Stuart A Kallen

In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west from Europe and landed on a Caribbean island in what he thought was India. Over the next twelve years, Columbus made several voyages to the New World, seeking gold and power and bringing other Europeans to start colonies. How can we know what the journey was like for Columbus, his shipmates, and the Taino people he met in the Caribbean? We can study maps and tools Columbus used, excerpts from his journal, and...

Native people of the Subarctic region of North America have long had their own languages, cultures, and methods for hunting and surviving in this cold, snowy land. Read all about their history and culture.

1952 On June 26, 1952, twenty-five men and five women entered the waiting room of a railway station in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. If they had been white people of European descent, they would have gone unnoticed. But they were black South Africans who were violating the waiting room's "Europeans Only" sign as part of the Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws. Instituted by the African National Congress (ANC), the campaign aimed to peacefully...

In the South Pacific during World War II, a group of Navajo Marines sent secret messages for the Allies using a code based on the Navajo language. Learn more about these heroes, whose unbreakable code helped win the war.

On a global scale, humans create around 2.6 trillion pounds of waste every year. None of this trash is harmlesslandfills and dumps leak toxic chemicals into soil and groundwater, while incinerators release toxic gases and particles into the air. What can we do to keep garbage from swallowing up Earth? Reducing, reusing, recycling, and upcycling are some of the answers. Learn more about the work of the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Ocean...

In the early 1980s, doctors sounded the alarm. A mysterious new disease-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS-was spreading around the world. While many of the first AIDS patients were gay men, no one seemed to be immune from the deadly blood-borne disease. Researchers set to work to discover what was causing AIDS. They suspected a virus. Two teams of scientists-one in the United States and one in France-worked tirelessly to identify the virus...

"The only way we could win was to keep fighting for a long time...the only way we could win was by staying with it."-Cesar Chavez As the sun rose on September 8, 1965, in Delano, California, thousands of acres of ripe grapes hung heavy on the vine. But instead of harvesting the crop, Filipino farmworkers on nine large ranches laid down their tools and walked out of the vineyards in protest of their low wages and dangerous working conditions. The strike...

Briefly describes the physical characteristics, habitat, and behavior of polar bears.