 

Then another. 

Eventually, Grace took apart all seven alarm clocks, trying to figure out how all the tiny, complicated pieces worked together. Her mother wasn’t exactly happy about all the alarm clocks in the house being broken, but she was understanding, and she let Grace keep one clock to study.

Grace’s father also supported Grace’s curiosity. He encouraged her and her sister to get as much education as they could so they could support themselves. This was not common for girls in the early 1900s. Grace especially loved math and geometry. She used geometry to draw pictures. This is a fun way to use math – try to see what you can draw some time just using the basic shapes like circles, squares, and triangles. If you look around, you’ll notice these shapes, along with angles, lines, curves, and other things that can be described with numbers, in many things you see every day.

Grace worked hard in school, and was almost able to start college when she was sixteen! Why almost? Her test scores in math were very high, but her scores in Latin were too low. But, just as she had done with the alarm clocks, Grace didn’t quit trying after one failure. She tried again, and was able to start college the next year at seventeen. She graduated with degrees in math and physics in 1928. She went on to get a PhD in math at Yale in 1934. Eventually, she became a math professor at Vassar College.

When World War II started, Grace tried to join the Navy, which had just started accepting women. Her grandfather had been in the Navy, and she wanted to follow in his footsteps. But the Navy wouldn’t take Grace! Their reasons for rejecting her were not what you might think: they said she was valuable to the war effort as a math professor; she was too thin for her height; and she was too old at 34. This shows us another important lesson: people often don’t say no to you because they don’t like you. They might say no because of rules they have to follow, or because you’re too important! Not a bad reason to be rejected, right?

But knowing Grace, you can probably guess that this rejection didn’t hold her back. She tried again. Grace took a leave of absence from her job as a professor and volunteered for the Naval Reserves. She had to get special permission due to her weight being too low, but she got to serve in the Navy and support the war effort, just like she wanted. Not only that, she was at the top of her class in the training program! The Navy sent her to Harvard University to work on the first computer made in the United States, the Mark I.

Grace worked on programming the Mark I to help the navy solve problems on their ships. Programming a computer means giving it instructions so it will do what you want it to do. You might be wondering why Grace was given a job programming computers. But, have you ever thought about why a computer is called a computer? Well, it’s because their original purpose was to compute things, to do complex math that humans can’t do quickly. The navy used the Mark I to help them track the location of enemy ships and submarines. It could perform math quickly, and never made mistakes like human mathematicians sometimes do. But, the Mark I did need humans to tell it exactly what math to do, and that was Grace’s job. 

Early computers were programmed using numbers and symbols. You had to understand a lot of mathematics to program a computer, which is why many early programmers like Grace, had degrees in math. Programming was complicated and it was easy to make mistakes, even for an expert. So Grace would save pieces of programs that did specific things so she could use them again in new programs. She also developed a system that allowed the computer to find these pieces of code without her having to input all of it again.

After the war, in 1949, Grace went to work at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. Here, she worked on Univac, the first computer in the United States to be sold to businesses for general purposes. This got her thinking about what people were trying to do with computers, and she realized not everyone could get their job done using only the language of math, numbers and symbols. Grace thought there should be computer programming languages that were based on the English language. This would make it easier for more people to learn to program and use computers to help them do their jobs. But, in order to create this kind of programming language, she also needed to invent the technology to translate English-based commands into the mathematical language that computers understood.

And that’s exactly what Grace did! She called her translator a compiler. If you want to imagine what a compiler does, think of all the word problems you’ve seen in your math books. You might have a problem like:

“Dan has seven apples. He gives three of them to Isaac. How many apples does Dan have left?”

The English words in this sentence give us clues about what kind of math problem we need to do. We know that the special words seven and three are numbers. We know if someone gives something away, they will have fewer of that thing. This gives us a clue that we need to subtract to find the answer. Once we think it through a bit, we can figure out that we need to write a math problem, “seven minus three equals” and then compute the answer. A compiler does something similar: it has a set of rules it uses to take the commands and translate them into numbers. The rules are more complicated than the subtraction word problem we just talked about, but the idea is similar.   

At first, the men Grace worked with thought this idea was crazy. But she kept working on her ideas for years, and eventually, others who worked with computers accepted them. Grace also reached her goal of inventing the first programming language based on English words, rather than numbers and symbols. This new language became known as COBOL. It was used for decades, and is even still used today. More importantly, COBOL inspired many other computer scientists to invent new programming languages based on human language to solve different types of problems. Today there are dozens of languages, and millions of people who learn and use them everyday. 

