As you move through our website, you will notice a number of advertisements for our various sponsors. These ads include links to their business sites. We would like to encourage you to support these folks, as they have been extremely supportive of us. So, we would like thank, Pickleman's, and all the kind sponsors of the fair, for your generosity. You make Springfield and the Ozarks a wonderful place to live, work, and play!
The organizers of the 2013 Homeschool History Fair of the Ozarks would like to express their appreciation to folks at Pickleman's Gourmet Cafe on South National for their hospitality. Yesterday, they were kind enough to open their doors to host a fundraiser for the upcoming fair. 10% of all proceeds collected between 11 am and 3 pm were donated by Pickleman's to the HHFO and will be used to purchase prizes and gifts for this year's entrants. We were overwhelmed by the response. Traffic was heavy, so it would appear that we were able to raise a significant amount of money. But, more importantly, we made many new friends, as word continues to spread about the fair. We received a number of entries and remain excited about the projects we will see in a few weeks. We met with several young historians. who shared with us some of their interests. One young woman, who was prize winner for Women's History in last year's fair, is planning a project on the Negro Leagues. Another young man, who will be entering for the first time, is considering one on pirates. The enthusiast expressed by this young people was wonderful to see. We expect to see some great things on October 11th! It was, by all accounts, a highly successful venture, which would not have been possible without the generosity and cooperation of Pickleman's.
As you move through our website, you will notice a number of advertisements for our various sponsors. These ads include links to their business sites. We would like to encourage you to support these folks, as they have been extremely supportive of us. So, we would like thank, Pickleman's, and all the kind sponsors of the fair, for your generosity. You make Springfield and the Ozarks a wonderful place to live, work, and play!
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Click photos for links to more information. August 25, 1916: The National Park Service was created when President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation that mandated the agency "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." August 26, 1789: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is approved by the National Constituent Assembly of France. The fundamental document of the French Revolution defined the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid at all times and in every place, pertaining to human nature itself. August 27, 410 CE: The Sack of Rome which had begun on August 24, 410, came to an end. The city was attacked by the Visigoths, led by Alaric I. This was the first time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to an enemy. The previous sack of Rome had been accomplished by the Gauls under their leader Brennus in 387 BCE. The sacking of 410 is seen as a major landmark in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem at the time, wrote that "The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken." August 28, 1565: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sighted land near St. Augustine, Florida and founds the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in what would become the continental United States.The Spanish crown had approached Menéndez to fit out an expedition to Florida on the condition that he explore and colonize the region as King Philip's adelantado, and eliminate the Huguenot French settlers, whom the Catholic Spanish considered to be dangerous heretics. Menéndez was in a race to reach Florida before the French captain Jean Ribault, who was on a mission to secure Fort Caroline, near present day Jacksonville. The two fleets met in a brief skirmish off the coast, but it was not decisive. On 28 August 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo, Menéndez's crew finally sighted land. They landed shortly after to found the settlement they named St. Augustine. August 29, 1949: The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. The explosion yielded 22 kilotons of TNT, similar to the American Gadget and Fat Man bombs. In order to test the effects of the new weapon, workers constructed houses made of wood and bricks, along with a bridge, and a simulated metro in the vicinity of the test site. Armoured hardware and approximately 50 aircraft were also brought to the testing grounds, as well as over 1,500 animals to test the bomb's effects on life. The resulting data showed the explosion to be 50% more destructive than originally estimated by its engineers. August 30, 1967: Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African-American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best known for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that desegregated public schools. