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The House That Ruth Built is the popular name for Yankee Stadium, the home of the New York Yankees. Ruth was Babe Ruth. His playing made the Yankees so popular, they built the stadium.

Yankee Stadium is in the Bronx area of New York City. Babe Ruth hit the first home run in the stadium on the day it opened: April eighteenth, nineteen twenty-three. That day, the Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox, four to one.

Babe Ruth had played for Boston. But the Red Sox traded him to the Yankees after the nineteen nineteen season. It was a decision the Red Sox would soon regret. In nineteen twenty Babe Ruth hit more than fifty home runs.

Over the years, the Babe set many baseball records. Tradition says he also changed history for the Yankees and the Red Sox.

The Yankees had not played in a World Series until he joined the team. Since then, they have won a record twenty-six championships.

The Red Sox had been one of the most successful teams in baseball before Babe Ruth left. After that, Boston played in four World Series and lost them all.

Fans in Boston and New York called it "The Curse of the Bambino." Bambino is Italian for baby. It was also another nickname for Babe Ruth, who was born George Herman Ruth.

Finally, in two thousand four, the supposed curse ended after more than eighty years.

The Red Sox defeated the Yankees for the American League championship. Then Boston won the World Series that year against the Saint Louis Cardinals. And the Red Sox are currently the defending major league champions. They defeated the Colorado Rockies four games to none in last year's World Series.

This is the eighty-sixth season the Yankees have played in Yankee Stadium. It was standing-room only as more than fifty-five thousand people watched them defeat the Toronto Blue Jays in the season opener on April first. The game was supposed to be played the day before, but got rained out.

Former Yankee hitter Reggie Jackson threw out the first pitch. He was known as "Mister October" because that was when he played his best, during championship seasons. Reggie Jackson was a Yankee hero in the nineteen seventy-seven World Series. He hit three home runs in Yankee Stadium during the sixth game of that series.

Eighty-two year old Yogi Berra was also at Yankee Stadium for opening day. He was the Yankees' catcher from nineteen forty-six to nineteen sixty-three. He played in fourteen World Series. He later became a manager and coach for several teams and is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Today many people know him for his "Yogi-isms" -- statements like "It ain't over till it's over" and "You can observe a lot by watching." But as a player he may be remembered best for catching a perfect game in Yankee Stadium during the nineteen fifty-six World Series. He jumped into the arms of pitcher Don Larsen to celebrate the no-hitter.

An area of the outfield at Yankee Stadium is known as Monument Park. There are stone monuments and plaques honoring players and team officials.

The players include Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. They also include Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson and Roger Maris. He hit sixty-one home runs in nineteen sixty-one. That broke Babe Ruth's record of sixty home runs in one season.

The first monument in Monument Park dates from nineteen thirty-two. It honors Miller Huggins, manager of the team for eleven seasons. His Yankees won three World Series.

Another manager honored in Monument Park is Casey Stengel. He led the Yankees to seven championships.

A special monument honors the New Yorkers killed in the terrorist attacks on their city on September eleventh, two thousand one.

Yankees radio announcer Mel Allen is also honored in Monument Park. He was the voice of the Yankees for twenty-five years. He was known for his way of calling a home run:

MEL ALLEN: "Swung on and hit, that ball is going, going, gone!"

Baseball's All-Star Game will take place this year at Yankee Stadium in July. Over the years, the ballpark has also been used for other sports as well as religious and political gatherings, concerts and more.

This coming Sunday, Pope Benedict will become the third leader of the world's Roman Catholics to celebrate Mass at Yankee Stadium. The others were Pope John Paul the Second in nineteen seventy-nine and Pope Paul the Sixth in nineteen sixty-five.

In nineteen thirty-eight, one of the most famous boxing matches of all time was held at Yankee Stadium. Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in the first round to win the world heavyweight championship.

The New York Giants of the National Football League played at Yankee Stadium from nineteen fifty-six to nineteen seventy-three. They settled into their own stadium in nineteen seventy-six. They are still called the New York Giants even though they play in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

In nineteen forty-six, lights were added to Yankee Stadium so games could be played at night. In nineteen seventy-three, after its fiftieth anniversary, the stadium was rebuilt. The project took two years. During that time the Yankees played at Shea Stadium, the home of the Mets, New York's other Major League Baseball team.

Some fans liked the nineteen twenty-three Yankee Stadium better. But the rebuilt ballpark was designed to give fans a better view of the field.

The changes reduced the number of seats. The original stadium had sixty-five thousand wooden seats. It was rebuilt with fifty-four thousand wider seats made of plastic.

The new Yankee Stadium is going up across the street from the existing one. It will be almost two-thirds larger, with more space for food, stores, even an art gallery. Yet it will hold fewer people. The new Yankee Stadium will seat about fifty-three thousand people.

Fans are being promised improved sight lines for watching games. The big video screen will be six times larger, and the sound system will also be improved.

The billion-dollar ballpark is to open next year at this time. Yankee officials say it will continue to honor team history but will provide what they call a modern fan experience.

The New York Yankees play in the American League; the New York Mets play in the National League. From time to time they play each other. The cross-town rivals met in the World Series in two thousand. The Yankees won the major league championship.

That was the last time the Yankees have won a World Series. They returned to the series twice more, but lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Florida Marlins.

This year, the Yankees have a new manager, Joe Girardi, a former Yankee player. And they are getting ready to say goodbye to the House That Ruth Built. But the Yankees are not the only players in New York who will be moving.

The Mets will also play on a new field next year. This is their final season in Shea Stadium which will also be torn down. It was built in the nineteen sixties and was designed for baseball and football.

The new home of the Yankees will still be called Yankee Stadium. But the new home of the Mets will be called Citi Field. Citibank will pay twenty million dollars a year for naming rights. The new ballpark is being built next to the existing one in the Queens part of the city.

New stadiums these days offer expanded services for people with more money to spend. This will be true for the new ballparks in New York. But the teams say games will not be priced out of reach of average fans.

When the Yankees lose a game, they play the version of the song "New York, New York" sung by Liza Minnelli over the loudspeakers. And when they win? They play the version sung by Frank Sinatra.

Five women were honored last week in Washington for their efforts to increase the economic and political progress of women. Vital Voices, an international nonprofit organization, presented its Global Leadership Awards to the winners from Argentina, Burma, France, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates.

Laura Alonso heads a group in Argentina called Poder Ciudadano, or Citizen Power. Its members work to make the government more open. They investigate corruption, observe elections and watch for government influence over the media. They also educate citizens about their rights.

Burmese activist Charm Tong received Vital Voices' human rights award, presented by first lady Laura Bush. Charm Tong co-founded the Shan Women’s Action Network. In a report six years ago, the group detailed how the Burmese military uses rape as a weapon against women and girls. Charm Tong also helped establish a school for ethnic Shan young people whose families live in exile in Thailand.

Author and journalist Mariane Pearl of France was recognized for writing about women who work for change in their countries. She also wrote a book about the death of her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. He was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in two thousand two. Actress and activist Angelina Jolie presented the award; she played Mariane Pearl in the film version of the book.

Another winner, Kakenya Ntaiya of Kenya, travels widely as the first youth adviser to the United Nations Population Fund. She speaks about girls' education as a way to end child marriage and the painful custom in some cultures of cutting the sex organs of girls.

She agreed to follow this tradition if her father would let her finish high school instead of getting married. Then she persuaded leaders in her rural village to help send her to college in the United States. Kakenya Ntaiya expects to receive a doctorate in education next year. She plans to return to Kenya to establish a school for girls.

The final winner was Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi in the United Arab Emirates. In two thousand four she became the first woman appointed as a finance minister in the Middle East. Now she heads a newly formed ministry of foreign trade. She is also a businesswoman and works with information technology.

A committee has released its final report on ways to improve math education for American students. President Bush created the National Mathematics Advisory Panel two years ago.

The panel examined thousands of reports, along with survey results from more than seven hundred algebra teachers. Yet the report, released last month, is short on detailed advice. It says existing research does not show just what knowledge or skills are needed for effective math teaching. The solution? More research.

The report does say basic math skills must be taught completely in the early years of school. Children should be able to add and subtract in the third grade. By the end of fifth grade, they should be able to multiply and divide.

Teachers should avoid revisiting skills year after year. And, the experts say, it is wrong to think children are "too young" or "not ready" to learn certain content at certain ages.

The report says a major goal for kindergarten through eighth grade should be understanding fractions. These skills are needed for algebra. Yet, the report says, at the present time they seem to be severely underdeveloped in American students.

Schools are urged to prepare more students to take algebra by the eighth grade.

Many people think math success depends largely on natural talent or ability; the experts say it depends on effort. Studies have shown that children improve in math when they believe that their efforts to learn make them "smarter."

The report also calls for strengthening the math preparation of elementary and middle school teachers. And it urges publishers to shorten math textbooks, which are often up to a thousand pages long. The panel said math books are much smaller in many nations where students do better in math than American children.

