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Charles Goodyear however became fascinated with this material, and spent his life trying to find a way to process and use it. He went broke, and went to debtors prison before he even started working on rubber. His family suffered much in his quest to find the secrets of rubber.

Andy Kaufman's lost Lincoln footage

The nine-year old Washington spent long, exhausting days packing salt. Like many blacks after Emancipation, Washington wanted an education. So despite the exhausting days he used his free time to go to school.

Unfortunately, in spite of their noble efforts, Tom's dedicated parents eventually found themselves incapable of addressing his ever increasing  interest in the  Sciences.

For example, when he began to question them about concepts dealing with Physics - such as those contained in Isaac Newton's great "Principia" - they were utterly stymied.  Accordingly, they scraped enough money together to hire a clever tutor to help their precocious son in trying to understand Newton's complex mathematical principles and unique style.... 

At age 16, after working in a variety of telegraph offices, where he performed numerous "moonlight" experiments, he finally came up with his  first authentic invention.

If he had failed, the government would have fallen almost immediately and everyone would have been bowing to King Washington. 

 Hanson established the Great Seal of the United States, which all Presidents have since been required to use on all official documents. President Hanson also established the first Treasury Department, the first Secretary of War, and the first Foreign Affairs Department. Lastly, he declared that the fourth Thursday of every November was to be Thanksgiving Day, which is still true today. 

The Articles of Confederation didn't work well. The individual states had too much power and nothing could be agreed upon. A new doctrine needed to be written - something we know as the Constitution. 

The settlers established Jamestown on May 24, 1607; it became the first permanent English settlement in North America. Jamestown was located on an island in the James River in what is now Virginia. Smith was the colony's leader and also led hunting and exploration expeditions around the area. He traveled as far as what is now Richmond, Virginia (1607).

orn in 1580 in Willoughby, England, John Smith left home at age 16 after his father died. He began his travels by joining volunteers in France who were fighting for Dutch independence from Spain. Two years later, he set off for the Mediterranean Sea, working on a merchant ship. In 1600 he joined Austrian forces to fight the Turks in the "Long War." A valiant soldier, he was promoted to Captain while fighting in Hungary. He was fighting in Transylvania two years later in 1602. There he was wounded in battle, captured, and sold as a slave to a Turk. This Turk then sent Smith as a gift to his sweetheart in Istanbul. According to Smith, this girl fell in love with him and sent him to her brother to get training for Turkish imperial service. Smith reportedly escaped by murdering the brother and returned to Transylvania by fleeing through Russia and Poland. After being released from service and receiving a large reward, he traveled all through Europe and Northern Africa. He returned to England in the winter of 1604-05.

Sarah Grimke was an abolitionist from an early age: she saw a slave being whipped at age 5 and tried to board a steamer to live in a place where there is no slavery. Later in opposition to southern law, she taught her attendant to read. An early feminist, she wanted to become an attorney and follow in her father's footsteps. He was chief judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. She studied constantly until her parents found out that she intended to go to college with her brother - then they forbid her to study her brother's books or any language.

In 1868 the Grimke-Weld trio served as officers (with Sarah as a vice president) of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association; two years later Sarah and Angelina led a group of Hyde Park women in unlawful attempts to cast ballots in a local election. On one occasion the 79-year-old Sarah tramped up and down the countryside distributing copies of John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women. Her involvement with Massachusetts suffrage crusaders continued until her death in Hyde Park. Grimke's contribution to antislavery agitation was pivotal, not only because of her considerable talent as a writer, speaker, teacher, and pamphleteer, but also because of her sex, southern nativity, and uncommon courage. As leaders of the female antislavery movement, Sarah and Angelina regularly risked physical harm and slander. They were the only women to brave social custom and charges of "heresy" in the 1837 speaking tour of New England; with Abigail Kelley, Frances Wright, Maria Stewart, and several others, Sarah made it possible for later generations of women to occupy public spaces without fear (as happened on one occasion) of having to run a gauntlet of jeering men and boys. Sarah's elegant mapping of similarities (and, occasionally, of differences) between white women in America and African-American slaves--and especially her insistence that white women learn to empathize more completely with black women--elevated her to the first rank of social reformers and Christian-feminist theoreticians. As historian Larry Ceplair put it, Sarah Grimke and her devoted sister were genuine "revolutionaries" in a land not given to revolutionary change, "increasingly conscious that they were blazing a public path for women of courage who had seen a light or heard a voice of truth" (Ceplair, p. xi).

Madison studied law at home but had no passion for it.

In 1776, he became a delegate to the revolutionary Virginia Convention and would later push through statutes on religious freedom, among other measures, that he had worked on with Thomas Jefferson.

For three years, he argued vigorously for legislation to strengthen the loose confederacy of former colonies, contending that military victory required vesting power in a central government.

Based on her interpretation of Scripture, Sarah advocated full equality for women in education, vocation, politics, and finances. She became a role model for many women who later became leaders in the suffrage movement, and is still a role model for many today. Sarah Moore Grimké confronted racism and prejudice within church, society, and herself.

In 1838 the sisters persuaded their mother to give them, as their share of the family estate, slaves, whom they immediately freed.

15th Amendment ratified (1870). Section 1. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Even at this early age, Joplin demonstrated his extraordinary talent for music. Encouraged by his parents, he was already proficient on the banjo, and was beginning to play the piano. By age eleven and under the tutelage of Julius Weiss, he was learning the finer points of harmony and style. As a teenager, he worked as a dance musician.

Joplin’s father had been a slave while his mother was free born. His parents had amateur musical interests enabling him to grow up within a musically sympathetic home and by the age of seven he began piano lessons with a neighbouring white teacher.