Later Grace returned to working for the Navy. After a long career, she reached the rank of rear admiral. At the time, she was one of the highest ranking women in the Navy. She retired in 1986 at the age of 80, but even after retiring, she continued to work. She was always eager to help young people learn about computers and programming, and aside from inventing the compiler, she said this was one of her greatest accomplishments.

Grace used to have a clock on her office wall. It was the kind of clock with hands that tick off the hours, seconds and minutes, just like the alarm clocks she took apart as a child. But this clock was unique: its hands went around in the opposite direction from other clocks. Instead of going clockwise, her clock went counter-clockwise! Even though the clock went backwards, it still ticked off the hours and minutes reliably, and gave the right time. 

Grace said this clock was a reminder that you don’t have to do things the same way everyone else is doing them. If you think you have a different or better way to do something, you should try it, even if others don’t understand at first. And as she showed so many times in her life, don’t just try once. Try over and over again until you get it! If you have a good idea and work hard to make it a reality, other people will eventually notice. 

Grace never gave up when she had a goal or a  great idea, even when others around her didn’t support her. She kept working on her ideas, and showing her work to others, until they had to listen, and, often, had to admit she’d been right all along! She knew that good ideas didn’t always fit the way people had done things in the past. They might even seem a little crazy at first. But without crazy new ideas we wouldn’t make any progress.

Sources

https://stories.vassar.edu/2017/assets/images/170706-legacy-of-grace-hopper-hopperpdf.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

The post The Story of Grace Hopper for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

How are you listening to this podcast today? On a computer, a cell phone, or a smart home device like Alexa? Whatever device you’re using, it connects to the internet. The internet is central to so many things we do today, but have you ever wondered what exactly it is, or how it got to be what it is today? In this episode, you’re going to find out!

Our story begins in 1955 in London England with the birth of Tim Berners-Lee. Both of Tim’s parents were scientists who helped build one of the first computers in the 1950s, the Ferranti Mark 1. Tim enjoyed playing with model railroads as a child, and he learned a lot about electronics from this hobby. He went on to study physics at the University of Oxford in England, where he continued to tinker with electronics in his spare time, building a computer inside an old TV. He graduated with a degree in physics. 

Tim worked as a programmer for many years after graduating, and learned about many technologies along the way. Eventually, he got a job working at CERN, a European nuclear research agency. At CERN, Tim’s first job was to help people communicate over computer networks and use data stored on them in order to do their jobs. But Tim was frustrated to find that all these computers worked in different ways, so it was difficult to get them to talk to one another. Tim wanted to make it easier for people to communicate and work together using these computer networks. 

In the early 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee helped to invent not one, not two, but three key, related technologies that helped the internet become more widely available. He developed the “www” or World Wide Web system (you may have noticed this in website addresses); HTML, or HyperText Markup Language; and the first web browser. 

We’ll talk about each of these in more detail later, but before that, I should go over a few basic things about how the internet works. The internet actually existed before Tim Berners-Lee’s contributions. It’s just a name for a system of computers that are connected to each other — a network. Computers on a network can send and receive messages to and from other computers on the network, or to other networks There are two main types of computers that you need to know about to understand the internet: servers and clients. Servers store information like email or documents, and send or “serve” that information to clients when they request it. Clients are the computers that you and I use to go online. 

The details of this can get a little confusing, but Tim Berners Lee himself actually has a good way of describing the process. He compares it to a mail system. Say you drop a letter in the mailbox. Your letter is like the information you’re sending over the internet. The workers in the post office, similar to a server, look at the address on the letter, and decide where to send it next. That letter might go through a half dozen or more post offices on its way to your house, getting a little closer to you with each one. Eventually, the mail carrier drops it in your mailbox, which is like the client computer.  Unlike with paper mail, all this happens in the blink of an eye on the internet, although in the early days, it could take a bit longer.

Actually, in the early days of the internet, there were no webpages at all. The internet was mostly a tool for scientists to communicate with each other, and it was entirely text-based – no photographs, videos, or music. There were various computer networks in the early days. One of the first was called Arpanet, and it was created by the United States government. It had just four computers on it at first, all of them at universities or government research facilities.  These researchers used very basic tools like File Transfer Protocol to share documents, or simple email systems. 