Publishers say American textbooks have to meet the goals of different states for what should be taught in each grade.

The report also calls for more research on the effects of using calculators. Many algebra teachers expressed concern about their use in the lower grades.

And the report says gifted students who can move through the material much faster than others should be permitted to do so.

The math panel says the educational system needs major changes. If not, it warns that the United States will lose the mathematical leadership it possessed during most of the twentieth century.

Being overweight can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes and heart attacks. But now there may be another reason to lose the fat, especially around the middle of the body.

A recent study suggested that people in their forties with belly fat have an increased risk of dementia later in life.

Dementia is the name for a group of brain disorders that affect memory, behavior, learning and language. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause. Dementia rarely appears before the age of sixty.

The new study added to growing evidence that people with large stomachs can face greater health risks than others who are overweight.

The study involved more than six thousand northern California members of Kaiser Permanente, a health care organization. Researchers looked at the patients' medical records from between nineteen sixty-four and nineteen seventy-three.

The people were in their early to mid-forties at the time. They were all part of a long-term health study that included measurements of belly fat.

The researchers compared the records with those from when the patients were in their seventies. By that time, almost one out of six of them had dementia. The researchers found that dementia was more common in those with wider bellies.

Those with the highest belly measurements had almost three times the risk of dementia compared to those with the lowest.

Belly size appeared to make a difference even in patients with normal body weight.

Belly size is linked to a kind of fat that grows around organs and produces harmful substances. Experts believe that belly fat is more dangerous than other kinds of fat cells that grow just under the skin.

The researchers say this is the first study to demonstrate a link between midlife belly fat and the risk of dementia. Still, it is possible that this apparent connection could be the result of a complex set of health-related behaviors.

The findings appeared in the journal Neurology. Rachel Whitmer from the Kaiser Permanente research division led the study. She says the findings do not explain why belly fat may be linked to dementia. But she says the study should send a warning.

Other research has shown that brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease might begin as early as young adulthood. And another study showed that belly fat in old people was tied to increased loss of brain cells.

Americans, possibly more than any other people, love their cars. Ownership of cars is a sign of middle class wealth. A car has long been part of the American dream. For many people, nothing provides a feeling of freedom like driving in a powerful car on the open road. But high fuel prices and changes in technology are causing people to change the way they look at the car.

The car industry is changing more quickly than almost any other industry. Just ask General Motors. This year the American company celebrates one hundred years of being in business. GM remains the biggest car company in the world for now. But Toyota of Japan is positioning itself to become the world leader very soon. General Motors has been losing market share to foreign carmakers at home for years. For two thousand seven, General Motors lost almost thirty-nine billion dollars. That is believed to be the largest one-year loss in the history of the auto industry.

General Motors finds itself in a changing marketplace. During the nineteen nineties, much of GM's profits came from the sale of large sports utility vehicles, or SUVs. However, rising gas prices have made these big, fuel-hungry vehicles unpopular. And GM has struggled to offer new vehicles that use less fuel.

However, GM has made its own changes. In January, Mark LaNeve, GM's North American vice president of sales and marketing, spoke at the Washington, D.C. Auto Show. He discussed ways that GM was changing itself into a car company for the twenty-first century. He said that GM is looking forward to competing in the next one hundred years. Mister LaNeve noted that not only was it important for GM to compete in the United States but also around the world.

The fastest growth markets are not in industrial nations any longer but in the developing world. And in these areas, GM is doing increasingly well. Mister LaNeve said that GM had increased sales in three of four areas around the world. The North American market was the only one in which sales did not grow.

The market for cars around the world is changing in ways that are more complex than simply the size or style of cars. One of the most interesting new developments comes from India's biggest company, the Tata Group, which owns Tata Motors. Tata Motors recently bought the high-cost car models Jaguar and Land Rover from American carmaker Ford in a deal worth two-point-three billion dollars.

But in January, Tata Motors made big news by announcing that it would start selling a very small car that costs only two thousand five hundred dollars.

The car, called the Nano, is designed mainly for India's home market, but its price has caught the attention of the world. The Nano is the result of a different kind of engineering. Instead of designing things to add to the vehicle, engineers thought of ways to remove things. For example, the car has very little storage space. Parts like the steering column, which helps the car to turn, are made of less costly, lighter materials. As with any lightweight car, safety is a major issue. The car could be very dangerous if it is in an accident. But the Nano does have four doors and five seats. And its price puts it within the reach of millions of people in India.

Tata Motors' Nano is mainly meant for the Indian market. But the German company Daimler makes a very small car meant for markets in industrial countries. It is called the Smart Fortwo. Almost eight hundred thousand of an early version of the car have been sold in thirty-six countries. Now Daimler will try to sell the Smart Fortwo in the American car market.

The car is less than three meters long and less than two meters wide. Still it has many of the things that people in industrial countries expect from a car. For example, the car can have a radio, air-cooling and many other details. However, its cost is not as low as you might think. The least costly version of the Smart Fortwo is over eleven thousand dollars.

Smaller cars are just one direction that the car industry is taking. The industry is also producing cars that limit pollution and have a less harmful effect on the environment. Many experimental versions of cars are being made using new technologies. These include cars that run on fuels like ethanol, hybrid cars that use both fuel and electric power and fully electric cars. Added to these are fuel cell vehicles.

At the Washington Auto show, a GM product called the Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell won top honors as an environmentally friendly vehicle. This fuel cell car won the Green Car Journal's Green Car vision award. The Equinox Fuel Cell is powered by an engine that uses hydrogen to produce electricity.

But recently, both GM and Toyota have questioned whether fuel cell cars can be offered at a price most people can afford. GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz spoke at the auto show in Geneva, Switzerland last month. He said there has been recent progress in power-storing lithium-ion batteries. He said future electric cars may be able to travel nearly five hundred kilometers before the batteries need to be recharged.

Toyota is working on fuel cell cars too. However, the company's president, Katsuaki Watanabe, confirmed that fuel cells are just too costly to be available in the next ten years. Toyota is the leading maker of hybrid vehicles. These run on both electrical power and gas.

The automobile industry is changing in ways that would seem surprising to people only a few years ago. Toyota, for example, is expected to become the largest car company in the world very soon. But while Toyota has gained market share in North America and other Asian countries, the company is facing falling sales at home.

In Japan, new car sales fell to a thirty-five year low in two thousand seven. Sales for new cars, trucks and buses fell over seven percent. High fuel costs and good public transportation are two reasons driving has become less popular in Japan.

An opinion study by a Japanese newspaper found that only twenty-five percent of Japanese men in their twenties wanted a car at all. That was down from forty-eight percent in two thousand. The study was reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Another trend involves not owning but sharing a car. Zipcar is a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is the world's largest car-sharing business. Members pay each time they use a Zipcar. The car is left in a place were it is available to other members.

The company is growing quickly. Zipcar recently joined with a similar company, Flexcar. The merger is expected to be complete soon. The combined company will have one hundred eighty thousand members and five thousand vehicles. Zipcar does business in the United States, Canada and Britain.

And Zipcar is not the only company interested in car- sharing. Reports say vehicle rental businesses are interested in competing with Zipcar. In early February, Enterprise Rent-A-Car entered the car-sharing business in Saint Louis, Missouri. Its program is called WeCar. Other companies such as U-Haul International have similar car-sharing businesses and the car rental company Hertz is considering one.

Enterprise, which is the biggest car rental company by sales, says it is seeking a different business model from Zipcar. It wants to provide shared cars to businesses.

Shared cars are seen as an environmentally friendly way to use cars without owning one. Car- sharing reduces the number of cars on the road. Many of the cars are models that burn less fuel and produce less pollution. For example, Enterprise provides the Toyota Prius hybrid car for its members.

Car-sharing could be one way that people use cars in the future. Smaller cars and electric models are also a growing part of the future of cars. But as tens of millions of new cars are sold each year, one thing is clear: cars are still as popular as ever.

Scientists in the United States say the Grand Canyon is nearly three times as old as earlier estimates. They say they found evidence that the Grand Canyon began forming seventeen million years ago. That is eleven million years earlier than other studies have shown.

Geologists at the University of New Mexico carried out the new study. Their findings were published last month in Science magazine.

Other scientists say the findings fit with earlier theories about how the Grand Canyon may have been formed. But some experts on Earth's development disagree. They say the study fails to support earlier findings.

The Grand Canyon is a popular stop for visitors to the southwestern United States. It stretches up to twenty-nine kilometers wide and nearly two kilometers deep. Yet its age has long been an issue of scientific debate.

Scientists have often used geologic events to describe the history of the Grand Canyon. Such events have included rock flows and sedimentary rock, or rock formed from other rocks. Generally, this method is only able to confirm ages of rock formations up to one million years ago.

Instead, the American geologists used a uranium-lead dating method that finds ages of minerals back tens to hundreds of millions of years. They dated minerals from caves at different depths of the canyon’s walls. Minerals from openings on hillsides are less likely to suffer damage from water or other causes of erosion.