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy and then served as the Solicitor General after being appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. August 31, 1876: The Ottoman Sultan Murat V was deposed and succeeded by his brother Abd-ul-Hamid II, who would be the last Sultan to exert effective control over the Ottoman Empire. Abd-ul-Hamidd II oversaw a period of decline in the power and extent of the Empire, until he was deposed on 27 April 1909. During his tenure, he was responsible for both modernization of the Ottoman Empire, as well as exerting maximum control over its affairs. Changes included: rationalization of the bureaucracy; the ambitious Hijaz Railway project; the creation of a modern system of personnel records (1896); establishment of an elaborate system for population registration and control over the press; systematization of officials salaries (1880); first modern law school (1898). We are very proud of how the 2012 Homeschool History Fair worked out. The students exhibited outstanding scholarship and the participation of many local historical organizations generated considerable excitement. However, it is unlikely that the fair would have been nearly as successful without the support of our generous sponsors. With their help, we were able to provide prizes, gifts, and t-shirts to every entrant to last year's fair in recognition of their hard work. We are excited to announce that Pickleman's Gourmet Cafe has agreed to help out the 2013 Homeschool History Fair of the Ozarks by allowing us to hold a fundraising drive at their 3522 South National location. You are invited to stop by Pickleman's on Thursday, August 29th from 11 am to 3 pm. 10% of all receipts received will benefit the fair, as those funds will be used to purchase prizes and giveaways for the students participating in this year's event. We hope that you will show your support for the fair by bringing your appetite this Thursday. It will also be a golden opportunity to meet with fair organizers to get registered or ask questions about student projects. So make a lunch date with friends, family, and co-workers for some delicious sandwiches at Pickleman's on South National, Thursday, August 29th! And we would like to express our thanks to Pickleman's Gourmet Cafe for sponsoring the 2013 Homeschool History Fair of the Ozarks, which will take place on October 11th, in Strong Hall on the campus of Missouri State University! Click photos for links to more information. August 18, 1920: The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, prohibiting any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. The Constitution allows the states to determine the qualifications for voting, and until the 1910s most states disenfranchised women. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. The Nineteenth Amendment's ratification effectively overturned Minor v. Happersett, in which a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give women the right to vote. August 19, 1612: The "Samlesbury witches", three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury, England, were put on trial, accused of practicing witchcraft, one of the most famous witch trials in British history. The charges against the women included child murder and cannibalism. The case against the three women collapsed "spectacularly" when the chief prosecution witness, Grace Sowerbutts, was exposed by the trial judge to be "the perjuring tool of a Catholic priest." The trial of the Samlesbury witches is one clear example of what has been described as "largely a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda," and even as a show-trial, to demonstrate that Lancashire, considered at that time to be a wild and lawless region, was being purged not only of witches but also of "popish plotters." August 20, 1882: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow, Russia. The overture written in 1880 to commemorate Russia's defense of its motherland against Napoleon's invading Grande Armée in 1812. It has also become a common accompaniment to fireworks displays, including those which occur in the United States in association with its Fourth of July celebrations. The piece has no connection to the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, but was personally conducted by Tchaikovsky in 1891 at the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York City. August 21, 1831: Nat Turner led a deadly slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 60 white deaths and at least 100 black deaths. The rebellion was ultimately suppressed within two days, but Turner would elude capture until October 30. Upon his arrest, he was quickly tried and convicted for "conspiring to rebel and making insurrection." He was executed on November 11, 1831, in the town of Jerusalem, Virginia (now known as Courtland) August 22, 1485: The Battle of Bosworth Field was fought in what would be was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York that raged across England in the latter half of the 15th century. The battle was won by the Lancastrians. Their leader Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, by his victory became the first English monarch of the Tudor dynasty. His opponent, Richard III, the last king of the House of York, was killed in the battle. Historians consider Bosworth Field to mark the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, making it a defining moment of English and Welsh history. August 23, 1839: The United Kingdom captured Hong Kong as a base as it prepared for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War. Trade with China was heavily regulated and could only be conducted with silver, Growing demand in England for tea