• Science

    The Inventor of the Telephone

    1870 May 28 Older brother Melville Bell dies of tuberculosis at the age of 25. July-August Alexander Graham Bell, his parents, and his sister-in-law, Carrie Bell, emigrate to Canada and settle in Brantford, Ontario. 1871 AprilMoving to Boston, Alexander Graham Bell begins teaching at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. 1872 March-June Alexander Graham Bell teaches at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Boston and at the American Asylum for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. April 8 Alexander Graham Bell meets Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who will become one of his financial backers and his father-in-law. Fall Alexander Graham Bell opens his School of Vocal Physiology in Boston…

  • Myths and Legends

    History of Vampires

    Medveđa, Serbia. Jan. 1732 — The Carpathian mountains loomed ominously to the east, as if nature herself was conspiring with evil. In the valley below a shadow had been draped over the corpses that now littered the quiet cemetery. Of the forty villagers exhumed that morning, a total of thirteen had been identified as vampires. Fresh blood seeped from their mouth, nose, or the gaping wounds in their chest where the stake had been pounded in. The gore was clear evidence of their demonic guilt. Dr. Johannes Flückinger, regiment medical officer dispatched by the Honorable Supreme Command, surveyed the ghastly scene. He was clearly uneasy about being sent to this…

  • Black History,  Math

    First African-American Grand Master Of Chess

    There are only about a thousand grand masters of chess in the world and only one of them is African-American: Maurice Ashley. He wasn’t even good enough to make his high school chess team. But he studied hard and became a master when he was 20, then, 14 years later– a grand master– a ranking just short of world champion. He’s 45 now and Maurice Ashley has made chess his life. He travels the world bringing chess to kids who might not otherwise be aware of it, often playing…and winning! against an entire room of young hopefuls lined up before him at their chessboards. Some of the upstarts he may…

  • Black History,  Sports

    Arthur Ashe

    Arthur Ashe biography Synopsis Born on July 10,1943, in Richmond, Virginia, Arthur Ashe became the first, and still only, black player to win the men’s singles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, or the Australian Open. Always an activist, when Ashe learned that he had contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion, he turned his efforts to raising awareness of the disease, before finally succumbing to it in 1993. Early Life Tennis player. Born Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. on July 10,1943, in  Richmond, Virginia. The oldest of Arthur Ashe, Sr. and Mattie  Cunningham’s two sons, Arthur Ashe, Jr. blended finesse and power to  forge a groundbreaking tennis game. He became the first,…

  • Black History

    Macon Bolling Allen

    Allen was born in Indiana in 1816. After beginning his career as a school teacher, he moved to Portland, Maine to study law. He was admitted to the Maine bar in 1844, becoming the first licensed African-American lawyer in the United States. He became a justice of the peace in Massachusetts in 1848, and was again the first African-American to do so. He practiced law in Boston before moving to South Carolina in 1868. He was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in November 1869 and joined in partnership with William Whipper and Robert Brown Elliott. Their law firm in Charleston was likely the first African American law firm in…