The uranium-lead dating system helped the geologists estimate water levels over time as river water cut through the rock to form the Grand Canyon. Their findings suggest that the rate of erosion was much slower in the western canyon than in the eastern part.

Today the Colorado River runs along the four hundred forty-six kilometer long canyon. Based on their findings, the geologists believe a separate river began the formation of the Grand Canyon. They say the canyon started instead from the west by a river about seventeen million years ago. Another river began forming a canyon from the east. Over time, the rivers connected to each other. The geologists estimate the two canyons joined together about six million years ago.

Scientists think they are a step closer to a new drug to treat schistosomiasis. More than two hundred million people suffer from this parasitic worm disease. Most live in developing nations. About ten percent of victims become seriously disabled from internal bleeding, iron loss, organ damage or other effects.

A team in the United States found that chemical compounds known as oxadiazoles can attack an enzyme needed for the survival of Schistosoma. This is the group of flatworms that cause schistosomiasis.

The scientists tested oxadiazoles on laboratory mice. They found that one compound killed the parasite at every level of development. The study also showed that the compound was active against all three major kinds of Schistosoma worms that infect human beings.

America's National Institutes of Health supported the research. Nature Medicine magazine reported on the study by scientists from Illinois State University and the Chemical Genomics Center at N.I.H.

David Williams led the research. He says the Schistosoma parasite needs oxygen to survive. Oxygen use produces oxygen-free radicals that can destroy an organism. The worm has a protective enzyme. But Professor Williams says the experimental drug disables this enzyme, causing the worm to self-destruct.
Each year, two hundred eighty thousand people die of schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia or snail fever. The microscopic worms infect snails, which produce infected eggs. People become infected when they enter fresh water where the snails live.

The worms dig through skin to enter the body. They move into blood passages that supply the intestinal and urinary systems. Then, if worm eggs in human waste enter fresh water, more snails and people become infected.

Since the nineteen eighties, doctors have used one main drug to treat schistosomiasis. Public health experts worry that the worms will become resistant to this drug, praziquantel.

More studies are needed on the experimental drug. The scientists say the results in mice were better than all the targets set by the World Health Organization for new schistosomiasis compounds. They hope the drug will be ready for testing in humans in four to five years.

Saturn is best known for the rings of icy material that surround the planet. But Saturn's moons interest scientists because some may hold liquid water and other materials necessary for life.

Recently, the American space agency NASA ordered the Cassini spacecraft to visit one of Saturn's most interesting moons. NASA jointly operates Cassini with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

The moon is Enceladus. It is not Saturn's largest moon. It is only five hundred kilometers across. But the forces that affect the surface of Enceladus are very active.

Periodically, huge amounts of material shoot up from the surface. NASA officials have called these events geysers, like the hot water that is forced out from under the ground on Earth. Cassini first captured pictures of such an event three years ago. The pictures have proved so scientifically important that NASA made changes to its plans for Cassini just to study the geysers.

On March twelfth, the space agency directed Cassini to pass only about fifty kilometers from the surface of Enceladus. Cassini got so close that it passed through material shooting out of the moon. The spacecraft was traveling at a speed of fifteen kilometers a second.

What Cassini found has only increased scientists' interest in the moon. New maps of temperatures on Enceladus show that an area on the southern part of the moon is ninety-three degrees below zero Celsius. Temperatures on Enceladus are normally about one hundred thirty degrees below zero.

John Spencer is a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He says the new temperature information makes it more likely that there is liquid water not far below the surface.

Liquid water is believed to be one of the things needed for life. Organic material is another. Cassini also found that the geysers are releasing organic material.

Hunter Waite is an investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. The spectrometer is a device that helps identify the chemistry of substances.

Mister Waite says the chemicals gathered from the geysers of Enceladus are much like those found on comets in our solar system. Cassini found water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and also organic material shooting from the geyser.

It is not known what causes the geysers on Enceladus. Cassini's deputy project scientist, Linda Spilker, says scientists know that heat causes the geysers to shoot from the surface of Enceladus. But, she says, it is not known what causes the heat.

Gravity from Saturn and the moon Dione are known to affect Enceladus. But it is not clear if this gravitational force is enough to cause the moon's energetic geysers.

The geysers are powerful. The material is leaving the surface at four hundred meters a second. And there is a link between the geysers and the objects for which Saturn is most famous. Material from Enceladus helps form the E-ring, the most distant of Saturn's many beautiful rings.

The most recent visit is only the beginning of close study of Enceladus. Scientists will have another chance to observe Enceladus when Cassini passes very near the moon again in August.

Desertification is a process. It changes productive land into useless land. One example of desertification is when a desert spreads into nearby cropland. In time, the cropland becomes an extension of the desert.

But that is not the only way farmers lose fertile soil.

Long dry periods, warmer temperatures and the removal of trees can all lead to the loss of good cropland. Floods can remove fertile topsoil and begin a process resulting in the loss of planting areas.

Another danger to good land is poor farming methods. Farmers should avoid continually planting crops in the same places, or letting animals feed year after year on the same lands.

Countries from Guatemala to Greece to Vietnam are working against the loss of cropland. Africa especially faces the risk of desertification.

Nigeria, for example, says it loses three hundred fifty thousand hectares of usable land each year. Hills of sand now cover places where people once lived.

When cropland turns to desert, people move to other places for better land and better jobs. This migration can cause political and social tensions.

A nonprofit organization in Nigeria is working to bring public attention to the problem. The group is called Fighting Against Desert Encroachment, or FADE.

Newton Jibunoh is a retired soil engineer who started this group in the year two thousand. He says desert encroachment could cause widespread hunger.

Newton Jibunoh is currently leading a delegation to thirteen African countries to discuss the dangers of losing farmlands. In northern Nigeria, the group organized a competition between schools in seven areas. The goal was to see who could plant the most trees.

Trees are often cut down for fuel wood. But lines of trees around cropland can catch blowing sand. In addition, tree roots can hold soil in place. Even within a desert, trees can be planted as borders around grassy areas.

For many years, China has been building a wall of trees in the northern part of the country. The goal is to stop the Gobi Desert from extending toward Beijing. The Great Green Wall will extend about five thousand kilometers. Completion is expected in two thousand fifty.

Philadelphia is a big city on the Delaware River in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania. It has about a million and a half people and is often called Philly.

The city was designed by William Penn. The Englishman and Quaker founded Pennsylvania in the sixteen eighties. He chose the name Philadelphia which he interpreted to mean "city of brotherly love" in Greek.

Philadelphia holds an important place in American history. It served as the nation's capital from seventeen eighty-five to seventeen ninety. And earlier, it was the capital of the American colonies during most of the Revolutionary War against Britain.

Philadelphia became the central meeting place for the "Founding Fathers" who created the United States government. The buildings where they worked can be seen today in an area called the Old City, or Independence National Historical Park.

The main building is Independence Hall. That was where colonial leaders declared independence and later debated the creation of a government.

A guide takes us into the room in Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed. The signing took place on July fourth, seventeen seventy-six.

During the summer of seventeen eighty-seven, the room had another important use. Delegates held a federal convention there and wrote the Constitution.

In the seventeen hundreds, Independence Hall was the Pennsylvania statehouse. Philadelphia was the capital of Pennsylvania at the time; today the capital is Harrisburg.

A bell was ordered for the building. But the bell cracked soon after it arrived from England. So in seventeen fifty-three, the bell was melted down for its metal and a new bell was made.

The new bell was rung many times for public announcements, including the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

In the eighteen thirties, a group that was trying to ban slavery in the United States began calling it the Liberty Bell. On it are these words taken from the Bible: "Proclaim Liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

But in eighteen forty-six a crack appeared in the replacement bell. No one knows why it cracked. The Liberty Bell has not been rung since, but it remains an important national symbol.

The National Park Service says more than two million people visited Independence National Historical Park last year.

Across the street from the park is the National Liberty Museum. This museum has a collection of more than ninety paintings and sculptures. They represent the idea that liberty is a freedom that is easily violated.

The museum also celebrates more than three hundred fifty world heroes. One example is Jonas Salk, the American doctor who developed a polio vaccine. Another is Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who helped the poor and sick.

Time for a meal. A few blocks from the Liberty Bell is the City Tavern. The restaurant serves food based on recipes as old as the nation itself. For example, there is beer brewed from a recipe developed by Thomas Jefferson, the third president, and his sweet potato biscuits.

In fact, the City Tavern is three years older than the United States. It was completed in seventeen seventy-three. Historians say it was considered the best restaurant in British North America.

When the nation was a year old, the first Independence Day celebration was held there on July fourth, seventeen seventy-seven.

And ten years later, after approving the Constitution, what did the delegates do? Tavern records show they went to the City Tavern for a meal.