created significant trade deficits. However, in 1817, the British hit upon counter-trading in a narcotic drug, Indian opium, as a way to reduce the trade deficit. The Qing Administration originally tolerated opium importation, because it created an indirect tax on Chinese subjects, while allowing the British to double tea exports from China to England—which profited the monopoly for tea exports of the Qing imperial treasury and its agents. However, by 1820, China's accelerated opium consumption reversed the flow of silver, just when the Imperial Treasury needed to finance suppression of rebellions against the Qing. The Qing government began its efforts to end the opium trade, which would ultimately lead to conflict. August 24, 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Hardliners in the Soviet leadership, calling themselves the 'State Emergency Committee', launched the coup in 1991 in an attempt to remove Gorbachev from power. During this time, Gorbachev spent three days (19, 20 and 21 August) under house arrest at a dacha in the Crimea before being freed and restored to power. However, upon his return, Gorbachev found that neither union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands as support had swung over to Boris Yeltsin, whose defiance had led to the coup's collapse. For all intents and purposes, the coup was the end politically for Gorbachev. On August 24th, he advised the Central Committee to dissolve, resigned as General Secretary and disbanded all party units within the government. Shortly afterward, the Supreme Soviet suspended all Party activities on Soviet territory. In effect, Communist rule in the Soviet Union had ended—thus eliminating the only unifying force left in the country. Planning for the 2013 Homeschool History Fair of the Ozarks is well under way as organizers are reaching out to local museums and organization to make the fair an incredible day of learning. We are happy to announce that one of our old friends, First Earth Wilderness School, has committed to coming back for this year's event and we could not be more pleased. In 2012, First Earth treated fairgoers to an extremely interactive exhibit and demonstrations, including flintknapping - the ancient technique used to make stone arrowheads, knives, axes, and other tools. Judging by the traffic around the exhibit, it was among the most popular with the younger set. What kid doesn't love obsidian knives, arrowheads, or bone fish-hooks? And what better way to help young people understand the enormous challenges faced by our distant relatives than to see in real life the difficulty in creating these tools. For those who might be unfamiliar with the First Earth Wilderness School, the founder and director, Bo Brown, has worked as a wildlife biologist since 1985, was Associate Director with Ozark Center for Wildlife Research for it's 15-year history, and was a naturalist for Missouri Department of Conservation in Branson, Missouri for 9 years. His career has taken him all over the U.S. and Central America and provided the opportunity to develop a wealth of natural history knowledge. Mr. Brown has presented primitive skills and nature programs for many schools, museums, and elderhostels around the country. If you would like to learn more about the educational programs offered by First Earth, please visit http://firstearth.org/firstearth/. And don't forget to like First Earth on Facebook! Once again, the 2013 Homeschool History Fair of the Ozarks is pleased to welcome First Earth Wilderness School back to the fair. We hope that you will not miss this opportunity to learn more about their work and something about humanity's past. In the summer of 2012, when a group of homeschooling parents got together to begin planning the first Homeschool History Fair, they quickly began brainstorming ways in which to get the word out to other parents who might be interested. Redeemed Music and Books was the first business approached to help the HHFO publicize the event. Besides offering financial support, Redeemed provided the fair with a powerful marketing tool, as they agreed to include small flyers advertising the fair in the bags of shoppers purchasing homeschool supplies. On the day of the 2012 fair, more than a few visitors reported that they had first heard about the event through Redeemed. We are pleased to announce that the relationship between Redeemed Music and Books and the HHFO will continue, as they have again stepped up to become one of our Scholar Level Sponsors. Redeemed's sponsorship is keeping with their steadfast support of home education, as they have become a communication hub and provide invaluable resources to the local homeschooling community. According to the store's website, Redeemed Music and Books was founded in 1998 by Bill and Harolyn Link, who also owned Christian Publishers Outlet. Together with Dennis Eversen, they opened the doors to CPO Used, as it was then known, boasting about 10,000 books and only 30 CDs. In May of 2002, the Links sold Christian Publishers Outlet but retained ownership of the used book store business and changed the name to Redeemed Music and Books (RMB). Under the effective leadership of both Eversen and Philip Vice, Manager since 2005, Redeemed Music and Books has grown dramatically to become a business blessed with patronage from customers throughout the beautiful Ozarks and this great