As we celebrate the Fourth of July, few women were more instrumental to America’s founding than Abigail Adams. Although she was not in Philadelphia when the Declaration of Independence was adopted, she played an essential role in shaping the new nation from her home in Braintree, Massachusetts. Continue reading
In the struggles between the colonies and the mother country that followed the French and Indian War, Britain declared that Americans had no right to rule themselves. This went against everything the Americans knew. In response, our ancestors risked their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to fight the War for Independence. Against all odds, they won, and in victory formed a stable, lasting republic.
Representative image of a vintage notebook, not Marie Curie’s. Photo via Pexels.
Some Curie papers have been found contaminated with radium-226, an isotope with a half-life of about 1,600 years, and original volumes are kept under strict radiation-protection controls before anyone can handle them.
More than a century after she wrote in them, the pages remain radioactively contaminated, mostly with radium-226, and the original volumes are kept under strict radiation controls. To read them at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, where they are stored in lead-lined boxes, you sign a liability waiver and put on protective clothing first.
This is not a curiosity of preservation. It is a direct consequence of the physics Curie helped uncover. Continue reading
What secrets are buried inside this 15th-century masterpiece? Discover the hidden musical notes, the impossible anatomy, and the dark mystery of the negative space that shocked art historians.
Ben Franklin played a key role in America’s founding, which included helping to design its paper currency. Kristina Davis
Benjamin Franklin understood something fundamental about money that still shapes modern economies: Money only works when people believe it is real.
In the early 18th century, the British colonies suffered from a chronic shortage of gold and silver coins, forcing local governments to rely on paper bills for trade and everyday commerce. But paper currency created a dangerous new problem: Unlike metallic coins, paper money could be easily copied, altered and faked.
Long before his experiments with electricity or his role in the American founding now 250 years ago, Franklin spent years working with paper, ink and printing. In the process, he developed a practical understanding of materials and manufacturing. Continue reading
On January 9th, 1776, the pamphlet “Common Sense” is published in Philadelphia. The pamphlet immediately becomes a bestseller, selling tens of thousands of copies across America. In “Common Sense,” Thomas Paine, the author and violent foe of aristocracy and monarchy, attacks the King and Parliament and offers Americans an alternative to British rule: true independence.
The Dunlap Broadside on display at the Museum of the American Revolution. Courtesy of the National Archives of the United Kingdom
Jonas Phillips had been living with the Declaration of Independence for a little more than three weeks by late July 1776, when one scorching Philadelphia day he decided he should go ahead and send a copy to his relative Gumpel.
Gumpel Samson, a cousin and business partner who lived in Amsterdam, must have had a lively curiosity in such things as rebellion and independence. Enough so, anyway, that Phillips, a Jewish immigrant patriot and civil rights leader, folded a broadside of the declaration that he likely had torn from the window of a Market Street shop, stuffed it into an envelope, and sent it on the next tall ship out of Philly.
This copy of the declaration then took its own trip — one beginning in those feverish Philly days in 1776 when independence was still new, and spanning nearly two and a half centuries and a continent and an ocean, before finding its way back to Philadelphia. Continue reading
Image by Victoria Maxfield
Benjamin Franklin’s fertile mind constantly spun off inventive and useful ideas. His lightning rod saved buildings and lives. His energy-saving improvement of the wood-burning fireplace kept families warm and forests from being leveled. His lending library extended literacy to those who couldn’t afford books. His map of the Gulf Stream made travel faster and commerce more efficient.
But Franklin’s ingenuity showed most clearly in his invention, or rather recurrent reinvention, of himself. In the course of his life, Franklin devised dozens of authorial personas in print, which allowed him to challenge authority, identify folly and promote human progress with an unsparing vigor he never could have achieved under his own name. Continue reading
The year 1913 quietly transformed the United States forever. In just a few months, America introduced changes that reshaped money, taxes, politics, and the power of the federal government — and most people today have no idea how much of modern life traces back to that single year.