Speaking of food, another good place to eat in Philadelphia is the Reading Terminal Market. It opened in eighteen ninety-two with spaces for almost eight hundred sellers. Today, the huge building is filled with stores selling local farm products as well as seafood, clothing, jewelry and crafts from many countries.

One hundred thousand people a week visit the Reading Terminal Market.

Visitors can find all kinds of foods -- including, of course, Philly cheesesteak. The city is known for these sandwiches made of thinly sliced meat covered with cheese. A cheesesteak is offered with onions and other toppings and served on a long roll.

Now it is time to get back to the Visitor Center at Independence Park for a tour of Philadelphia on a Duck. This is a kind of vehicle that can drive on land or ride on water. Other cities also have these kinds of tours.

The seventy-minute ride includes about twenty minutes on the Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

As we travel through Philadelphia, the riders blow on duck noisemakers, like this.

As we pass through Independence Park, our driver points out Carpenters’ Hall. That was where colonial delegates first gathered in seventeen seventy-four to discuss their problems with British rule.

We also pass by the houses of important people during colonial times. One of these buildings was where Betsy Ross lived when tradition tells us she sewed the first United States flag.

Outside the historical area, the Duck passes by Elfreth's Alley. This is one of the oldest streets in Philadelphia. It dates back to the beginning of the seventeen hundreds.

We also drive down South Street, a well-known area of shops and restaurants. The Orlons, a group from Philadelphia, had a hit in nineteen sixty-three with a song called "South Street."

As we pass through Independence Park, our driver points out Carpenters’ Hall. That was where colonial delegates first gathered in seventeen seventy-four to discuss their problems with British rule.

We also pass by the houses of important people during colonial times. One of these buildings was where Betsy Ross lived when tradition tells us she sewed the first United States flag.

Outside the historical area, the Duck passes by Elfreth's Alley. This is one of the oldest streets in Philadelphia. It dates back to the beginning of the seventeen hundreds.

We also drive down South Street, a well-known area of shops and restaurants. The Orlons, a group from Philadelphia, had a hit in nineteen sixty-three with a song called "South Street."

The National Constitution Center also has a big room called Signers' Hall. It looks like the room at Independence Hall where thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution on September seventeenth, seventeen eighty-seven. Included among the delegates were George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.

There are life-size statues of forty-two delegates -- the ones who signed the Constitution and three others who did not. American visitors have fun finding the delegates from their home states and having their pictures taken with them.

Nearby is a rare first public printing of the Constitution. The Pennsylvania Packet Constitution was published in a newspaper two days after the Constitution was signed in Independence Hall. A copy of the Constitution itself is on display at the National Archives in Washington.

The National Constitution Center is not just about political events in the past. On April sixteenth, Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton plan to be there for a debate. Six days later is the Pennsylvania primary election.

The city of Philadelphia has much to see, both historic and modern, but that's all we have time for today. For anyone planning a visit, one place to get information on the Internet is gophila.com, spelled g-o-p-h-i-l-a, the official visitor site for Greater Philadelphia.

Goldman Sachs Group, the international investment banking company, has launched a new program to provide ten thousand poor women with business education. The program, called 10,000 Women, will support partnerships between American and European universities and business schools in mostly developing countries. Partners will work together to establish or expand education programs lasting from five weeks to six months. Several partnerships may also offer full college degrees in business.

The 10,000 Women program hopes to expand into the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and throughout Africa. Sixteen schools have agreed to take part in the program so far. They include Columbia, Harvard and Stanford Universities in the United States. Other schools are in India, Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania.

The Pan-African University in Lagos, Nigeria is also a partner. Peter Bamkoleh heads that university's Enterprise Development Services. He says about fifty women will receive training at the school every year. The women will take classes several times a week, then use what they have learned.

Dina Powell is the managing director of Goldman Sachs. She says that 10,000 Women is not a “one size fits all” program. Each university decides what to teach to fulfill local needs. At the American University of Afghanistan, for example, women will study the general ideas of business management. But at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, the partner school will offer beginning and higher-level business classes to the first five hundred women. Such classes may include financial record-keeping, market research and advertising. Women also could learn how to write a business plan, do business over the Internet or gain investors.

Goldman Sachs plans to give one hundred million dollars to the 10,000 Women program over the next five years. It will also urge its employees to donate their time and knowledge in the classroom.

The program is based on a Goldman Sachs research report called "Women Hold Up Half the Sky." The research shows the powerful effects that working women have on their nations' economies and societies.

Forty years ago, African-American civil rights leader, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, was shot and killed. He died on April fourth, nineteen sixty-eight, in Memphis, Tennessee.

On Friday, in that city, presidential candidates, civil rights leaders, labor activists and thousands of citizens came together. They honored Doctor King for leading the struggle for racial equality and economic justice.

During the nineteen fifties and sixties, Doctor King had led a campaign of nonviolent protests. His work was aimed at ending racial separation and discrimination against African-Americans.

His efforts led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty-four. That year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Forty years ago, Doctor King was in Memphis to organize a strike for workers' rights. The sanitation workers in the city were protesting their low wages and poor working conditions. Doctor King was thirty-nine years old at the time, and had become the nation’s chief civil rights leader.

His murder incited riots in more than one hundred American cities. The race riots lasted for days. Many African-American neighborhoods burned. The government ordered about fifty thousand soldiers to help control the violence. An estimated twenty-one thousand people were arrested. Almost fifty people were killed. And millions of dollars in property was damaged or destroyed.

His murder also brought about a divisive and difficult period for race relations in the United States.

In the years since his death, Doctor King has often been called one of the most honored Americans in history. But for many, his work for racial equality remains unfinished.

In the past forty years, African-Americans have become successful in education, business, entertainment and politics. The rise of Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama is a powerful sign of racial progress. If elected in November, Mister Obama would become America’s first black president.

Yet experts say the black population as a whole has not reached equality with white people socially and economically. Black Americans experience greater rates of poverty and crime than whites.

Civil rights leaders say that forty years after his death, many African-Americans still seek Doctor King’s dream of equality and opportunity.

Martin Luther King Junior is best remembered for his nineteen sixty-three “I Have a Dream” speech. It brought together millions of people in the United States and around the world to work for racial justice.

Every people has its own way of saying things, its own special expressions. Many everyday American expressions are based on colors.

Red is a hot color. Americans often use it to express heat. They may say they are red hot about something unfair. When they are red hot they are very angry about something. The small hot tasting peppers found in many Mexican foods are called red hots for their color and their fiery taste. Fast loud music is popular with many people. They may say the music is red hot, especially the kind called Dixieland jazz.

Pink is a lighter kind of red. People sometimes say they are in the pink when they are in good health. The expression was first used in America at the beginning of the twentieth century. It probably comes from the fact that many babies are born with a nice pink color that shows that they are in good health.

Blue is a cool color. The traditional blues music in the United States is the opposite of red hot music. Blues is slow, sad and soulful. Duke Ellington and his orchestra recorded a famous song – Mood Indigo – about the deep blue color, indigo. In the words of the song: “You ain’t been blue till you’ve had that Mood Indigo.” Someone who is blue is very sad.

The color green is natural for trees and grass. But it is an unnatural color for humans. A person who has a sick feeling stomach may say she feels a little green. A passenger on a boat who is feeling very sick from high waves may look very green.

Sometimes a person may be upset because he does not have something as nice as a friend has, like a fast new car. That person may say he is green with envy. Some people are green with envy because a friend has more dollars or greenbacks. Dollars are called greenbacks because that is the color of the back side of the paper money.

The color black is used often in expressions. People describe a day in which everything goes wrong as a black day. The date of a major tragedy is remembered as a black day. A blacklist is illegal now. But at one time, some businesses refused to employ people who were on a blacklist for belonging to unpopular organizations.

In some cases, colors describe a situation. A brown out is an expression for a reduction in electric power. Brown outs happen when there is too much demand for electricity. The electric system is unable to offer all the power needed in an area. Black outs were common during World War Two. Officials would order all lights in a city turned off to make it difficult for enemy planes to find a target in the dark of night.

The first government of the United States was weak. It had many debts and an empty treasury. Its support from the people was not firm. There was some question about its future. Many wondered if it would last.

In a few years, however, there was a change. This change was produced in large part by the energy and imagination of one man, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton wanted to make the United States a strong and important nation. He wanted it to become the equal of the powerful nations of Europe. Here are Shirley Griffith and Frank Oliver with our story.

Alexander Hamilton firmly believed that no country could become a modern nation without industry. So, he carefully developed a program that would make the United States an industrial nation. He also organized the nation's finances. This was done by establishing government credit and a national bank.

The bank increased the flow of money needed for investment. It fed the needs of business and commercial activity. The need for money had brought much of this activity to a stop.

Finally, Hamilton took steps to protect American manufacturers from foreign competition. He did this by establishing a system of import taxes -- tariffs -- on some foreign goods brought into American ports. These import taxes forced foreign manufacturers to raise their prices. As a result, American manufacturers had much less competition in selling their products.