Internet access expanded to the general public in the 1980s, but it was still far from the internet we know today. There were no viral tik tok dances, cat memes or Wikipedia. It was still used as a communication tool for people with technical knowledge. The systems they used were mostly text-based, meaning they had no graphics.

But Tim Berners-Lee and his three inventions would change everything. The early 1990s were a turning point in the development of the internet, the time when the web really began to look something like what we know today. 

Tim developed the first invention with his colleague at CERN, Robert Cailliau. The World Wide Web, or WWW, is the system used by servers — those computers where your websites are stored — to find documents on the internet. What I’m calling a “document” in this case might be a webpage, a photo, or a music or video file. In the WWW system, every document on the web has a Universal Resource Locator, or URL. That may sound like fancy techno-babble, but I’m sure you’ve seen one. It’s a web address, like www.bedtimehistorystories.com. These addresses can be used by anyone to link to any page on the internet, and they’re usually pretty easy to remember. The very first world wide web server was actually Tim’s work computer at CERN!

HTML is short for HyperText Markup Language, and it’s a computer language used to encode or “mark-up” documents so that a web browser can read and display them in a way that is easy for people to read and understand. HTML tags mark where specific elements of a document are. There are HTML tags for paragraphs, images, links, and most of the other things you would see on a webpage.  

Of course, in order to be useful for displaying web pages, HTML needed a program designed to read and display it. Tim also invented the first program to read and display HTML documents, which he called a browser. Today, there are dozens of browsers, like Chrome, Edge, and Safari, but the first one was called World Wide Web. Since CERN was not interested in paying people to develop web browsers beyond this, Tim encouraged the growing online community of web developers to volunteer their time to create a better browser. In 1993, the Mosaic browser was released by a team at the University of Illinois. Since then, this model of using volunteers from across the world has helped create many important web technologies and products. 

Finally, the managers at CERN made a decision that turned out to be very important for the future of the web: They decided to make Tim’s inventions open standards, meaning anyone could use them. This meant that people around the world could set up their own web servers and create pages using HTML, and they could link to any other webpage on the internet. Likewise, anyone in the world who had a computer and an internet connection could use a browser to view those pages. You didn’t have to be a computer scientist, or an academic, or even know what a server is. As a result, today there are:

• Almost 2 billion websites on the internet
• Almost 5 billion internet users
• Around 7 billion Google searches per day
• Around 7 billion YouTube videos viewed per day and…
• Thousands of podcasts you can listen to at any time!

Tim Berners Lee saw a system–the early internet–that had a lot of potential, and came up with ways to improve it and make it vastly more useful for people all over the world. He has won many awards for his achievements: he was knighted by the queen of England in 2013, and won a prestigious computing prize called the Turing Award. He was the key force behind the modern internet, but he also made sure that anyone with the right skills could improve the systems he developed, which is what allowed the world wide web to explode in popularity and accessibility. He has continued to work throughout his life to keep the internet a free and open system that anyone can access.

Tim is a great example of someone who was curious and used his skills to design things that would be useful to other people. He liked to tinker, which means try out new things and play around with them, until they become a useful invention. And when he did design something that was useful he didn’t keep it to himself. He found a way that people all over the world could benefit from it. Considering others is important to do in all of our actions.

We hope you enjoyed this episode about the Invention of the Internet and Tim Berners Lee and be sure to tune in next Monday for a new episode.

The post Tim Berners-Lee and the Invention of the Internet for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 in Kentucky to parents who were very poor at the time. They lived in the middle of the woods in a very small log cabin his father built. The woods were full of wild animals and no one else lived nearby. Every night Abe and his family slept on a hard dirt floor. When Abe was old enough to work he and his father, Thomas, ate a small breakfast, picked up their axes, and ventured off into the thick woods to chop down trees to make the land flat for farming. It was very hard work and they worked all day long. Abe became very strong chopping wood. He also began to grow very tall for his age. He grew so much that his pants became too small and because his parents were poor. They couldn’t afford to buy him new ones. Some people thought he looked funny because he was so tall and skinny, but they liked Abe because he was kind and funny. 

In Abe’s town there wasn’t a school, so most days he just worked. For a short time, a teacher lived a few miles away so Abraham did learn a little, but just enough to read and write. Once Abe learned to read it became his favorite thing to do. He only had a couple of books, but he spent any free time he had reading. When he learned something new he repeated the words over and over until he knew them by memory. He also wrote new words down. This helped him remember the words so he could use them later. 

