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Imagine if you will, a moonlit night. The air is warm and scented with jasmine. You are strolling on a wide plain under the canopy of stars, drawn to the softly glowing white dome you see in the distance. It is spellbinding.
“Wanted. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”
That’s the ad I answered in May 1860. By the way, my name is Charlie Miller, but everyone called me Broncho Charlie back then. I was 11 years old and it turned out I was the youngest of that pack of “wiry fellows!” But don’t let that fool you, I knew horses and with a good pinto under me I could ride like the wind.
Here are some neat facts about the Pony Express, one of the most fascinating and important institutions in early American history.
As important as the Internet might be to modern citizens around the world, so the Pony Express and its brave riders were critical to communication for early American settlers.
The beautiful and unique quality of snowflakes fascinated a young farmer in Vermont. He saw each snowflake as “a masterpiece of design” and he mourned its melting because that particular and individual “miracle of beauty” would be lost for all time.
Wilson A. Bentley is the young man in question. He was born in 1865 and by the time he was 20 he made history as the first person to photograph a snowflake!
Before there were phones, or even electricity, how did people communicate over long distances?
Primitive man used smoke signals to tell hunting parties about the movement of game. The ancient Greeks flashed coded messages during battles by using mirrors to reflect the sun. Carrier pigeons have been used by many cultures to relay messages.
The first passenger-carrying railroads began operating in the late 1820’s. It wasn’t very long before people realized that some sort of signaling was necessary to protect trains from crashing into each other.
At first, policemen stood at crossings and junctions and used hand held flags to signal passing trains. They were acting like human semaphore poles, with their two arms holding flags that signified clear messages.
Did you know that September is the month that the ice cream cone was invented? Or that it started out as a flat dessert in one place and was made of paper in another? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What’s the point of a cone without ice cream?
Mmmmm, let’s see, which is your favorite? Chocolate, strawberry, or maybe vanilla? Perhaps, like President Bush, you like Pralines and Cream.
Ice cream, in one form or another, has been a treat since at least the beginning of recorded time. There are records from 62 AD that tell us Emperor Nero sent slaves to the Apennine Mountains to collect snow and ice, which were then flavored with fruit juice, honey and nectar. That’s the first mention in history of a snow cone!
From my perspective, it was a lot of hoopla! Looking back on the 1860s though, I realize just how novel and exciting my life and job may have seemed to others at the time. And if it served to inspire a few young women, then perhaps the hoopla was worthwhile.
Who was Ida Lewis? A woman who broke many 19th century employment taboos and in so doing so, made a lasting contribution to the American Coast Guard. Read on to discover her remarkable story.
The infinite creativity of the human brain means that there are endless possibilities for secret encoding. However, one of the most successful codes, one that was never broken, was borrowed from an ancient and venerable culture.
In search of a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it, the military was intrigued with a proposal made by Philip Johnston. Johnston, the son of a missionary, had grown up in a Navajo village and was one of a very small number of non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently.
The Navajo Indian recruits had to invent about 450 code words to describe military terms that did not exist in their language. Here are just a few:
My name is Katep and I am the son of a scribe. My father is well educated and regarded with respect. He is a Royal Scribe at the court of the Pharaoh. The government officials require him to write their reports and sometimes their thoughts. He is often sent out into the country to record the volume of the grain harvest or to tally the Pharaoh’s herds of cattle. Other scribes become priests at the temple and they have the sacred task of writing down the magical formulas that guide the dead safely to the gates of the underworld. My father however, says that his favorite pastime is writing down the stories he remembers from his own childhood. I love to hear the tales that he reads aloud to me under the stars while the waves of the river Nile lap the shore.
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