Such a tariff system, Hamilton hoped, would strengthen American industry. He thought the United States should not have to depend on other nations for the things it needed. Such a system, he believed, would create a demand for all kinds of workers. It would increase immigration from other countries. And it would bring a new and greater demand for American farm products.

Hamilton's financial program helped manufacturers. But it did not seem to do much for farmers.

There was a loud protest, especially among farmers in the south. Everything he did, they said, helped the industrial and banking interests of the north. Yet the farmers had to pay more for the manufactured goods they needed. At the same time, they had to sell their crops at lower prices.

Hamilton succeeded in getting Congress to approve his financial proposals. Yet his political victories brought him many enemies. And they started a Constitutional debate that continued throughout American history. The dispute involved this question: What exact powers do the government and the Congress have under the Constitution?

Alexander Hamilton believed the Constitution gave the government a number of powers besides those written down. Otherwise, he said, the government could not work. For example, he believed that under the Constitution, the government had the right to start a national bank. It also had the right to put a tax on imported goods.

Hamilton's opponents disagreed sharply. They did not give the words of the Constitution such a wide meaning. They said the government had just those powers that were clearly spelled out in the Constitution, and nothing more. If not, they said, the government could become dangerously powerful.

These disputes, and others, helped shape the new United States. In future programs, we will tell more about Alexander Hamilton's influence on political developments. Now, however, we will tell a little about his private life. What kind of man was he? Where did he come from? How did his political and economic beliefs develop?

There is much mystery about the early days of Alexander Hamilton. Some facts about his childhood and youth have been clearly established. Others have not.

His mother was the daughter of French Huguenots who had settled in the West Indies. Her name was Rachel Lavien. Historians are not sure who his father was. One story says he may have been James Hamilton, a poor businessman from Scotland. Rachel Lavien lived with him after she left her husband.

One thing is certain. His mother died when he was eleven years old. When she died, friends of the family found work for the boy on the island of Saint Croix -- then called Santa Cruz -- in the Virgin Islands. He was to be an assistant bookkeeper. He would learn how to keep financial records.

Young Alexander was considered an unusual child. Other children played games. He talked about becoming a political leader in the North American colonies.

He read every book that was given to him -- in English, Latin and Greek. At a young age, he learned a great deal about business and economics. And he developed an ability to use words to communicate ideas clearly and powerfully. This ability to write started him on the path to a new life.

A severe ocean storm hit the West Indies. Hamilton wrote a report about the storm for a newspaper called the Royal Danish American Gazette. His story was so good that some of his friends decided to help him get a good education. They gave him money so he could attend a college in New York City.

The boy's plan was to study medicine and return to Saint Croix as a doctor.

When Hamilton arrived in New York, he tried to enter King's College, which would later be known as Columbia University. However, he did not have enough education to enter King's College. So he went to a lower school at Elizabethtown, in New Jersey.

He was one of the most serious students at the school. He read his books until midnight. Then he got up early and went to a cemetery to continue reading where it was quiet. He wrote many papers. Each time, he tried to improve his style. After a year at Elizabethtown, he was accepted at King's College.

At King's College, both teachers and students were surprised by Hamilton's intelligence and his clear way of writing and speaking. The problems of the American colonies were very much on the young man's mind.

Hamilton protested against British rule. When colonists in the city of Boston seized a British ship and threw its cargo of tea into the water, Hamilton wrote a paper defending them. Then came the year seventeen seventy-six. The thirteen American colonies declared their independence from Britain. The declaration meant war.

As a boy, Alexander Hamilton had written, "I want success. I would put my life in danger to win success, but not my character. I wish there were a war where I could show my strength." Now, war had come.

The American Revolution gave Hamilton the chance to show his abilities. He wanted to be a great military leader. Instead, he became a valuable assistant to the commanding general, George Washington. In this job, he had to use all his political and communication skills to get money and supplies for the Revolutionary Army.

Hamilton also would become an influential thinker, writer, and journalist. For many years, he wrote editorials for the newspaper he established, the New York Evening Post. He also helped write the Federalist Papers with James Madison and John Jay. The Federalist Papers are considered the greatest explanation of the United States Constitution ever written.

In addition to being a fine writer, Hamilton was a fine speaker, but only to small groups. He spoke the same way that he wrote: clearly, forcefully, and with knowledge. It was this ability that he used so well in the New York state convention that approved the Constitution.

More than any other man, it was Alexander Hamilton who made the delegates to that convention change their minds and accept the document.

After the new government was formed under the Constitution, Hamilton continued to play an important part in national politics.

Fort Knox is the name of an Army base in the southern state of Kentucky. But the name is better known for its link to gold.

Since nineteen thirty-seven, the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox has housed a large portion of the government’s gold reserves. The depository is next to, but not part of, the Army base. The building is under the control of the United States Mint, which is part of the Treasury Department.

The Fort Knox Bullion Depository holds over one hundred forty-seven million troy ounces of gold. A troy ounce is a measurement used for jewels and metals like gold and silver.

The amount at Fort Knox is equal to more than four and one-half million kilograms of gold. The gold is in the form of coins and bars. The bars measure about seventeen centimeters long and nine centimeters wide.

In nineteen thirty-three, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered an end to the use of gold as money. The newly elected president did this as part of his New Deal economic plan during the Great Depression. Private ownership of gold that was not in the form of jewelry or collectable coins became illegal.

So people who owned gold exchanged it with the government for paper money. Soon, the government needed a safe place to store its growing amounts of gold. The Treasury Department started building the Fort Knox depository in nineteen thirty-six.

As you can imagine, the building has very high security. In fact, the term “Fort Knox” is used in popular language to describe something that is carefully protected.

The gold is housed in a two-level vault made of concrete and steel. The Treasury Department Web site says no one person knows the code that opens the vault. Instead, several people must each enter a separate code to unlock it.

Other valuable objects have been stored at Fort Knox over the years. These include the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta and three versions of the Gutenberg Bible. The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed in Europe with movable type.

Don’t get too excited about visiting Fort Knox. The bullion depository is not open to the public.

This spring in Washington D.C., you can visit a video art exhibit called “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image.” The exhibit can be seen at the Hirshhorn Museum, the modern art center of the Smithsonian Institution.

The first part of the show is called "Dreams." It explores the way in which movies have changed the way people experience reality.

Some videos in the exhibit show peaceful worlds that are beautiful in an unusual way. In “Overture” by Stan Douglas, you seem to travel through a mountain environment like an engineer sitting in the front of a train. The train and the quality of the recording suggest the film is very old. Douglas included a recording of a man talking about his thoughts and dreams. You cannot tell if the calm voice is talking about reality or if the man is asleep.

In another video, the video projector itself is part of the art. A large, old projection device from the nineteen sixties shows the video on a wall. Canadian artist Rodney Graham made the film in black and white. It shows a white material falling like snow on an old Rheinmetall typewriter. The snow slowly covers the machine until it becomes unrecognizable.

Not much happens at all in another video, Andy Warhol’s famous movie “Sleep." It shows a man as he sleeps. The recording lasts for several hours.

Other videos in the exhibit are frightening. The German artist Christophe Girardet used a few seconds of the actress Fay Wray in the nineteen thirty-three movie “King Kong.” In one part of the movie, the actress shouts when she sees the huge creature. The artist worked with the video so that the images are repeated again and again. Fay Wray seems to be doing a strange dance as she shouts.

The American artist Tony Oursler has three works in the exhibit. He places videos of human faces on round objects to make unusual talking creatures. In one work, a video of a person’s eye can be seen on a ball. If you look carefully, you can see a moving image like a television in the eye. As the eye sees brighter and darker images, the pupil of the eye increases and decreases in size.

In June, the Hirshhorn Museum will show the second part of this video exhibit. It will be called “Realisms.”

This week, the Bush administration proposed major changes to the way the financial system is supervised. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the plan Monday. He said the changes should not and will not be put in place until the current financial crisis is over. The plan is divided into short-term, intermediate-term and long-term goals.

Among the short-term goals is an expansion of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets. The proposal would bring banking supervisors into the group and expand its responsibility to the entire financial industry. Other short-term goals include creating a group to set rules for the home loan industry. Many people blame irresponsible lending to people with risky credit histories for the current subprime mortgage crisis.

Intermediate goals include combining or closing some financial supervising agencies that perform similar duties. The proposal would close the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees non-bank savings organizations. It would also combine the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The C.F.T.C. currently supervises the market for financial contracts known as futures while the S.E.C. regulates securities markets.

Another aim would be to take the first steps toward the federal government supervising the insurance industry. This industry has been supervised mainly by the states for about one hundred thirty-five years.

In the long term, the plan calls for strengthening the Central Bank to guard against all threats to the financial system. But, the proposal would also create new agencies. It calls for a Prudential Financial Regulator, which would combine all federal bank regulators into a single agency. Also, a Conduct of Business Regulator would be responsible for investor protection. This agency would perform many duties currently done by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Small banks and some state officials strongly oppose the plan. Small banks see the plan as a way to make big financial companies more competitive. Other groups have criticized the plan because it does not provide help for the current mortgage crisis.

