Thanksgiving

The holiday of Thanksgiving goes back to America's colonial roots. When the colonists from England, and other places, began to create settlements along what is today the East Coast of America, their lives were very difficult. They often struggled to have enough to eat because the farms and markets they had used in Europe were not there. So a good harvest, hunt, or fishing expedition was cause for celebration -- and eating a big meal before the food that could not be stored spoiled.

Gathering with friends and family to celebrate the good things which life offers by sharing a meal is a richly American tradition. National holidays of thanksgiving have been proclaimed by most of our Presidents, starting with George Washington, usually around the time of autumn harvests. In modern times, the Thanksgiving holiday became a formal celebration under President Franklin Roosevelt on the last Thursday of November. Today, Thanksgiving is a major holiday an a time we can

Stephen Decatur

Stephen Decatur was, perhaps, the first war hero of an independent United States.  He was born in 1779 and when he was 17 he found himself working for a shipbuilder and then serving on board a U.S. navy ship.  He liked it and joined the navy outright, and with his studies in college he quickly became an officer.

In 1803, he was a Lieutenant in the Navy serving on board a ship in the Mediterranean, patrolling against pirates.  Some of the pirates were sponsored by the Sultan of Algiers and they captured a U.S. ship called the Philadelphia.  Stephen took command of a smaller ship called the Enterprise and used it to capture a pirate ship which he re-named Intrepid.  He then sailed Intrepid into the harbor where the pirates were trying to take the guns and other supplies off the Philadelphia.  After steering a course directly for the captured ship, he lit the Intrepid on fire and jumped off at the last second, swimming back to the Enterprise before sailing away to safety.  For his heroics he was made captain at age 25.

He saw action again in the War of 1812.  He was the only person in the Navy to capture a British ship, and sailed it home safely so the U.S. Navy could use it in the war; after that, he sailed again and this time captured an entire British squadron.  Then peace was made between England and the U.S., and Stephen was sent back to the Mediterranean, where he captured more pirate ships.

In the last few years of his life, he was a commissioner of the Navy, working to make the military strong and able to handle threats against the country.  It was at this time that he said of the country he loved so very much, "may she always be in the right, but our country right or wrong!"

Apollo Project

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged America to adopt a national goal of sending people to the Moon and bringing them safely back to Earth.

Over the next eight years, many different parts of the government, and a lot of private companies, and a lot of scientists, worked very hard to make that happen.  Along the way, they invented all sorts of things to help put a man on the Moon, from things that seem ordinary like instant orange juice to transforming computers from things that took up entire floors of office buildings into things that would fit into a person's pocket.

Also along the way, they learned how to build very large rockets.  At the time, no one could be really sure how the rockets would work, and every time one went up with astronauts in them, they could never be sure that they were going to get back home safely.

But after eight years of research and ten test missions, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed a tiny spacecraft called the Eagle on the Moon on July 16, 1969.  More than one-fifth of the entire people of the world watched on television at the same time as American astronauts became the first people ever to walk on the Moon's surface, and come home again to tell about it.  They became the first of six American missions safely to the Moon and back.  The moon landing is one of America's proudest moments.

Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug was a scientist from Iowa, who has probably saved more lives than anyone else in history.

Norman came from a farm family in Iowa, and went to college on an athletic scholarship during the Great Depression. He studied forestry and the kinds of diseases that attack crops, while he saw a lot of hard working people starving for lack of food.  So after he finished his education, he devoted his life to doing something about it.

He got both the government and private companies to support his experiments with different kinds of crops, especially wheat. Eventually he researched a kind of wheat that would grow in cold temperatures, and found a way to make it grow very fast so farmers could grow two crops a year.  Then, he found a way to make his wheat resistant to diseases and insects, so more wheat could be harvested every crop with fewer pesticides.  American farms, and after them farms all over the world, were able to triple their output within a year of starting to use Norman's wheat -- and today nearly all of the bread we eat is made from seeds that he developed

More than a billion people who otherwise would have starved to death lived instead, because of a farm boy from Iowa who combined education, hard work, and compassion to work and made the whole world a better place for it.

Alvin York

Alvin C. York was born in 1887 to a very poor family in Tennessee.  His father died when Alvin was 24 years old, and Alvin had to help his mother raise eight of his younger brothers and sisters.  He was drafted into the Army at age 29 and fought in World War I.  Alvin didn't want to go to Europe and fight, but eventually, he decided that he had to answer the country's call to duty along with everyone else.

On October 8, 1918, Alvin's squad of seventeen men had to find a route to a railroad line in France that the Germans were using to supply their troops.  To get there, they had to cross a valley and the Germans had defended it with machine-gun nests and over two hundred troops.  Half the soldiers were killed by the German troops, leaving Corporal Alvin York in charge.

He stormed the German machine guns head-on.  Imagine what it's like to run directly at a machine gun that an enemy soldier is firing at you.  But Alvin got to the nest, only to find eight Germans coming at him with bayonets, long knives at the end of their rifles.  He kept on fighting until he ran out of ammunition, and then the Germans surrendered.  He took 132 prisoners and opened up the rail line for the U.S. and its allies.

When Alvin came home after the war he got married and had five children.  He founded a school for young farm boys in Tennessee, and a movie was made of his life.  He tried to enlist for combat duty again in World War II even though he was 55 years old, but the Army said he was too old and would more do good for the country helping recruit younger soldiers.  He lived to be 75 years old and is one of America's greatest war heroes.

Liberty Bell

The Liberty Bell was originally ordered to for use in the provincial government building of Pennsylvania in 1751.  Its inscription reads:  "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof ," which is a quote from the Book of Leviticus.  It cracked almost immediately after its first testing.  It took two years to re-cast the bell, which by then weighed 2,080 pounds. 

It was rung to announce the first Continental Congress in 1774 and the battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775.  During the Revolution, the bell was hidden from the British Army so that it would not be melted down and made into a cannon.  The American army hid it in a haypile of an ordinary farmer turned soldier, and the bell survived the war, and was returned to Philadelphia, where it was rung to announce elections and the deaths of many important Americans.

The old crack started to show again in 1835 after many uses, and in 1846 on George Washington's birthday the bell was run many times and the crack we see on the bell today grew to the point that the bell had to be retired.  In the nineteenth century, anti-slavery activists adopted the bell as a symbol of an America where everyone could be free.  Today, replicas of the bell -- some with the crack and some without -- are used by many states and given as gifts from the United States to other countries, as symbols of a commitment to freedom.

Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park is located in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It is a special place, which preserves the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains and serves as a shelter for all kinds of wildlife. It also has unusual features like geysers -- natural fountains of water coming up from deep in the earth -- and it sits on top of a gigantic volcano.

President U.S. Grant created the park in 1872 after an explorer named Ferdinand Hayden surveyed the region and reported on its great beauty and the many geysers there.  He urged the President that this land was special and should be set aside for all future generations of Americans to enjoy.  This was the first time ever in history, anywhere in the world, that a country set aside a part of its land to be a national park, open to everyone, and kept preserved in a way that would let people appreciate nature.  Today there are over 400 parts of the country set aside as national parks in the United States, and almost every country in the rest of the world has copied Mr. Hayden's idea and created their own national parks.