The parents of your father and/or mother are your grandparents (your grandmother and/or grandfather) and their parents are your great grandparents. Your parents' brothers and sisters are your uncles and aunts. The brothers and sisters of your grandparents are often called your great uncles or great aunts, but this is incorrect. They are actually your grand aunts and grand uncles. The brothers and sisters of your great grandparents are your great grand uncles and great grand aunts.

You may have heard some cousins referred to as your 1st cousin, or 2nd cousin. You may have even heard of them referred to as your 2nd cousin once removed. These relationships aren't as difficult to figure out as it seems.

Mnemonics (the first m is silent) are tricks or strategies to help you remember information. A mnemonic can be a word, phrase, a rhyme, a song, or anything else you use to help you remember something. One mnemonic you know already is the alphabet song. This help kids remember the letters of the alphabet. Below are some other examples:

Knowing the mnemonic H.O.M.E.S. can help you remember the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Eerie, and Superior. This mnemonic uses the first letter of each lake to create another common word.

This mnemonic uses your knuckles to remember which months have 30 days and which have 31 (or 28). The higher bumps of your knuckles let you know a higher number should match, while the dips between your knuckles are lower, helping you remember a lower number corresponds with the dips.

The practice of tarring and feathering as punishment began in the 1100s when Richard the Lionheart began using it to punish thieves. It consists of removing a person's clothing, pouring hot tar on them and then covered with feathers that would stick to the tar. As you can imagine, the hot tar caused severe blistering and was incredibly painful to remove. The feathers made this even more difficult.

This form of intimidation and punishment was used extensively during the American Colonial Period, especially the 1760s when Patriots used it against Loyalists and British officials. Tar could easily be found in shipyards. Pine tar was applied between the boards in ships to make them water-proof. Most pillows of the time were stuffed with feathers, so they, also, were easy to obtain.

Tarring and Feathering was not usually fatal. The tar was painful and the feathers were intended to make the person appear comical. It was designed to embarrass and humiliate the victim. Sometimes, a person's clothing was left on when they were tarred and feathered as a lesser punishment or warning. Because the tar was heated to make it spreadable, it often caused blistering when applied to bare skin. When a victim tried to remove the tar, their blistered skin was also removed. This was, of course, incredibly painful, but the beatings and other tortures that frequently went along with tarring and feathering were often more life-threatening.

Tarring and feathering was successful. Tax collectors were often threatened. Though there are no records of a stamp commissioner being tarred and feathered, the threats were enough that when the Stamp Act tax went into effect in 1765, there were no stamp commissioners left in the colonies to collect it.

It was also successful in protesting the Townshend Duties which included the tea tax that led to the Boston Tea Party.

Other materials were used to exact the same punishment such as syrup instead of tar or cattails instead of feathers. John Robert Shaw described a tarring and feathering in his autobiography:

Plot is the series of events in a story that explain to the reader what is happening. One of the easiest ways to understand plot is to look at the mountain shaped plot diagram and think of story in terms of climbing a mountain.

Stage 1 - Exposition

• Exposition is at the base of the mountain or the beginning of the story. This is where the author sets up the story including characters, setting, and main conflicts.

Stage 2 - Rising Action

• The Rising Action occurs as you begin to move throughout the story. This is where conflicts start to build.
  

Stage 3 - Climax

• The Climax is the turning point of the story. You have reached the top of the mountain and you cannot go any farther, you have to turn and go down. Though this appears in the center of the mountain diagram above, the climax of a story often happens closer to the end.
  

Stage 4 - Falling Action

• Falling Action occurs after the climax as things start to work themselves out in the story. You are coming down the mountain just as you are coming down from the excitement or tension of the climax.
  

Stage 5 - Resolution

• The Resolution is the solution to the problem as you have reached the bottom of the mountain. The solution might not be what you want, but the conflict has been resolved.

Every story has a conflict - a struggle between two opposing forces. The conflict may be between two people or it may be between a person and some other force such as the weather, a problem, or even a problem a character has with themself. Since every story revolves around conflict,  it is important to understand the two kinds of conflict.

• Internal Conflict is a struggle that occurs within the main character. This struggle happens within the character's own mind.
  
• External Conflict is a struggle that the main character has with another character, with society, or with a natural force.

Ernst Morch, born in 1908,  was an important doctor in the field of anesthesiology (using gases or drugs to lessen pain, especially before surgery). He became interested in this when he was 5 years old and had his tonsils removed without any anesthesia, which was incredibly painful. He developed medical equipment, learned new techniques, and administered new drugs that helped advance medicine and make surgeries far less painful.

