Scientist- Niels Bohr

Niels Henrik David Bohr was born on October 7, 1885 in Copenhagen. His father, Christian Bohr, was a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen. His mother, Ellen Adler Bohr, was born into a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family. Niels' brother, Harald Bohr, became a mathematician and Olympic soccer player for the Danish national team.

In 1911, Bohr received his doctorate from Copenhagen University. After graduation, he attended Victoria University of Manchester in England where he studied under Ernest Rutherford. Under Rutherford's theories Bohr published his model of atomic structure (1913) and introduced the theory of electrons orbiting around the atom's nucleus and stated that the element's properties are largely determined by the number of electrons in the electron cloud. He also introduced the idea of electrons dropping from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one could emit a photon of discrete energy. These findings later became known as the quantum theory.

In 1916, Niels Bohr became a professor for the University of Copenhagen and director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in 1920. In 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his investigation of the atom. Bohr later went on to conceive the principle of complementarity, that items can be analyzed seperately as having contradictory properties. Bohr met with Albert Einstein to debate the truth of the principles. Bohr's most famous student was Werner Heisenberg, who helped develop quantum mechanics and was the head of the German atomic bomb project.

In 1943, Bohr was to be arrested by the German police. However, Bohr escaped to Sweden and later to London before an arrest could be made. From there, Bohr went to the USA and secretly worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos laboratory under the name "Nicholas Baker" for security reasons. His role on the project were extremely important and was seen as the knowledgeable consultant or "father confessor" of the project. However, when asked of the nuclear arms race, Bohr stated "That is why I went to America. They didn't need my help in making the atom bomb."

Bohr believed the atomic secrets should be shared with the international community. After meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt, the two agreed the results should be shared with the Russians in order to speed the process. However, when Bohr returned to England to ask for approval from Churchill, the Prime Minister opposed the idea. After the war had ended, Bohr returned to his native Copenhagen and advocated for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Niels Bohr died in Copenhagen in 1962. The element bohrium was named in his honor and his picture was put on the 500 kr. Danish bank note.

-Amber Vrolyk

Misc essay 1- Mary Brooks

Mary Louise Brooks, also known by her childhood name of Brooksie, was born in the midwestern town of Cherryvale, Kansas, on November 14, 1906. She began dancing at an early age (with the Ziegfeld Follies) but would become one of the most fascinating and alluring personalities ever to grace the silver screen. She was always compared to her Lulu role in PANDORA'S BOX, which was filmed in 1928. Her performances in A GIRL IN EVERY PORT and BEGGARS OF LIFE, both filmed in 1928, proved to all concerned that Louise had real talent.

She became known, mostly, for her bobbed hair style. Thousands of women were attracted to that style and adopted it as their own. As you will note by her photographs, she was no doubt the trend setter of the 1920's with her Buster Brown-Page Boy type hair cut, much like today's women imitate stars. Because of her dark haired look and being the beautiful woman that she was, plus being a modern female, she was not especially popular among Hollywood's clientle. She just did not go along with the norms of the film society.

Louise really came into her own when she left Hollywood for Europe. There she appeared in a few German productions which were very well made and continued to prove she was an actress with an enduring talent. Until she ended her career in film in 1938, she had made only 25 movies. After that, she spent most of her time reading and painting. She also became an accomplished writer, authoring a number of books, including her autobiography. On August 8, 1985, Louise died of a heart attack in Rochester, New York. She was 78 years old.

-Amber Vrolyk

Literary Figure- Sinclair Lewis

Born Harry Sinclair Lewis in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. A dreamer, at age 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. At first, he produced romantic poetry, then romantic stories about knights and fair ladies. By 1921 he had six novels published .

In 1930, Sinclair Lewis became the first American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The award reflected his ground-breaking work in the 1920s on books such as Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. He was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 'Arrowsmith', but declined it because he believed that the Pulitzer was meant for books that celebrated American wholesomeness and his novels, which were quite critical, should not be awarded the prize.

Lewis was innovative for giving strong characterization to modern working women and his concern with race. Restless, he traveled a lot and in the 1920s he would spend time with other great artists in the Montparnasse Quarter in Paris, France where he would be photographed by Man Ray.

Alcohol would play a dominant role in his life and he died of the effects of advanced alcoholism in Rome, Italy.

In 2001, his 1920 book, Main Street would be named to the list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.

-Amber Vrolyk

Greta Garbo.

Many People of the 1920's remember the beautiful actress Greta Garbo. Greta Garbo was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1905. When she was just 14, her father died. She was devistated. She could no longer go to school because she needed to support herself, so she got a job. Her first job was a soap-lather girl in a barbershop. The founder of PUB Department store walked in and that day offered Garbo a job as a clerk at PUB. She also started modeling in the newspapers for PUB. And Eventually she stared in two short films for PUB. They were seen by famous comedy director Erik Petschler, he gave her a part in his upcoming film Peter The Tramp.

