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People have been using flags since almost forever to identify a group of individuals united by a common cause. Flags flew from castle turrets and on ships that sailed the seven seas. Explorers carried flags as they discovered new lands and the astronauts even placed a US flag on the moon.

One of the most important functions of a flag is to identify soldiers on a military battlefield. This function led to the creation of the Confederate flag during the 1860s when the United States was fighting the Civil War.

Soldiers from the Confederate States of America came from all states that did not want to abolish slavery. These states went to war against the United States of America, which was fighting to end slavery. In those days, the US was often referred to as the Union.

The Union armies flew the flag we know as the US flag today. The US flag is also known as Old Glory or the Stars and Stripes, because each star represents a state and the stripes represent the thirteen original colonies.

The Confederate army needed a flag, too, that would unite all troops from the south. At the beginning of the Civil War, soldiers carried flags that represented their home towns or the southern state they came from. All the different flags were confusing and did not represent a unified military force.

The original Confederate flag looked a lot like Old Glory, with stars representing each Confederate state and wide red and white bars instead of stripes. Members of the Provisional Confederate Congress liked it because it didn’t look too different from Old Glory but it caused a great deal of confusion on the battlefield. Soldiers couldn’t tell if they were going into safe quarters or right into the middle of enemy territory.

Over time, new designs were used for the Confederate flag and the one that became the standard is a solid red background with a blue ‘X’ across it. Within the blue ‘X’ are 13 white stars that represent the 13 Confederate states.

The Union army won the war, slavery was ended, and all 13 Confederate states of the south became part of the United States of America once again. Many of these southern states changed the state flags they flew before the war to look more like the Confederate flag they’d flown during the war. Many of these states still fly flags today that bear some resemblance to the Confederate flag but the Confederate flag itself is no longer officially recognized by any government.

Even without official recognition, the Confederate flag is often on public display today. This public display often stirs up controversy and even violence because of the memory of the Civil War, slavery, and racial hatred that many people today say it represents now.

To drive on land, you need some wheels. To drive on the water, wheels won’t do any good but a propeller will get you going. To travel on ice, you’ll need skis, snow tires, or chains to keep from slipping and sliding out of control. Right?

Well, kind of right. Right in most cases, anyway. But if you’re driving a hovercraft, all you need is one vehicle and you can travel across the land, over the ice, and straight into the water without ever slowing down.

A hovercraft doesn’t have wheels at all, or skis, but it does have at least one propeller. And a skirt. The propeller sits high above the back of the craft and it powers the engine, just like it does with a boat, but it does something totally different, too.

The hovercraft’s propeller also powers a specially designed fan, called an impeller, which forces the air above and around the hovercraft to go down below the vehicle, where a layer of high-pressure air forms a cushion above the ground. It’s this cushion of pressurized air that makes the hovercraft go. The hovercraft’s skirt helps keep the pressurized air underneath the craft and it helps the propellers push air out the back end, which causes the hovercraft to go forward.

The air cushion underneath the hovercraft acts as the machine’s wheels, skis, snow tires, and propeller. The entire vehicle rests, or hovers, above the ground surface without touching the ground itself. Since it never touches the ground, the hovercraft can go just about anywhere, even when the ground surface changes from land to water to ice.

It may seem like a machine that floats along on a cloud of air would be pretty delicate but even armies use hovercrafts and they use them for some very important operations. The US Navy uses hovercrafts to transport soldiers from their ships to the land. During the Vietnam War, US soldiers used a hovercraft to travel across the marshy, treacherous Mekong Delta.

The biggest military hovercrafts belong to Russia. Their biggest can carry three army tanks, 140 soldiers and all their equipment, plus 260,000 tons of cargo – all at one time!

Military use isn’t the only thing a hovercraft is good for. The US Postal Service uses a hovercraft to carry mail from the city of Bethel, Alaska, to eight near-by villages along the river. There are no roads going from the villages to the city so the hovercraft just travels right along the top of the river, even when it’s iced over during the long, cold, Alaskan winters.

In Great Britain, they use a hovercraft like a ferry, transporting people and cars from the mainland to islands or from island to island. From 1965 to 2004, more than 20 million people traveled this way. The biggest hovercraft ferry can hold 418 people and 60 cars, all on a cushion of air above the water.

One hovercraft, named the Princess Anne, traveled across the English Channel in just 22 minutes in 1995. The English Channel is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that divides England from France and is 21 miles wide at its skinniest point.

The speed record for the fastest hovercraft is 85 miles an hour, fast enough to get a speeding ticket if it traveled that fast on a public road or highway instead of a test field.

Cars are great to have around and boats can be a lot of fun. When it’s icy outside, skis or cars with snow tires are a good way to travel. But having a hovercraft means you can go almost anywhere you want to, any time you want to, without worrying about the weather. And it doesn’t matter at all if travel is over solid ground, water, or slippery ice.

Did you learn that song in the second grade? Kids in the 1960s did. Of course, many people who learned that song in the 1960s sing it now to their own kids and grandkids.

No matter how many new generations are born, the story remains the same: On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew of 88 sailors set sail from Spain in three small ships, called caravels – the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. They were looking for a shortcut from Europe to the Indies, a series of islands in Asia.

They didn’t find that shortcut and they never made it to the Indies, either. They found America instead and called it the New World.