The following piece is not one that I would usually publish as it relates more to Public Schools – however – there are lessons included that should still relate to Homeschooling. ~ Editor
“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children”. ~ Mr. Thomas Sowell
School used to come with a little more survival built into the walls. Kids learned how to read a long chapter without checking their phones, balance a checkbook without panicking, and cook something beyond noodles.
Write a thank-you note, debate without melting down, and maybe even fix a wobbly chair before declaring it “broken forever.” Continue reading
Annie Nicol is homeschooling her grandson, who lives with her son in a tiny home on her property. Annie Nicol
It’s a trend in our family that we take care of our own.
My parents, who both lived into their 90s, were retired educators and played a big role in caring for my kids. My son and I shared caregiving responsibilities for them. My husband is 80 and works part-time as a therapist, and he takes care of his grandkids every Friday and on some Tuesdays.
My grandson, who lives with me, lost his mother when he was an infant. He has an auntie he’s very close to, but it took some time because she lives out of town. Continue reading
For working parents managing busy children’s schedules, the week can feel like an endless relay of pickups, practices, late homework, and forgotten gear. The core tension is real: supporting kids’ interests and tackling children’s productivity challenges can quietly squeeze out dinners, downtime, and simple connection, until balancing family time becomes another task to juggle. When child activity management is unclear, the whole household runs on urgency instead of rhythm. A calmer, more intentional pace is possible. Continue reading
COTTONBRO STUDIO/PEXELS
Parents and caregivers raising a child with disabilities often carry the emotional challenges of caregiving alongside constant decisions about safety, schooling, and services. The core tension is simple and heavy: parental incapacity or death can transfer responsibility overnight, and without special needs child care planning, critical supports can be delayed, disputed, or lost. Long-term care provisions and future legal planning are not about expecting the worst; they are about reducing uncertainty and protecting a child’s day-to-day stability.
Understanding the special needs guardianship importance is a first step toward making care enforceable rather than informal. Continue reading
In 1901, the last schoolteacher who taught the original history was told to stop – her lessons about the past didn’t fit the new narrative being shaped by those in power. She was teaching students about a history that wasn’t officially recorded, one that challenged the versions being promoted by governments and institutions.
This video uncovers who she was, what she taught, and why she was forced to stop saying what she knew was true.
Public education in the United States began taking shape in the 19th century, especially during the Common School Movement led by Horace Mann. His goal wasn’t to avoid education – it was to expand it. At the time, schooling was inconsistent, often private, and inaccessible to many families. Public schools were created to provide free, basic education to all children, regardless of social class. Continue reading
Clara Barton and her Red Cross colleagues have a picnic in 1898 in Tampa, Fla.
The office was quiet except for the scratch of a pen and the shuffle of paper. On Washington’s 7th Street, the Civil War was long over, but Clara Barton still lived in its shadow.
The North recorded about 360,000 deaths during the war, but only 315,000 burials. Of these, just 172,000 names were identified. Continue reading
“For money, some men will allow the innocent to hang. They will turn traitor… they will lie, cheat, steal and they will kill. They appear brilliant, charming and generous! But they are deadly! Such are men as Dimitrios.”
Americans, living in what is called the richest nation on earth, seem always to be short of money. Wives are working in unprecedented numbers, husbands hope for overtime hours to earn more, or take part-time jobs evenings and weekends, children look for odd jobs for spending money, the family debt climbs higher, and psychologists say one of the biggest causes of family quarrels and breakups is “arguments over money.” Much of this trouble can be traced to our present “debt-money” system. Continue reading
In November 1910, seven men boarded a private train under assumed names, travelled to a private island off the coast of Georgia, and spent nine days designing the financial system that would govern the United States for the next century. They represented an estimated quarter of the entire world’s wealth. They spoke for the Rockefeller banking interests, the Morgan financial empire, the Rothschild network’s American operations, the Warburg transatlantic banking dynasty, and the United States Treasury. The Federal Reserve was the outcome. But the outcome was never just a central bank. It was a permanent arrangement.