Armstrong-History

Goodyear was determined to solve the problems inherent in natural rubber. With no formal training in chemistry, his work was based on trial and error, experimenting with different methods of processing and additives such as magnesia.

Goodyear, who was by then obsessed with rubber, was not discouraged. He began experimenting, mixing dry powders into the rubber in order to make it less soft and sticky.

He had spent five years, since going bankrupt in hardware, trying to make something useful from natural rubber, which is gooey in the summer and brittle in the winter. His idea had been to coat it with a powder to make it less sticky, but by dropping the mixture onto the stove he had invented "vulcanization" (Vulcan, Roman god of fire) and created the elastic form of rubber upon which we increasingly depend.

He experimented endlessly, kneading various chemicals into the raw rubber.

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

She was later employed by the Continental Congress to make flags and colors of various kinds. There is no evidence, however, that she had anything to do with the design or the manufacturing of the American flag, contrary to popular myth.

The next 11 he spent in the backwoods of Wisconsin, working through the daylight hours, clearing the forest, holding a plow to a straight furrow behind a team of oxen, digging wells through hard bedrock, and taking an adult's part in subduing wild nature.

He also prepared throughout his childhood for his life as a naturalist by a close attention to the wonders of nature. Everything, it seemed, drew his eye and his mind, and all creatures drew his sympathy, whether the mice that ate the grain he had wrung from the earth by the sweat of his brow or the intelligent old ox Buck, who figured out how to open pumpkins to feast on the succulent inner flesh. As a teenager, he had no time for school and little opportunity for formal study.

Sakakawea, my grandmother, died at the trader's place, seven days after that."

While admitting that historians agree that there are no primary sources to support the Ross tale, the Revolutionary War Archives present the "overwhelming circumstantial evidence in support of Betsy."