After Abe and his father cleared the land of trees, they began farming. Most days he’d take a book out to the field and read in between planting. His mother, Nancy, read to him and his sister. She knew learning was very important and taught Abe this from a young age. Abe loved his mother very much.

Abe’s mother dies

When Abe was only nine his mother became sick and died. He and his family were very sad. Not long after this, his father left him and his sister for nine months while he went to find a new wife. Can you imagine being left alone for that long? Somehow Abraham survived, finding help from caring neighbors. Eventually, his father returned with their new mother. When Abe saw her on the road he ran and hugged her, even though he didn’t know her. He was just happy to have a mother again. 

Sarah turned out to be a very good mother to Abe. She found him new books and was kind to him. Abe’s father Thomas was hard on him. He was also known to be a very good storyteller. This was a talent Abe picked up and was known for later in his life.

Once Abraham was old enough to be on his own, he left home and started working for himself. He knew that by working hard, he could improve his life. He had a job moving goods down the river, then later worked in a store. Once while working in the store, someone paid the wrong amount of money. That night Abe walked very far to return the money. This is where he got his nickname “Honest Abe.” Honesty means telling the truth. 

Abe becomes a lawyer

One day in town, Abe went to the courthouse and saw a lawyer arguing a case. A lawyer is someone who understands the law and often helps defends others when they need something. When Abe heard the lawyer speaking, he decided that being a lawyer was what he wanted to do. Without going to a big school, Abraham read and studied and repeated words on his own until he knew everything he needed to become a lawyer. This took lots of time and practice but soon he became very smart and understood the law. He passed all the tests he needed and before long became a lawyer. He traveled from town to town on his horse helping others.

While working as a lawyer, Abe became interested in politics. Politics involves law and government and voting for new leaders. Abe wanted to become a leader so he could shape and change the country for the better. His first job in the state government was in the House of Representatives. Later, he was part of the U.S. House of Representatives. There he helped pass laws to build railroads and support banks so the state could grow and improve.

At the same time, slavery was a tragic problem in the United States. Slavery is when someone is forced to work without any pay. Many Americans had slaves that they treated very poorly and made work very hard. Abe knew slavery was horrible and was against slavery spreading to the new states in America. He argued this against another leader named Stephen A. Douglas. These arguments became very intense at times, because Americans were very upset about slavery, either being for it or against it. 

At this time, Abe ran for President of the United States. Many Americans in the South were against Abe being president because they wanted to keep slavery. Also, many Americans thought Abe could never win because he was just a farm boy from the woods who didn’t have very much money or schooling. But Abe cared about helping the country and to everyone’s surprise, he won and became the President of the United States! The people who loved Abe were very excited that such a caring man had become their new president.

The Civil War

But Southerners who wanted to keep slavery were angry and wanted to break off from America. They said they would form a new country where they could keep their slaves. This was called The Civil War because it was a war between two parts of our country, the North and the South. Soon very dangerous fighting began, and many soldiers on both sides died. It was a very sad time for the United States.

Abraham Lincoln wanted more than anything to keep the country together. He believed America was stronger and better as one country. But he was also very sad to see soldiers dying on both sides. Some wanted to quit the fight, but Abe was determined to not give up. He gave the Gettysburg Address and his bold words inspired Americans to follow him. He also worked to create new laws to stop slavery even when it was unpopular to do so. 

Finally, the war came to an end when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the North. It was a time of much celebration for the North. Many lives had been lost, but in the end, the country stayed together and the slaves became free. Some leaders may have been harsh to the losing side of the war, but Abraham Lincoln was determined to show kindness and mercy to the South and do all he could to rebuild the broken country.

Abraham Lincoln dies

Not long after the war ended, while Abe was watching a play in Ford’s Theater, he was shot by the assassin John Wilkes Booth. The Americans who loved Abe were very sad at this news. They had lost the president who cared for them and saved the country. But having done all he could, Abraham Lincoln has gone down in history as one of the greatest presidents of all time.

Like Abe, no matter where you were born or to whom, you can decide to improve yourself and be a good person. Abe had very little, but he read everything he could and studied and worked until he could make a living for himself. He also decided to help his country by running for different offices in the government. These aren’t easy jobs, but when good people lead they can make a great difference. Like Abe, you can be aware of what is going on in your own communities and in your country. And when you’re old enough you can vote for good leaders and even become one yourself. Just remember, no matter your circumstances, if you make the decision to improve yourself and do good things, you can do it!