For two years Garbo studied at the Royal Dramatic Theature in Stockholm. There, she met director Mauritz Stiller. He was working as a teacher there and gave her a major role in his silent film Gosta Berlings Saga in 1924. Even though Garbo had a great career so far, a great tragedy as Garbos sister died of cancer in 1926 at the age of 23. During the 1920's Garbo was the most active in her career, being in a total of seventeen movies including The Gay Cavalier, The Scarlet Angel, The Torrent, The Temptress, Love, The Divine Woman, Wild Orchids, and The Kiss. She was active from 1920-1941 and then happily retired in 1951 as a US citizen. She from then on lived alone, no children nor husband in New York City. She died in a New York hospital in 1990 due to pneumonia and renal failure. She left her entire estate to her niece an estimated 20,000,000 dollers.

-Kara Klaczynski

Warren G. Harding

Before his nomination, Warren declared that "Americas need was not heroics, but healing; but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality...." A democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo, said that Harding's speeches were "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea." Since Harding's pronouncements remained unclear on the league of nations, in contrast to the crusade of the democratic candidates, Governor James M. Cox of Ohio and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Harding was born near Marion, Ohio in 1865. He married a divorcee, Mrs. Florence Kling De Wolfe. He was a trustee of the Trinity Baptist Church, a leader in fraternal organizations, charitable enterprises, and director of almost every important business.

Harding's undeviating Republicanism and vibrant speaking voice, plus his willingness to let the machine bosses set policies, led him far in Ohio politics. He served in the state Senate and as Lieutenant Governor, and unsuccessfully ran for Governor. He delivered the nominating address for President Taft at the 1912 Republican Convention. In 1914 he was elected to the Senate, which he found "a very pleasant place."

An Ohio admirer, Harry Daugherty, began to promote Harding for the 1920 Republican nomination because, he later explained, "He looked like a President."

Thus a group of Senators, taking control of the 1920 Republican Convention when the principal candidates deadlocked, turned to Harding. He won the Presidential election by an landslide of 60 percent of the popular vote. Republicans in Congress easily got the President's signature on their bills. They eliminated wartime controls and slashed taxes, established a Federal budget system, restored the high protective tariff, and imposed tight limitations upon immigration.

Looking wan and depressed, Harding journeyed westward in the summer of 1923, taking with him his upright Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. "If you knew of a great scandal in our administration," he asked Hoover, "would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?" Hoover urged publishing it, but Harding feared the political repercussions.

He did not live to find out how the public would react to the scandals of his administration. In August of 1923, he died in San Francisco of a heart attack.

-Prashant Singh

The Lost Generation

During the 1920s their was a very popular group of writers called "The Lost Generation".The term "the lost generation" was coined by Gertrude Stein who is rumored to have heard her auto-mechanic while in France to have said that his young workers were, "une generation perdue". This referred to the horrible auto-mechanic repair skills. Gertrude Stein would use this phrase to describe the of 1920's who rejected American post WWI values. The three best known writers of The Lost Generation were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos. The others were Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald. Ernest Hemingway, Perhaps the leading literary figure of the decade, took Stein's and used it as an epigraph for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Because of the popularity of the novel, the term, "The Lost Generation" is the enduring term that has stayed with writers of 1920.

The "Lost Generation" defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness apparent in literary figures during the 1920s. World War I seemed to have destroyed the idea that if you acted virtuously, good things would happen. Many good, young men went to war and died, or returned home either physically or mentally wounded, and their faith in the moral guideposts that had earlier given them hope, were no longer valid...they were "Lost."

These literary figures criticized American culture in fictional stories which had the themes of self exile, care free living and spiritual alienation. Fitzgerald's This Side of Pardise shows people of the 1920's covering their depression behind the force of the jazz age. Another Fitzgerald novel does the same where the illusion of happiness hides the loneliness of the main character.

The novels produced by the writers of the Lost Generation give insight to the lifestyles that people lead during the 1920's in America, and the literary works of these writers were innovative for their time and have influenced many future generations in their styles of writing.

-Prashant Singh
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The Radio

During the 1920's the automobile was one of the best inventions, but it was not the greatest.An invention of smaller dimensions, lower cost, and with the same abilities to bring people together spurred on as the greatest craze of the 1920s. The radio was an instant success with the American people. It was cheaper than a car and so it virtually became a part of every home in America in a couple of short years. Following the first American broadcasting station, KDKA, in Pittsburgh. Thousands of broadcasting would pop up in the later years. Everyone instantly obsessed with the radio. Many people would stay up half the night listening to concerts, sermons, news, and sports. People without home radios would gather around in public places. The advent of public radio allowed listeners to not only keep up with national issues and events, it also allowed listeners to experience new ideas, new entertainment, and to form opinions on matters that had never been publicized to a national degree.Radios in thousands of homes linked people simultaneously in enjoyment and excitement.

There were actually many negative effects to having a radio. For example, if one were to spend a lot of time listening to the radio they would become idealistic, and for some it would be hard for them to discerning reality from "radio reality". "The hobby of radio listening encouraged a tendency, ..., a feeling that one's country and one's self were exempt from unpleasant consequences.", which said that people in the 1920's only saw "good" in life and were ignorant of the "bad". Advertisement quickly followed the outburst of radio popularity. According to Stevenson, radio advertising did not help the American public to become more open-minded. Take the following passage from Stevenson's The American 1920s.