The United States declared its independence from Britain on July fourth, seventeen seventy-six. The new nation was a loosely formed alliance governed under the Articles of Confederation. All this changed when a new plan of government, the Constitution, went into effect on March fourth, seventeen eighty-nine. There was much to be done to make it work. The machinery of government was untested. Strong leadership was needed.

Many historians believe there would never have been a United States without George Washington. He led the American people to victory in their war for independence from Britain. He kept the new nation united in the dangerous first years of its life.

Washington had a strange power over the American people. His name still does. During his lifetime, he was honored for his courage and wisdom. After his death in seventeen ninety-nine, he became almost god-like. People forgot that he was human, that he had faults and made mistakes.

For well over one hundred years, Americans found it difficult to criticize George Washington. He represented the spirit of America -- what was best about the country.

Recent historians have painted a more realistic picture of Washington. They write about his weaknesses, as well as his strengths. But this has not reduced his greatness and importance in the making of the nation.

The force of Washington's personality, and his influence, was extremely important at the Philadelphia convention that wrote the new Constitution. Had he not agreed to attend, some say, the convention would not have been held. Later, as the first president, he gave the new nation a good start in life.

Washington was able to control political disputes among officials of the new government. He would not let such disputes damage the nation's unity.

Washington often thought of the future. He wanted the first government to take the right steps.

He said, some things may not seem important in the beginning, but later, they may have bad permanent results. It would be better, he felt, to start his administration right than to try to correct mistakes later…when it might be too late to do so. He hoped to act in such a way that future presidents could continue to build on what he began.

Washington had clear, firm ideas about what was right and what was wrong. He loved justice. He also loved the republican form of government.

Some people had difficulty seeing this part of the man. For Washington looked like an aristocrat. And, at times, he seemed to act like one. He attended many ceremonies. He often rode through the streets in a carriage pulled by six horses. His critics called him "king."

Washington opposed rule by kings and dictators. He was shocked that some good people talked of having a monarchy in America. He was even more shocked that they did not understand the harm they were doing.

Washington warned that this loose talk could lead to an attempt to establish a monarchy in the United States. A monarchy, he said, would be a great victory for the enemies of the United States. It would prove that Americans could not govern themselves.

As president, Washington decided to do everything in his power to prevent the country from ever being ruled by a king or dictator. He wanted the people to have as much self-government as possible. Such government, Washington felt, meant a life of personal freedom and equal justice for the people.

The eighteenth century has been described as the age of reason and understanding for the rights of people. Washington was a man of his times. He said no one could feel a greater interest in the happiness of mankind than he did. He said it was his greatest hope that the policies of that time would bring to everyone those blessings which should be theirs.

Washington was especially happy and proud that the United States would protect people against oppression for their religious beliefs.

He did not care which god people worshipped. He felt that religious freedom was a right of every person. Good men, he said, are found all over the world. They can be followers of any religion…or no religion at all.

Washington's feelings about racial oppression were as strong as his feelings about religious oppression. True, he owned Negro slaves. But he hated slavery. "There is not a man alive," he once said, "who wishes more truly than I to see a plan approved to end slavery." By his order, all his slaves were freed when he died.

From the beginning, George Washington was careful to establish a good working relationship with the Congress. He did not attempt to take away any powers given to the Congress by the Constitution. By his actions, he confirmed the separation of powers of the three branches of the government, as proposed in the Constitution.

The Congress, too, was ready to cooperate. It did not attempt to take away any powers given to the president by the Constitution. The Congress, for example, agreed that President Washington had the right to appoint his assistants. But Congress kept the right to approve them.

Washington asked some of the nation's wisest and most able men to serve in the new government.

For Secretary of State, he chose Thomas Jefferson. At the time, Jefferson was America's representative to France.

While Congress was considering Jefferson's nomination, Washington heard of threatening events in France. He learned that a mob had captured the old prison called the Bastille. Washington was worried. The United States had depended on France for help during its war for independence. And it still needed French help. A crisis in France could be bad for America.

The information Jefferson brought home would prove valuable if the situation in France got worse. Washington also thought Jefferson's advice would be useful in general, not just on French developments.

For Secretary of the Treasury, Washington chose Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had served as one of Washington's assistants during the Revolutionary War.

For Chief Justice of the United States, he chose John Jay. Jay helped write the Federalist Papers, which are considered the best explanation of the Constitution ever written. Two delegates to the Constitutional convention were named associate justices of the Supreme Court: James Wilson and John Rutledge.

For Attorney General, Washington wanted a good lawyer and someone who supported the Constitution. He chose Edmund Randolph of Virginia. It was Randolph who proposed the Virginia Plan to the Philadelphia convention. The plan became the basis for the national Constitution. Randolph refused to sign the document, because he did not believe it could be approved. But he worked later to help win Virginia's approval of the Constitution.

President Washington named his assistants, and the Congress approved them. The president was ready to begin work on the nation's urgent problems. And there were many.

One problem was Spain's control of the lower part of the Mississippi River. American farmers needed to use the river to transport their crops to market. But the Spanish governor in Louisiana closed the Mississippi to American boats.

There also were problems with Britain. The United States had no commercial treaty with Britain. And Britain had sent no representative to the new American government.

Equally urgent were the new nation's economic problems. Two major issues had to be settled. One was repayment of loans made to support the American army in the war for independence. The other was creation of a national money system. Both issues needed quick action.

Finding solutions would be the job of President Washington's treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton.

A new report says only about half of all students in the main school systems of America's largest cities finish high school. The report notes higher rates of graduation -- more than seventy percent -- in areas surrounding the cities.

The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center prepared the report.

Researchers studied high school graduation rates from the two thousand three, two thousand four school year. They also identified the nation's fifty largest cities. The largest, New York City, had a population of more than eight million. The smallest city was Wichita, Kansas. It had about three hundred sixty thousand people.

Researchers used a system of measurement called the cumulative promotion index to find graduation rates. School officials in many of the cities studied say the resulting numbers were too low. That is because different areas use different methods to find graduation rates. Critics say many methods do not give a true picture of the number of students who leave high school before finishing.

Other studies have put the national graduation rate at about seventy percent. But experts agree that too many students are not completing high school. They estimate the number at more than one million each year.

The report was prepared for America’s Promise Alliance. The private group aims to help children receive services they need to succeed.

General Colin Powell was chairman of America's Promise Alliance when it was formed in nineteen ninety-seven. He attended the press conference Tuesday where the report was released. He said studies have shown that the United States must do more to educate the leaders and work force of the future.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings also spoke. She said the government will propose that states use the same methods when reporting graduation rates.

Alliance officials also announced the start of a nationwide campaign to improve graduation rates. It is to include a series of meetings to be held in every state over the next two years. The meetings will bring together elected leaders, business owners, students, parents and education officials. They will develop plans to increase the number of Americans who finish high school.

Next Monday is World Health Day, observed by the World Health Organization. The objective chosen for this year is to get people involved in the campaign to protect against the health effects of climate change.

The World Health Organization is a United Nations agency.

The W.H.O. says there is already evidence of health problems related to climate change. It says more people are dying from extreme heat, and that diseases spread by insects are also on the rise. And it says climate change has increased the risk of natural disasters, especially severe dry weather, wildfires, major storms and floods.

Disasters like these can kill directly or indirectly. People can die or get sick from food shortages or conditions like the spread of disease. Several years ago, the W.H.O. blamed climate change for two percent of diarrhea cases worldwide in the year two thousand.

Last month, researchers in Canada predicted that temperature increases there will spread insects like ticks and mosquitoes farther north. These insects can carry disease.

The scientists also predict that climate change will lead in Canada to an increase in outbreaks of diseases that can be carried in water and food. They note that flooding, heavy rains and warmer temperatures are linked to the spread of bacteria, viruses and other organisms. This is true even in the presence of water treatment systems, they say.

The report by scientists at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

World Health Day marks the establishment of the World Health Organization on April seventh, nineteen forty-eight. One goal this year is to call for local and international partnerships that will seek to improve health through efforts to stabilize climate change. The W.H.O. says it aims to put public health at the center of U.N. efforts on climate change.

A major message of this World Health Day is that the health of poor people will be hurt the most. The W.H.O. says different areas of the world will experience different problems from climate change. But it says countries with high levels of poverty and underdevelopment will be the least prepared to deal with them.

Not long ago, many people believed that babies only wanted food and to be kept warm and dry. Some people thought babies were not able to learn things until they were five or six months old.

Yet doctors in the United States say babies begin learning on their first day of life. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is a federal government agency. Its goal is to identify which experiences can influence healthy development in human beings.

Research scientists at the institute note that babies are strongly influenced by their environment. They say a baby will smile if her mother does something the baby likes. A baby learns to get the best care possible by smiling to please her mother or other caregiver. This is how babies learn to connect and communicate with other human beings.