The post History of Abraham Lincoln for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Close your eyes and imagine a short man with gray and white hair that sticks up off his head and grows in all directions. He has a big mustache and wears a coat that is rumpled, pants that are short, and socks that don’t match. But he has a kind smile on his face and deep, thoughtful eyes. This is what Albert Einstein looked like. And it might be easy to judge him by his funny appearance, but Einstein is one of the most famous scientists of all time. And many of his big ideas changed the world! But where did Albert Einstein come from? What was his childhood like? What was his life like? Listen closely, because it all starts in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879 when Albert was born.

Albert was quiet and very shy as a child. It took him longer to say his first words than most kids. His parents thought this meant there was something wrong with him. They took him to the doctor, but the doctor said everything was just fine. As a child, Albert liked to play by himself. He played with blocks and built towers of cards. He was very curious and often sat and just day-dreamed. His parents thought this meant he had some kind of problem, but really he just liked to sit and think and dream and make things on his own. 

Albert also liked the play the violin. Often he and his mother played together. Albert’s mind was always imagining and wondering about the world around him. He went to school, but wasn’t learning the things that interested him, so he started searching for answers on his own. He read and found many of his answers in books and by asking others. His parents began to see how curious and bright he was and appreciate his talents, even though he was quiet and shy. 

In high school, Albert struggled in school. Kids had to sit perfectly still, wear uniforms, and march in line. If they asked questions they were punished. His teachers told his parents he’d never do anything useful in life because he was so disobedient by asking questions and speaking out of turn. These years were very frustrating for Albert, because he was curious and wanted to learn. Math was one of his favorite subjects. His parents found a book about geometry, the study of shapes, and he taught it to himself. 

Eventually, Albert was told to leave his school, because he refused to stop asking questions and wouldn’t blindly obey his teachers. He moved with his family to Italy and there spent his time hiking in the mountains and learning on his own. He read about great scientists and astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo who had great ideas. But because their ideas were different than what was believed, they were treated poorly. Albert understood these scientists because he felt he was being treated the same way. In Italy, he wrote his first scientific paper, but it received very little attention because he was young and no one thought someone his age would have great ideas. In Italy, he decided to move to Zurich Switzerland to study physics.

There he loved the Swiss people and his new college. He was able to ask tough questions and talk about them with his classmates. There he met a woman named Mileva who was also a big thinker. They enjoyed their time together and were later married. 

In Switzerland, Albert started working at the patent office. When someone comes up with an idea for a new invention, they draw up the plans and get a patent — which means no one else can take their idea. Albert’s job was to read about all of the new inventions and approve them. He enjoyed this job and was able to work so fast that he could take off early and spend time hiking and thinking. These were some of Albert’s happiest years of his life. So many marvelous ideas came to him at this time. He started writing scientific papers about his ideas and published five of them. These included big ideas about space travel and electricity. Albert was known for wearing the same wrinkled clothes every day and didn’t comb his hair, so it stuck up all over the place. He liked to spend time deep in thought rather than taking care of himself. People began to know him for his big ideas and recognized him for his funny appearance.

As Albert became more popular, he finally got his dream job — teaching physics for the university. Now he was able to spend all of his time thinking and teaching his students. The students loved their quirky professor. He was able to take difficult ideas and explain them in a simple way.

One of his big ideas was called The Theory of Relativity. This idea was that all things move at different speeds except for light. Think about how as a car passes it’s moving at a different speed as it drives by. But if you’re inside the car it doesn’t appear to be moving at all. So speed is “relative” to where you are. Another example is that the Earth is flying around the sun and spinning at incredible speeds, but because you’re standing on the Earth it doesn’t appear to be moving at all.

 Another of Einstein’s big idea was that not only are the planets moving around the Sun, but the Sun is moving through the galaxy as well, it just doesn’t appear to move because our planet is moving around it.

Some funny things about Albert is that even though he was a scientific genius he was often absent-minded, which means he forgot simple things. For example, often when he went out he forgot his keys, lost his bags, and forgot to eat. He was so focused on what went on in his wonderful brain that he often didn’t consider what was going on around him. He found simpler ways to live his life, so he could focus all his energy on thinking. For example, he wore the same clothes every day and only buttoned his top button because it took less time and energy. He often wore socks that didn’t match, his clothes were rumpled and his hair stuck all over the place. But his fans loved it and people all over the world talked about this brilliant, quirky genius.