nation. Today, Redeemed Music and Books maintains an inventory of over 120.000 books and 100,000 CDs, as well as a wide selection of DVDs, videos, electronic games, and audio books. Moreover, Redeemed has become an important resource for homeschoolers seeking out curriculum and other teaching materials. If you have not visited Redeemed Music and Books, now is the perfect time to become acquainted with this wonderful store. While the prices at Redeemed are always more than competitive, they are currently in the midst of their Big 40% Off Sale. You might want to borrow a friend's truck! You can find Redeemed Music and Books on the corner of National and Republic, at 4140 S. National, Springfield, Missouri 65807. The store is open Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 7 PM (except Wednesday when they close at 6 PM). For more information, check out their website, or call 417.877.9294. Stop by and let them know how much you appreciate their support of the Homeschool History Fair of the Ozarks and home education, in general! Click photos for links to more information. August 11, 1942: Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi. The early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. However, the idea was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired. Consequently, the patent was little known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr a belated award for her contributions. August 12, 30 BCE: Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last ruler of the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty, committed suicide. Formerly involved with Julius Caesar, after Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, she aligned with Mark Antony in opposition to Caesar's legal heir, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (later known as Augustus). With Antony, she bore the twins Cleopatra Selene II and Alexander Helios, and another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus. After losing the Battle of Actium to Octavian's forces, Antony committed suicide. Cleopatra followed suit, according to tradition killing herself by means of an asp bite. August 13, 1918: Opha May Johnson (2 Feb 1900 – Jan 1976) was the first woman to enlist officially in the United States Marine Corps, when she joined the Marine Corps Reserve during World War I. Johnson was the first of 305 women to join up with the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve that day. August 14, 1952: Three-time Olympic champion, and a former world record-holder at three distances, Deborah Meyer was born in Annapolis, Maryland. Meyer won the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle swimming races in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. While she was still a 16-year old student at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, California, she became the first swimmer to win three individual gold medals in one Olympics. Meyer is still the only woman Olympian to win three individual freestyle swimming gold medals in one Olympics, namely the 200-, 400- and 800-meter freestyle events. No swimmer has ever done this in any other combination of distances August 15, 1970: Patricia Palinkas became the first woman to play professionally in an American football game. She was a placekick holder for her husband Steven Palinkas for the minor league Orlando Panthers in the Atlantic Coast Football League. On her first play, against the Bridgeport Jets, Palinkas was attacked by Jets defenseman Wally Florence, who admittedly attempted to "break her neck" as punishment for what he perceived to be "making folly with a man's game." Palinkas went on to appear four more times: three consecutive successful extra point kicks, and a field goal attempt that was blocked. August 16, 1902: Georgette Heyer was born in Wimbledon, London. She was named after her father, George Heyer. Her mother, Sylvia Watkins, studied both cello and piano and was one of the top three students in her class at the Royal College of Music. Heyer became a prolific and commercially successful historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. Heyer essentially invented the historical romance and created the sub-genre of the Regency romance. At the time of her death, in 1974, forty-eight of her books were still in print, including her first novel. August 17, 1953: Herta Müller, a German-Romanian novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. was born in Nițchidorf, Romania. Müller is noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceaușescu regime which she has experienced herself. Many of her works are told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania and are also a depiction of the modern history of the Germans in the Banat, and Transylvania. Her much acclaimed 2009 novel The Hunger Angel (Atemschaukel) portrays the deportation of Romania's German minority to Stalinist Soviet Gulags during the Soviet occupation of Romania for use as German forced labor. In 2009, the Swedish Academy awarded Müller the Nobel Prize in Literature, describing her as a woman "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." The Greene County Historical Society and the German-Austrian-Swiss Heritage Society of the Ozarks will be co-sponsoring a very special meeting on September 22nd, at South Street Christian Church. The featured speakers at the meeting will be Mara Cohen-Ioannides