The Nazis didn't want news about what was really happening in the war to get out to the public, so Dr. Mørch and his colleagues set up a receiver on the roof of the hospital so they could listen to the BBC—the British Broadcasting Company that was a radio station reporting on the war. They then reported what they heard in their underground paper. They also snuck out information they learned about the Nazis to authorities in England.

After the war, Dr. Mørch rode on one of the buses sent by the Danish government to Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany to bring home the Danish citizens who were held there. The prisoners there had been starved for a long time, so when they were given food and milk, they quickly died because their bodies couldn't handle suddenly eating and drinking like normal. Dr. Mørch figured out that small shots of beer, given every 30 minutes along with injected vitamins over the slow ten-day drive back to Denmark, could save thousands. These buses ended up transporting more than just the Danish people and ended up saving 280,000 concentration camp victims.

The map above shows the Caribbean as it is today. Columbus spent the most time on an island called Haiti (though some think it was called Quizquella). He renamed it La Isla Española. When France took over the island it was called Santo Domingo (or Saint Domingue in French). Today the countries of Haiti and The Dominican Republic make up the island, now known as Hispaniola.

The people who originally lived on the island we now know as Hispaniola were Taíno. As many as 750,000 Taíno were living on Hispaniola when Columbus first arrived. They lived on many of the islands in the Caribbean, but most historians agree that the largest population of Taíno were on Hispaniola. Other large populations were living on the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Taíno women were highly skilled in agriculture (growing food), while the men hunted and fished. They were skilled artisans making beautiful pottery, intricate belts woven from dyed cotton, and they carved incredible images from stone, wood, shell, and bone. Some of the first Spanish who met and wrote about them said they had well-organized communities with each village having a chief known as a cacique if it was a man or a cacica if it was a woman. Villages were then grouped into districts headed by one of the village cacique or cacica. These districts were then grouped into a region headed by the most prominent district cacique or cacica. This organizational structure is similar to the political structure of the United States with mayors, governors, senators, etc.

It seems the Taíno were not used to battle or warfare because Columbus wrote, "They traded with us and gave us everything they had, with good will . . . they took great delight in pleasing us. They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal. Your highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people . . . They love their neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing." He also wrote, "With 50 men you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished." He eventually did just that.

Columbus wrote of the Taíno people, “They will give all that they do possess for anything that is given to them, exchanging things even for bits of broken crockery. . . . They were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces. . . . They do not carry arms [weapons] or know them. . . . They should be good servants.” He and his men enslaved Taíno men, women, and children and forced them to search for gold, build their settlements, and do any other task they wished. Failure to find gold or work as they expected was met with cruel and vicious punishment, and sometimes death.

After finding very little gold on his second journey in 1493, and needing a cargo other than gold and spices to ship to Spain, Columbus decided to send the Taíno people he had enslaved as a show of the wealth available in the New World. He loaded the "best men and women" onto ships and sent them off to Europe. This was just the beginning of the widespread enslavement of the Native Peoples.

Within thirty years, 80-90% of the Taíno population had died from disease, starvation, or brutal treatment.



 

As news of James Marshall's 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill spread, people from around the world began making the trek to California to seek fortune. In 1849, the steady stream of people from within the United States had established three main routes to California. 

Travel often began by steamboat up the Ohio or Mississippi River to reach the trailheads. The most common "jumping off" point was Independence, Missouri. The Oregon trail had been traveled by fur trappers for decades.

1. Chimney Rock - A 500 ft. tall column marked 550 miles from Independence, Missouri.
2. The Platte River - The river was sometimes difficult to cross. In 1849, rains made this especially difficult.
3. Fort Laramie - In the first six months of 1849, more than 39,000 people were recorded passing through Fort Laramie. It is likely that several thousand more passed through unrecorded.
4. Independence Rock - A rock with hundreds of pioneer names carved upon it.
5. South Pass - Overland travelers had to cross the continental divide. The South Pass was the easiest place to pass through the Rocky Mountains. At the continental divide, rivers on the east side of the mountains eventually flowed to the Atlantic Ocean, while rivers on the west side eventually flowed to the Pacific. This marked the beginning of the most difficult portions of the trail.
6. The Humboldt Basin - This 40-mile stretch of desert had no food or water. It was extremely hot and the sand was deep enough to trap oxen. It was littered with heavy items from wagons as travelers, seeking to lighten their load, dumped things they no longer felt was necessary in order to survive the ordeal of crossing.