Albert’s next job took him back to Germany, but over the years he and his wife were growing apart. He was so busy being a professor and speaking around the world that he didn’t give Mileva and his children the time they needed. Mileva decided not to move him and they divorced. Albert admitted he was not always a good father and chose writing his papers and teaching over his family responsibilities. 

While Albert was living in Germany, World War I started. He was sad to see soldiers marching down the street because he knew what war did to people. He refused to support the war and the leaders of Germany were upset at him. He could have gone to jail, but he stood up for his beliefs anyway. When World War I ended Albert was very happy.

In Germany, Albert met a woman named Elsa. They grew close and she spent her time taking care of him, making sure he ate and shaved and didn’t lose his keys. They were married. Albert loved Elsa and she loved him. 

By this time, Albert was so popular it made his life difficult. You might think being popular is a great thing, but for people who are very famous, you can’t walk anywhere without people talking to you or wanting a picture or asking for your autograph. Albert loved being alone, so this was very hard for him. He was offered a lot of money to speak and do other things, but he refused. For him, his research and his ideas were more important than money or fame.

Sadly, new problems began in Germany. Albert Einstein was Jewish, which is a race and religion. Many Jews who lived in Germany wrote to Albert and asked him to defend them because they were being treated badly. Their shops were taken from them and they were often beaten up by non-Jews. The Nazis, who had taken control of Germany, falsely blamed all their problems on the Jewish people. They burned their books and many Jews started leaving Germany. Albert spoke out against the Nazis and refused to leave even though his life was at risk. Hitler, the powerful leader of the Nazis, said Albert was a spy and eventually Albert realized it was too dangerous for him to stay. He and Elsa moved to the United States and became a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey. 

Albert’s years at Princeton were hard. He was sad to see what was happening to Jews in Germany. Then sadly Elsa died. Albert often kept to himself and played his violin. He also didn’t have as many big ideas as when he was younger.

One of Albert’s most famous ideas was an equation, E = MC2. It basically said that all things are energy. Even the hard walls around you, your body, mass are energy, too, but just in a different form. He also had the idea that if an atom could be broken it would cause a HUGE explosion, called a nuclear explosion. He worried that the Nazis might create a nuclear bomb and use it against the United States and her Allies. Even though he hated the idea that such a weapon would ever be used, he wrote President Roosevelt and told him that the United States must create the bomb first. Eventually, the United States did create an atomic bomb and used it against its enemy Japan. For the rest of his life, Albert wondered whether he should have ever shared his ideas about a nuclear bomb. But he also thought the consequence of the Nazis making it first would be even worse. 

After World War II ended, Einstein spent many years speaking out against atomic bombs. The United States and Russia had made thousands of them and it made the world a very dangerous place. Fortunately, after World War II nuclear bombs were never used. 

Albert Einstein spent the last years of his life growing old while living in Princeton, New Jersey. His hair was now white and grew widely in all directions. He was still a quirky and funny sight to see with his rumpled, mismatched clothes. He continued to play his violin and go on walks around his home. He often stopped to help people in need or invite them into his home. He was a very gentle, kind person who had changed the world with his ideas but didn’t care about money or being famous. He just wanted the world to be a peaceful place. On April 17, 1955 Einstein passed away while thinking through a problem and writing equations on a piece of paper. To his last day, he was a thinker! 

Spend a moment thinking about what it was like to be Albert. When he was young he loved to go on walks and observe the world around him. He saw everything through the eyes of wonder and curiosity. The world to him was an exciting, mysterious place. He loved to understand how it worked and dream about how the parts he didn’t understand might work. His imagination led to some of his amazing ideas. You can wonder, too. Remember in the times when you might be bored, it’s ok to be bored. Say it out loud “it’s ok to bored!” When you’re bored, you can take a deep breath and look closely at the world around you. It’s the perfect chance to see things with new eyes. 

Even though Einstein became very famous, he didn’t care about having lots of money and expensive things. He wanted the world to be fair and peaceful. He also wasn’t perfect. No one really is. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. Einstein wasn’t a very good father, but he ended up helping the world in many other ways. 

If you want to learn more about Albert Einstein we shared our favorite videos and books on our website, BedtimeHistoryStories.com. Be sure to check it out.

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