and Rachel Gholson of Missouri State University, who have done extensive research into the history of Jewish communities in the Ozarks. “Early German Jewry in Springfield”Cohen-Ioannides and Gholson teach in the Department of English at Missouri State University. They are the co-authors of Jews of Springfield in the Ozarks (Arcadia Publishing, 2013). Their presentation, titled “Early German Jewry in Springfield,” will focus on the German Jewish immigrants who established the first synagogue in Springfield. There will be plenty of photographs for those in attendance to enjoy, as this should be to be an extremely informative lecture. The selection of South Street Christian for this presentation is of particular note. According to Cohen-Ioannides and Gholson, In 1894, Temple Israel held Yom Kippur services, both evening and morning, in South Street Christian Church. These are the first known Jewish services to be held in Springfield. Although it may not come to the fore in one's thinking about the city, the Jewish community, in fact, has a long history in Springfield. As is noted in the publisher's description of Jews of Springfield in the Ozarks, Jews arrived to the bustling town of Springfield shortly after its founding in 1838, only five years after the birth of the state of Missouri. The first Jews to live in Springfield were Victor and Bertha Sommers with her brother Ferdinand Bakrow. They opened Victor Sommers & Co., a dry goods store in 1860. The Jewish community grew as merchants brought their families, tying Springfield to other towns along the Mississippi River through marriages. The first congregation was founded in 1893 by the German Reform Jews.Courtesy of the Springfield News-Leader Don't miss this wonderful opportunity to meet the authors who have done so much to illuminate and preserve such a significant piece of Springfield and Greene County's rich heritage. This event is free and open to the public. For more information about the Greene County Historical Society go to http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gcmohs/. If you would like to learn more about the German-Austrian-Swiss Heritage Society of the Ozarks, please visit http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gcmohs/3rd_level/org_german.htm. Click photos for links to more information. August 4, 1964: U.S.Naval destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy reported coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. This came on the heels of an August 2nd attack by three North Vietnamese Navy P-4 torpedo boats. This second attack has come to be questioned as probably involving false radar images and not actual NVN vessels. Nevertheless, the two incidents would precipitate the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, the use of "conventional'' military force in Southeast Asia. August 5, 1305: William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance against England, was captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London where he would be placed on trial and ultimately executed. Along with Andrew Moray, Wallace defeated an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, and was Guardian of Scotland, serving until his defeat at the Battle of Falkirk in July 1298. August 6, 1945: Hiroshima, Japan was devastated when the atomic bomb "Little Boy" was dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people were killed instantly, and some tens of thousands died in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning. August 7, 1819: Simón Bolívar triumphed over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá. The battle was fought in Colombia, then known as New Granada, and is credited as the battle in which Colombia acquired its definitive independence from Spanish Monarchy, although fighting with royalist forces would continue for years. Brigadier Generals Francisco de Paula Santander and José Antonio Anzoátegui led a combined republican army of Colombians and Venezuelans, complemented by the British Legion, to defeat in two hours a Royalist Colombian-Venezuelan force. Simón Bolívar credited the victory to the British Legion declaring that "those soldier liberators are the men who deserve these laurels" when offered laurels after the victory. August 8, 1942: the Quit India Movement was launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence. The British refused to grant immediate independence, saying it could happen only after the war ended. Sporadic small-scale violence took place around the country but the British arrested tens of thousands of leaders, keeping them imprisoned until 1945, and suppressed civil rights, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In terms of immediate objectives Quit India failed because of heavy-handed suppression, weak coordination and the lack of a clear-cut program of action. However, the British government did come to the realization that India was ungovernable in the long run and actively began to seek an exit strategy. August 9, 1854: Henry David Thoreau published Walden. The book details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. August 10, 1519: Ferdinand Magellan's five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. The Basque second in command Juan Sebastián Elcano would complete the expedition after Magellan's death in the Philippines. |
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