posted: September 24, 2002 | by chelsie

In 1889, Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler, and Karl Benz built the first gasoline internal combustion engines in Germany. Henry Ford built the first in the U.S. in 1896. Rudolf Diesel made his first working 'diesel' engine in 1897. [Click here to read more...]

posted: September 17, 2002 | by chelsie

By the mid to late 1800s, South American countries found themselves in control of an ever-increasing demand for caoutchouc [kow' chuk], the latex of the Para tree (Hevea brasiliensis (Willdenow ex A. Jussieu) Müller Aargau). The wealthy controlled latex export. Collecting and transporting latex out of the rainforests was a logistical nightmare, but they had blacks and natives as slaves. [Click here to read more...]

posted: September 10, 2002 | by chelsie

Rubber is a stabilized form of latex, a thick white sap found in numerous plant families. Today, more than ninety percent of all natural rubber comes from the Para or Brazilian rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis (Willdenow ex A. Jussieu) Müller Aargau) grown in Southeast Asia. [Click here to read more...]

posted: September 3, 2002 | by chelsie

When Columbus returned from his second voyage, he brought the curious rubber balls the Caribbean natives used for games. These bounced and became the toy fad with Europe's rich and famous. The substance was called caoutchouc [kau' chuk] from the South American name for the tree, cahucha (Hevea brasiliensis (Willdenow ex A. Jussieu) Müller Aargau). Rubber remained a curiosity for more than three hundred years simply because it became soft and tacky when hot and brittle when cold. [Click here to read more...]

posted: August 27, 2002 | by chelsie

In Mayan cosmology, before humans walked the earth, the lords of Xibalba (underworld) had defeated and dismembered the forces of good. Two sons of a defeated god, Hunahpa and Xbalanque, challenged the Xibalbans to a game with a rubber ball that had belonged to their father. Upon defeating the Xibalbans, the boys went to the Place of the Ball Game Sacrifice and put their father back together. [Click here to read more...]

posted: August 20, 2002 | by chelsie

It is thought that horseradish (Armoracia rusticana P. Gaertner, B. Meyer & Scherbius) became popular as a condiment because of the lack of refrigeration. The sharp spiciness simply covered the taste of tainted meats. John Gerard (The Herbal, 1633) believed horseradish "causeth better digestion than mustard". [Click here to read more...]

posted: August 13, 2002 | by chelsie

The Han Dynasty fell in 220 CE. The next thousand years were marked with various dynasties and war lords. The Great Wall became patchwork. In the middle of the Thirteenth Century, Mongols under Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, successfully conquered China establishing the Yuan Dynasty. [Click here to read more...]

posted: August 6, 2002 | by chelsie

In 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huangdi unified the feudal states of the loosely organized Zhou Dynasty. He brutalized the population, burned the literature, and silenced any criticism of his regime. Scholars were put to death outright or sent off to work on the Great Wall. [Click here to read more...]

posted: July 30, 2002 | by chelsie

The Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum Linnaeus) [po dof' il um pel tat' um] is a perennial herb inhabiting the damp woodlands in eastern North America. A single forked stem topped with lobed umbrella-like leaves arises from a rhizome. Each Mayapple stem produces a single white flower in the spring; the berry ripens yellow in late summer. [Click here to read more...]

posted: July 23, 2002 | by chelsie

The Aztec were the peoples of central Mexico, the Mexica [ma shee' ka] tribe created the culture we call the Aztec. The primary goal of conquests by the rulers of Tenochtitlan was tributes, taxes in the form of goods. The culture spread because craftsmen could specialize, needed to specialize to pay the tributes.

In 1519, Hernán Cortés and his men invaded the land of the Aztec. The Spanish found a wealthy culture--plantations, cities, temples, aqueducts, gardens, and marketplaces. For sale were foods, spices, flowers, pottery, and textiles. [Click here to read more...]

posted: July 16, 2002 | by chelsie

Little thought is given to those plants which are truly out of sight except to the people who live by the sea. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from marine algae or seaweeds. These algae comprise three divisions: Chlorophyta (green algae), Phaeophyta (brown algae), and Rhodophyta (red algae). [Click here to read more...]

posted: July 9, 2002 | by chelsie

Native to the Gran Peten and the Yucatan of Central America, the chicozapote (Manilkara zapota (L.) van Royen) has been tended since the Mayan civilization. This rainforest tree provides both fruit, the sapodilla, and a latex, chicle. Archaeologists believe only women and children chewed chicle in Maya culture, the habit becoming more popular and widespread during the Aztec. [Click here to read more...]

posted: July 2, 2002 | by chelsie

In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. The Great Plains were open to settlers--Civil War refugees, the landless, and immigrants. In the 1870s, Mennonite farmers left Russia and choose the North American prairie, land not all that different from their farms in Russia. [Click here to read more...]