"... Advertising was false in promising more than the seller delivered to the buyer, but it was false in seeming to be a world to which real life must bring itself to relation. It was false to particular American life and it was false to particular human nature in its blindness, narrowness, its smoothing away of individual corners and all inconvenient or tragic exultations or despairs. It was so persuasive a surface, so willingly adjusted to by many people that it was like a lowered, limited horizon. Strong emotions and fierce beliefs were stoppered down so that when they burst forth they rushed out with violence and exaggeration. ..."

-Prashant Singh

Al capone

Capone, Al (Alphonse) (1899–1947), a United States gangster. During the prohibition era, he achieved international notoriety as boss of the Chicago underworld. By ruthless extermination of rival gangs, Capone gained control of the bootleg liquor business, prostitution, gambling, and other rackets in Chicago. Although it could not be proved, it is virtually certain he was responsible for the St. Valentine's Day massacre, in which his henchmen murdered seven members of the Bugs Moran gang in 1929.
Capone was convicted of income tax evasion in 1931 and served eight years in prison. Seriously ill upon his release, he retired to Florida. Capone was born in Naples, Italy. He was raised in New York City and there became involved in crime. Capone moved to Chicago in 1920.

-Clancy Darcy

Scientific Discovery - Insulin

In 1920 Dr. Frederick Banting had an idea that would make a discovery that would change the world. Before this discovery being diagnosed with diabetes would mean death. At the University of Toronto Charles Best and Fred Banting a pancreatic extract that had anti-diabetic characteristics. It were successful when tested on dogs. Within months Professor J. J. R. MacLeod, who provided the lab space and general scientific direction to Banting and Best, put his entire research team to work on the production and purification of insulin. J.B. Collip joined the team and the four of them were able to purify insulin and use it on diabetic patients. The first test of the use of insulin was on Leonard Thompson in early 1922, and it was successful. J.R. Macleod and Fred Banting were awarded the Nobel prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1923.The word spread quickly around the world and gave hope to many diabetics that were near death. Although insulin is not a cure this discovery has and continues to save millions of lives. The production of insulin has changed since 1922. Modern science and technology has now made high quality insulin and delivery systems which makes it more convenient for diabetic persons.


-By Prasahnt Singh

Literary Figure, Earnest Hemingway

Earnest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899. He was born in Illinois in the city of Oak Park. Out of six children he was the first born son. He lived a relatively normal life and even became a reporter for The Kansas City Star, and worked for then for just around six months. He later tried to join the U.S. Army to see what it was like in WWI but failed the medical entrance exam. Instead of giving up, he decided to join the American Fields Service Ambulance Corps, where on the first day of duty he was sent to pick up human bodies that belonged to women that were bombed in a nearby factory. In 1918 he was wounded, ending his career, his consolation prize, a Silver Medal of Military Valor from the Italian Government.

He married his first wife, Elizabeth Richardson, in 1921. He moved with his new bride to reside in Paris. He wrote his first book, entitled Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1923. When his wife became pregnant they moved back to the stated by the time she was due. His first American book published was In Our Time in 1925. he divorced and remarried to Pauline Pfeiffer, and published a new book, Men Without Women all in the same year of 1923

He wrote and published many book of poetry and short stories after that. He was injured very badly in 1954; he was victim of two plane crashes. Only moths later he was subject to a terrible bushfire that left him with second-degree burns on his legs, torso, lips, left hand, and right forearm. He fell into depression and also into heavy drinking. Hemingway attempted suicide in the spring of 1961 and failed, but shortly after his 62nd birthday he took a shotgun shot to the head by his own hands and ended his life on July, 2, 1961.

By: Amber Vrolyk

Historical Figure, Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth, whose birth name is George Herman Ruth, was history’s first sports superstar. He originally could have been the greatest left-handed pitcher, but instead became the greatest hitter in history. He led the Red Sox to victory in two World Series, but was traded soon after to the Yankees in 1918. He was making $80,000 a year, which is more than the President at that time who was only making $75,000. Because of Babe Ruth the Yankees were the first team to have a million fans into their stadium.

At one point, he held the record for most home runs in a season at 60 home runs right up until 1961. In total he has hit 714 home runs in the entirety of his career. Supposedly, there was a curse placed on the Red Sox after they traded away Babe Ruth. They didn’t win the World Series for an extremely long time. Until recently, in 2004, when they won the World Series. However, the Yankees made it to, and won the World Series a multitude of times.

Ruth was only 19 when Jack Dunn, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, decided to sign him to his first professional contract. But in order so complete the contract Dunn had to adopt him in order to get in out of school. This started his nickname Dunn’s “baby”. His nickname seemed to stick and changed slightly to the famous one we all know, Babe, followed be his last name Ruth. Thus the name Babe Ruth was created.

-Amber Vrolyk