It took Christopher Columbus and his men ten long weeks of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, seeing nothing but blue water and sky, before they finally sighted land on October 12. Their first stop in this strange, new world was in the Bahamas, a nation of islands in the Caribbean Sea just off the eastern coast of Florida.

Since they were expecting to land in the Indies, they called the people on the Caribbean island Indians. It was a mistake, of course, but nobody knew that yet. As they traveled from island to island, they found people everywhere and they called them all Indians. That’s why Native American tribal peoples are often called Indians even today.

The queen in Spain, Isabella, used her jewelry to get the money to buy the ships and supplies that Christopher Columbus and his men needed for their long voyage. When they returned to Europe to tell her of their discoveries, they brought her all kinds of new and exotic things they’d found in the Americas, including some of the people.

Along with some Indians, Columbus brought Queen Isabella parrots, sea turtles, and other animals never before seen in Europe. He brought new and delicious foods, too, including corn, sweet potatoes, pineapples, and chili peppers.

One very important find Columbus made in the Americas was gold, which helped Queen Isabella get her jewelry back. The discovery of gold added so much importance to Christopher Columbus’ voyage that Queen Isabella sent him back to the Americas, this time with 17 ships and 1,500 men. She also declared Columbus governor of the island he named Hispaniola, the first Spanish settlement in the New World.

Christopher Columbus’ New World covers most of the Western Hemisphere, including all of North America, Central America, and South America. If your long-ago ancestors lived here 1492, you can trace your family’s heritage to the Native American Indians. If your long-ago ancestors did not live in the Americas in 1492, it was Christopher Columbus’ historic journey across the Atlantic Ocean that helped your ancestors find their way to a new life in a whole new world.

Kids of all ages love pirates. Many people go through a phase in their lives when they even want to be a pirate.

Many children first learn about pirates when they discover the story of Peter Pan. Peter Pan and his band of Lost Boys, Tinker Bell, Wendy, and all her brothers are interesting enough but the evil pirate, Captain Hook, is simply unforgettable.

As we grow older, our interest in pirates often grows, too, when we read about Gulliver’s travels, Robinson Crusoe, and what happens at 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Pirates of the Caribbean is the name of a wild, and wildly popular, ride at the Disney theme parks that usually has the longest lines. The lines are so long because everybody loves these rides. Everybody loves pirates.

The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have thrilled kids (and their parents) in recent years and they seem to be gaining in popularity even as the years go by. The lead actor, Johnny Depp, makes just about the best pirate ever.

Dreaming of the life of a pirate brings up ideas of wild but way cool stuff, like having a pet parrot sitting on your shoulder, doing the talking for you. And sword fights. Hidden treasures. Shipwrecks.

Pirates let the bad guys walk the gang plank – all the way over the side of the ship and into the ocean. Pirates often call the ocean the briny deep because brine is salty, just like sea water. And pirates say Davy Jones locker is down there, all the way at the very deepest, darkest, bottom of the sea.

Pirates talk funny, too. “Ahoy, matey” and stuff like that. They drink grog and walk on peg legs and wear eye patches instead of eye glasses. They give their ships funny names; some of them are scary sounding but others are the same name as their girlfriend or wife.

Pirates talk so funny that today we have a special day set aside every September just so everybody all around the world can talk like a pirate. So shiver yer timbers and sail away! And remember to talk like a pirate on International Pirates Day, lads and lassies from all four corners of the earth, one and all!

Aarghh!

Kids in the old days were a lot like kids today – when they got bored, they wanted to play with new toys. Today’s kids have plenty of toys and games to choose from but kids in American pioneer families didn’t have so many choices.

Being a part of a pioneer family meant long, hard days traveling with as few personal belongings as possible. The days of travel often turned into weeks and even months of travel that was slow, at best.

Where the typical pioneer family was going, no one really knew. They went west mostly, with the plan of reaching a particular location or landmark but there weren’t any road maps and signs to point the way. There weren’t even any roads.

The absence of roads meant travel was slow, slow, slow and often very boring. Brothers and sisters in a pioneer family had to learn how to create their own fun along the way.

Most pioneer families traveled on foot or atop horses and some of them even had the luxury of a covered wagon to travel in. Either way, they didn’t have much room to store things while they traveled so their load was limited to just the constructive things they’d need to build a new home and start a new life way out west, wherever that was.

Traveling with as few things as a pioneer family did meant kids had to use their imagination to find their fun. There was just no room for toys and games. But, just like kids today, being bored makes a kid very creative.

When the day’s travel time was over, pioneer kids often enjoyed games of tree tag and they liked fox and geese, too. These are the kind of games that can be played just about anywhere, so long as there’s a tree nearby.

Pioneer girls enjoyed their rag dolls, too. Rag dolls were easy to pack away for the day’s journey and new ones could be made as soon as more rags accumulated. Most toys were left behind but there was often room for a rag doll or two.

Sledding and skiing were activities pioneer kids enjoyed once they reached the mountains. Story telling was an important past-time, too. And pioneer kids and their parents all enjoyed a swim whenever a good swimming hole came their way.

Being part of a pioneer family meant doing a lot of hard work, even for the kids, so the children learned a lot of very important skills along the way. But they never turned down a chance to have a little fun, too.