The American researchers say this ability to learn exists in a baby even before birth. They say newborn babies can recognize and understand sounds they heard while they were still developing in their mothers.

One study shows that babies can learn before they are born. The researchers placed a tape recorder on the stomach of a pregnant woman. Then, they played a recording of a short story.

On the day the baby was born, the researchers attempted to find if he knew the sounds of the story repeated while in his mother. They did this by placing a device in the mouth of the newborn baby.

The baby would hear the story if he moved his mouth one way. If the baby moved his mouth the other way, he would hear a different story. The researchers say the baby clearly liked the story he heard before he was born. They say the baby would move his mouth so he could hear the story again and again.

Many experts say the first years of a child’s life are important for all later development. An American study shows how mothers can strongly influence social development and language skills in their children.

The study involved more than one thousand two hundred mothers and children. Researchers studied the children from the age of one month to three years. They observed the mothers playing with their children four times during this period.

The researchers attempted to measure the sensitivity of the mothers. The women were considered sensitive if they supported their children’s activities and did not interfere unnecessarily. They tested the children for thinking and language development when they were three years old. Also, the researchers observed the women for signs of depression.

The children of depressed women did not do as well on tests as the children of women who did not suffer from depression. The children of depressed women did poorly on tests of language skills and understanding what they hear.

These children also were less cooperative and had more problems dealing with other people. The researchers noted that the sensitivity of the mothers was important to the general health of their children. Children did better when their mothers were caring, even when the women suffered from depression.

Another study suggests that low-birth weight babies with no evidence of disability may be more likely than other children to have physical and mental problems.

American researchers studied nearly five hundred boys and girls. They were born in, or admitted to, one of three hospitals in New Jersey between nineteen eighty-four and nineteen eighty-seven. At birth, each child weighed less than two thousand grams.

The boys and girls had an average age of sixteen years at the time of the study. They were asked to complete intelligence and motor skill tests in their homes. Their test results were compared with those of other children their age.

The study found that the young people with low birth weight often had more problems with motor skills than others. A motor skill is a skill that requires a living thing to use its skeletal muscles effectively. Motor problems were more common among males, those with injured nerve tissue in the brain, and those who had been connected to oxygen supplies for days as a baby.

The first three years of a child's life is the most intensive period of language and speech development. This is the time when the brain is developing. Language and communication skills are believed to develop best in an environment that is rich with sounds and sights. Also, the child should repeatedly hear the speech and language of other people.

America's National Institutes of Health says evidence suggests there are important periods of speech and language development in children. This means the brain is best able to learn a language during this period. Officials say the ability to learn a language will be more difficult if these periods pass without early contact with a language.

The first signs of communication happen during the first few days of life when a baby learns that crying will bring food and attention. Research shows that most children recognize the general sounds of their native language by six months of age. At that time, a baby also usually begins to make sounds. These sounds become a kind of nonsense speech over time.

By the end of the first year, most children are able to say a few simple words. But they may not understand the meaning of their words. By eighteen months of age, most children can say eight to ten words. By two years, most children are able to form simple statements, or sentences. By ages three, four and five, the number of words a child can understand quickly increases. It is at this age that children begin to understand the rules of language.

A long-term American study shows the effect of early education on future learning abilities. The study followed more than one thousand three hundred children from birth through the ages of ten or eleven years. It found that children who received higher quality care before starting school had better language skills by those ages than children who had lower quality care.

The study is known as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. It is said to be the largest, longest lasting and most complete study of child care in the United States.

The children included in the study were born around nineteen ninety-one in ten areas of the country. Researchers examined the quality and amount of child care the children received until they were fifty-four months old. Child care included any care provided by people other than the child’s mother that lasted at least ten hours a week. This included any care given by fathers or other family members.

The researchers then examined each child’s performance in school and social development. They also measured other influences, such as the quality of classroom education and parenting.

Recently, the researchers examined whether the developmental qualities that had been observed in young children were still present a few years later. They found that the older children who had received higher quality child care continued to show better ability in measures of language skills.

The children’s understanding was observed using a method which shows their ability to name objects shown in a series of pictures. The study confirmed a link between high quality child care and better test results continued as the children grew older. It also found that the children’s ability was not dependent on the amount of time they had spent in child care.

Interestingly, children who had been in child care before entering school were also more likely to have shown aggression or disobedience in their early school years. However, the researchers said the children's behavior was considered normal.

James Griffith was the science officer for the study. He says the findings add to the growing research that shows the quality and kind of child care a person experiences early in life can have lasting effects.

The common housefly is unwelcome around food because flies can carry disease-causing germs. Now, scientists have shown that the insects can also spread food poisoning bacteria to chickens in poultry houses. As a result, they say flies are a threat to the safety of poultry products.

Peter Holt and Christopher Geden of the United States Department of Agriculture did a study with Salmonella bacteria. Chickens infected with Salmonella do not get sick, but they can pass the infection to humans through undercooked meat or eggs.

Cases can be mild or severe, or even deadly. The greatest risk is to the old and very young and to people with weak immune systems.

The researchers investigated whether infected hens could pass the infection to flies. They also investigated whether those flies could then infect healthy chickens. The research was described last month in the Agriculture Department magazine Agricultural Research.

Peter Holt put uninfected chickens in individual laying cages next to each other in a room. Then Christopher Geden brought in young flies two days away from becoming flying adults. He placed them in an open box in the room with the chickens.

Three days later, the chickens were given Salmonella in their drinking water and became infected. Soon, about half the house flies had Salmonella in and on their bodies. The scientists used a dissecting microscope to cut the insects apart for study. The number of flies with Salmonella stayed at fifty percent or more for several days.

Next, the researchers placed the newly infected flies near healthy, uninfected hens. The scientists observed that just being near the infected flies did not infect the hens. But many of the hens did get infected when they ate the flies.

The bacteria grew in the intestines of close to forty percent of the birds. The crop, a small part in the digestive system that stores predigested food, was mostly free of Salmonella.

Peter Holt says there is much more to learn about the relationship between Salmonella, flies and poultry. But he says the study shows that growers need to be especially careful to control flies.

The findings show that Salmonella bacteria may not spread around the henhouse by simple physical contact. Instead, eating infected flies seems to be the main way for Salmonella to pass from flies to birds.

More than twenty-nine thousand foreign exchange students attended American high schools last year. The State Department says the teenagers came from one hundred nine countries.

Foreign exchange students get the chance to learn more about a culture and its people. They make new friends and experience new places. But they can also experience problems being far from home, among people they do not know and may not understand.

The way many describe it, the experience is exciting and frightening at the same time.

In the past, exchange students usually had limited contact with their host families before meeting them. But times have changed. Today, exchange students may know a lot about their host family before they ever leave home. E-mails go back and forth; pictures of families, homes and pets are shared.

E-mail and cell phones also make it easier for the students to keep in contact with their own families back home.

Exchange groups are supposed to provide a contact person, or liaison, to help students in case they have any problems.

This is what happened with a boy from Argentina we'll call Juan Carlos.

Juan Carlos liked sports; his American host family did not. He liked to go out with friends; his host parents did not approve. And they did not think he was doing well enough in school: he was getting average grades. The host parents discussed these issues with his liaison.

And the solution? A new family was found for Juan Carlos. The new family included two boys who played soccer on local teams. Juan Carlos joined those teams and was much happier with his new family. Not only that, his grades improved.

Exchange students have to speak English well enough to attend an American high school. But some students find it takes weeks or months for them to understand everything they read or hear.

One girl from Switzerland told her exchange group that some students at her American high school made fun of her accent. An exchange volunteer asked how many languages she spoke. The girl said her native language was Swiss-German and she also spoke Italian, French, English and Spanish.

The volunteer had this advice: Tell those students that you have an accent in four of the five languages you speak. And then ask them how many languages they speak. The majority of Americans speak only English.

Seventeen-year-old Nadia Gerstgrasser is from Italy. Nadia says being a foreign exchange student is not always easy.

NADIA GERSTGRASSER: "Like the language, you think it's going to be hard, but you don't know how it is in real life when people don't understand you and how hard it can be even to order a hamburger. When a waiter asked me the first time how I wanted it done, I said 'cooked' and he was like 'yeah, I know, but how,' and I said 'on my plate,' and everybody started laughing. Stuff like that. It can embarrass you, but that's just the way you learn English. Now I laugh about it, but back then I was really embarrassed."

Nadia is living with a family in Alexandria, Virginia, through the end of June. She is attending a Fairfax County high school with more than one thousand seven hundred students. Nineteen percent of them are limited English speakers. She says that surprised her -- finding so many different ethnic groups.

NADIA GERSTGRASSER: " You know, I was expecting all Americans ... like, I knew there was black people, white people, but I didn't know there was a lot of Hispanics, Asian kids at my school. And, yeah, it was surprising but positive."

