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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.

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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.

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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:

• Navajo: beshlo Translation: Iron Fish Code for: Submarine
• Navajo: dah-he- tih-hi Translation:hummingbird Code for: fighter plane
• Navajo: debehli-zine Translation: black street Code for: squad

Here are some totally cool, totally retro inventions from the 1950s. It is surprising how many things were invented in that decade. How many of these inventions do you recognize?

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What peculiar pinkish substance stretches without breaking, yet can be snapped off cleanly, bounces higher than a rubber ball and floats if you shape it one way, yet sinks if shaped another way?

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Hank Hot Rod and Della Deluxe are so cool, they’re totally retro! Classic 1950s is written all over their whitewall tires, fancy paint jobs and shiny chrome and their radio stations are set to rock and roll. While Hank cruises the Main on Saturday afternoons, Della like to plays it cool at the soda shop. Saturday nights you’ll find them both at the drive-in movies.

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Did you know that the very first phone call was made on March 10, 1876? By today’s standards it was a short call over a short distance. Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, were literally just down the hall from each other in a Boston machine shop. The message was a single sentence, “Watson come here, I want you!”

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Long before the airplane was ever invented, people had dreams of flying. Many people must have watched the birds soaring in the wind and wondered how they too could accomplish such an amazing feat. And a certain few of those people actually took the initiative to try and make it happen.

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This article is dedicated to Native Americans. As you may know, many Native American tribes have been living in this country long before anyone ever settled here from Europe. So, we decided to honor these people by giving some insight into the many different cultures and tribes that have paid respect to the earth in the past, and that still thrive today. Because there are so many tribes that exist, it would be impossible to honor each one.

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Chief Seattle was born in 1786 and became the chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes. During his life, he saw many of his people fight to keep their land, however, he and his father took a different approach to the inevitable moving in of the white man. They decided to become friends with the white man and try to resolve things in a peaceful manner.

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The Lakota people of South Dakota have believed in a story and prophecy for 2,000 years. The story told of the white buffalo calf woman begins two thousand years ago when two warriors were hunting buffalo. All of a sudden they saw a white buffalo calf come near them.

As it got closer, it turned into a beautiful young Indian girl. She told them that she would return in four days with a sacred bundle. Indeed she came back and with her was her bundle which she spent four days explaining the meaning of.

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In the early 1840’s, California was a place that housed very few people and was not of much interest to people. One man, John Sutter, saw it as a land of opportunity, a place where he could build an agricultural empire. In 1847, Sutter sent some men down to the American River to build a sawmill which would provide lumber for his visionary farm.

Things were going as planned, the sawmill was almost finished, when all of a sudden, one of the men James Marshall spotted something shiny. It was on this day, January 24, 1848, that the first gold of the gold rush was discovered.

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