Sickness
The biggest killer along the trail was disease. According to the National Parks Service, of the 350,000 people who traveled by land, they estimate 30,000 people died of disease over the 20-25 years the Emigrant Trail was active. The most common was cholera—a bacteria that caused severe diarrhea and dehydration killing many. Some got it and died before even leaving Independence. Dysentery, from dirty drinking water, also killed many.

Guns
A common fear was attack from the Native People, though this almost never happened. This fear, however, meant the overland travelers were well armed. Inexperience with guns and cheaply made weapons were a problem, and gunshot wounds were common. Hunting along the route was necessary (and often done just for fun, too) so hunting accidents occurred and diaries of the journey often mention someone shooting themselves while mishandling their own gun.

River crossings
At that time, most people didn't know how to swim. Many died from drowning at river crossings as they tried to get animals and wagons across. If it had recently rained, rivers would be larger and more dangerous, so wagon trains sometimes waited for several days for the river's flow to lessen.

Accidents
Gunshot and drowning weren't the only accidents that happened. Walking 10-15 miles per day, every day, for months, meant people and animals were exhausted, which made them careless. Examples of other accidents that happened include being kicked or dragged by oxen or horses or crushed by wagon wheels.

Weather
The weather on the plains could be severe. Tornadoes, prairie fires, lightning, and hailstones big enough to kill a man were recorded. Crossing the desert meant incredible heat and dehydration. The mountain crossings meant even more problems as snow often occurred, even in summer months.

Most overland travelers joined a wagon train, banding together for safety and to share resources. They often made sure to have people from many different occupations and abilities along so they would have experienced people to do things like hunt, repair broken wagon wheels, or set a broken bone.

Plates, silverware, pots and pans were kept in a special box on the back of the wagon.

Space in the wagon was limited, so hooks and ropes tied to the wooden frame of the canvas covering the wagon or the outside of the wagon itself held milk cans, guns, etc. The sloshing milk in the can even churned butter as the wagon rumbled along the trail!

Some brought chickens. Eggs were stored in flour barrels, where they were safe from breaking as long as they didn't touch.

A bucket of grease was hung between the wheels. It was used to lubricate the wheels and axles of the wagon.

Traveling by ship by going "around the horn" meant sailing all the way down the eastern shore of South America, and around the southern tip of the continent, known as Cape Horn. Costs and travel time varied greatly depending on circumstances. Nicer rooms that weren't as far below deck sold for more than hammocks strung between beams amongst dozens of other (usually) men. As demand for the sea route increased, so did prices. Travel time varied depending on the weather. Storms could mean an additional month at sea. Sometimes, when wind and currents were not favorable, ships would have to travel as far a Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands) before being able to travel northward to San Francisco. This could add months to the trip.

Most of the ships along this route were not designed as passenger ships. They were cargo ships that were quickly converted to carry passengers as more and more people began trying to get California.

Keeping the ship stocked with supplies was difficult. Supplies might include: Salt pork, salt beef, ham, hard bread, salt, 40 pounds of butter and cheese, tea, sugar and spices. One advantage of this route was that the ship could stop at ports along the way to resupply.

• Almost all ships at the time had rats that would get into and eat the food.
• Hot temperatures caused food to go bad and candles to melt.
• Butter and lard went rancid.
• Bread and flour had weevils.
• Wine turned to vinegar.

Sickness
Like the other routes, disease was a major problem. Cholera and dysentery killed some, but crossing the isthmus also meant many got yellow fever or malaria from mosquito bites. Thousands died along this route of disease.

In the animation above you can see how the states within México, the U.S. - México border, and the border with the Republic of Texas changed throughout the years. Because of these border changes, Mexican Americans say, "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us."

• In 1821, México gained independence from Spain.
• In 1836, the Republic of Texas declared independence from México.
• The United States annexed Texas in 1845.
• From 1846 to 1848 the Mexican-American War is fought.
  
• In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed and land in what is now California, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Texas becomes part of the United States of America.
  
• In 1854, the United States of America buys additional land from México (shown in yellow below) in the Gasden Purchase.
  

Through war and sale, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens suddenly became United States citizens.

Something else to consider? Canada, México, and 31 other countries are on the American continents—North and South America. We, in the United States, sometimes irritate or insult people in these other countries by calling ourselves "American"  because they, too, are American.

In French speaking Quebec in Canada, United States citizens are called Etats-Uniens. In many Latin American countries, United States citizens are called estadounidense. Both of these mean United States-ian.