American high schools come in small, medium, large and extra large. They can have three, four, even five thousand students. It is easy to feel lost at first in a huge building and moving from class to class.

Changing classrooms might also be a new experience for exchange students. Some students come from countries where the teachers move from room to room, not the students.

More than one hundred organizations are involved in the State Department's Exchange Visitor Program for secondary school students. These groups are responsible for choosing, placing and supervising exchange students.

In many cases, families pay an organization to place their child with an American family and supervise their time in the United States.

In the case of Rotary International, local Rotary clubs pay some of the expenses of exchange students. The clubs place students with three different families during the school year.

As of last year there were twelve schools and school districts involved in the State Department program. Schools often want foreign exchange students as a way to increase the diversity of their student population. These programs may be true exchanges. A student from the school goes to a foreign country for a school year while a foreign student comes to the United States.

Secondary-school exchange students normally come to the United States with J-One visas provided by the State Department. Some, however, come with an F-One study visa from the Department of Homeland Security. But an F-One visa does not provide the same protections as a J-One visa.

These protections include making sure all adults in host families have been checked for criminal records. Another protection is making sure exchange students have placements waiting for them in American schools.

The Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students is a nonprofit organization in California. It works to strengthen protections for exchange students in the United States and around the world.

Sally Smith is a family law attorney who works with the committee. She says exchange students should know how to report any cases of sexual abuse or other crimes. In the United States, the number to call for police or other emergency services is nine-one-one.

Sally Smith advises parents of teens who are considering an exchange program to discuss the possible dangers with the sponsoring group. Exchange students should never leave home without knowing who their host family will be, and that the family has been investigated.

Sally Smith notes that the rules in the United States do not say how a criminal background check must be carried out. The Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students wants the government to require criminal checks based on fingerprint records.

A State Department representative tells us that officials are now studying the possibility of strengthening the requirements for background checks. But she says the details are not known at this time.

The State Department has programs to bring exchange students to the United States from different areas of the world. One program, for example, is for German teenagers. Another is for students from countries of the former Soviet Union. Other programs offer exchanges for students in Serbia and Montenegro and countries with large Muslim populations.

Gauri Noolkar from India is in Virginia as part of the State Department's Youth Exchange and Study, or YES, program. We'll let her explain it:

GAURI NOOLKAR: "The students in the YES program, their expenses are basically covered by the State Department of this country, and it is for fostering friendship between America and Middle East and Asian counties. It is based on merit and talent, and they cover all our expenses and in return we are expected to teach people over here about our cultures and then go back and teach our people about American culture."

Seventeen-year-old Gauri is also attending a public high school in Fairfax County. And like Nadia from Italy, Gauri says she, too, was surprised by the ethnic diversity she has seen in the United States.

GAURI NOOLKAR: "Another surprising thing was even though it is a very individualistic society, there is a notion that Americans just live for themselves. But I realize that over here they are very helpful and nobody turns you down. If you ask for help, you do get it."

To become an exchange student at an American high school, students must have completed no more than eleven years of school, and done well. They must be between the ages of fifteen and eighteen and a half. They must also speak English well. And they must agree to accept the rules of the exchange program and their host families.

Host families are supposed to receive training in hosting an exchange student. Host families do not get paid, but they get a fifty dollar tax deduction for each month the student lives in their home.

Nadia Gerstgrasser has this advice for students considering a foreign exchange:

NADIA GERSTGRASSER: "You should not leave your country thinking 'Oh, wow, cool, a year of holiday, I'm not going to do anything, it's going to be fun, everything is just going to be exciting,' because it's also hard. But at the same time it's so cool. You're gonna start liking it. It's worth it. You should try."

Going to a foreign country to live with complete strangers is not for everyone. But many who have done it say the experience taught them a lot about the world and about themselves.

A new study says Asia must do more to prevent AIDS, or the number of people infected with H.I.V. could double by two thousand twenty.

Today about five million people in Asia are living with the virus that causes AIDS.

An estimated three hundred thousand people died of H.I.V.-related diseases in Asia last year. At current rates, that number could rise to almost five hundred thousand.

The United Nations program on H.I.V./AIDS requested the study, led by Indian economist Chakravarthi Rangarajan.

The report says three main groups are driving the spread of AIDS in Asia. One group is sex workers and the men who use them. Another is injection drug users who share needles. And the third group are men who have unprotected sex with other men.

Researchers estimate that as many as ten million women in Asia sell sex. At least seventy-five million men buy on a regular basis. In many Asian countries, these men, and their female partners, represent the largest group of people living with H.I.V.

The study found that AIDS is the most likely cause of death and lost work days for people in Asia between the ages of fifteen and forty-four.

The report says prevention programs can be effective if governments invest at least thirty cents a year per person.

For more than twenty years, scientists have been trying to develop a vaccine to prevent H.I.V. infection. The latest failures came last September. Researchers halted two studies of an experimental AIDS vaccine from the drug company Merck.

Early results showed that the vaccine not only failed to protect, it appeared to put some people at higher risk of infection.

Last Tuesday, several hundred researchers and activists met in Bethesda, Maryland, for a Summit on H.I.V. Vaccine Research and Development. They debated what to do now.

Many of the scientists agreed that experimental vaccines should continue to be tested on humans. But many said there should be less dependence on human trials.

Anthony Fauci is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which called the meeting. He and others said there should be more tests on animals, to add to discoveries from human studies.

There also were calls for a return to more basic science, first identifying and answering major scientific questions. But Doctor Fauci said the search for an AIDS vaccine will not stop.

A North American Major League baseball record was established in nineteen thirty-nine. The man who set it played in two thousand one hundred thirty games without missing one. In nineteen ninety-five, the record was broken by Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles. But there is not much chance that the man who set the first record will be forgotten.

Lou Gehrig was born on June nineteenth, nineteen-oh-three. He was a huge baby. He weighed six-and-one-third kilograms. His parents, Heinrich and Christina Gehrig, had come to America from Germany. They worked hard. But they always had trouble earning enough money.

Lou loved to play baseball games on the streets of New York City, where he grew up. Yet he did not try to play on any sports teams when he entered high school. He thought of himself as a ball player only for informal games with friends.

Then one of Lou's high school teachers heard that he could hit the ball very hard. The teacher ordered Lou to come to one of the school games.

Years later, Lou said: "When I saw so many people and heard all the noise at the game, I was so scared I went home." The teacher threatened to fail Lou in school if he did not attend the next game.

So Lou Gehrig went to that game. He became a valued member of the high school team. He also played other sports. The boy who feared noise and people was on his way to becoming a star baseball player.

A representative of a major league team, the New York Giants, came to watch him. He got Lou a chance to play for the manager of the Giants' team, John McGraw. McGraw thought Gehrig needed more experience before becoming a major league player. It was suggested that Lou get that experience on a minor league team in the city of Hartford, Connecticut.

Lou played in Hartford that summer after completing high school. He earned money to help his parents. His father was often sick and without a job.

The money Lou earned also helped him attend Columbia University in New York City. The university had offered him financial help if he would play baseball on the Columbia team.

But, the fact that Gehrig had accepted money for playing professional baseball got him into trouble. Officials of teams in Columbia's baseball league learned that Lou had played for the professional team in Hartford. The other teams got him banned from playing for Columbia during his first year at the college.

Gehrig was permitted to play during his second year, though. He often hit the ball so far that people walking in the streets near the baseball field were in danger of being hit.

Lou's mother earned money as a cook and house cleaner. But she became very sick. The family could not make their monthly payments for their home.

The New York Yankees major league baseball organization came to the rescue. The Yankees offered Lou three thousand five hundred dollars to finish the nineteen twenty-three baseball season.

That was a great deal of money in those days. Gehrig happily accepted the offer. His parents were sad that he was leaving Columbia. Yet his decision ended their financial problems.

The Yankees recognized that Gehrig was a good hitter. They wanted him to add to the team's hitting power provided by its star player, Babe Ruth. But Gehrig had trouble throwing and catching the ball. So they sent him back to the minor league team in Hartford. While playing there he improved his fielding. He also had sixty-nine hits in fifty-nine games.

The next spring Gehrig went to spring training camp with the Yankees. Again he was sent to Hartford to get more experience. And again, the Yankees called him back in September. He hit six hits in twelve times at the bat before that baseball season ended.

Lou Gehrig began to play first base for the Yankees regularly in early June of nineteen twenty-five. He played well that day and for the two weeks that followed.

Then Gehrig was hit in the head by a throw to second base. He should have left the game. But he refused to. He thought that if he left, he never again would have a chance to play regularly.

Gehrig continued to improve as a player. By Nineteen twenty-seven, pitchers for opposing teams were having bad dreams about Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Ruth hit sixty home runs that year. Gehrig hit forty-seven and won the American League's Most Valuable Player Award. Nobody was surprised when the Yankees won the World Series.

Gehrig, however, almost did not play. His mother had to have an operation. He felt he should be with her. Missus Gehrig and the Yankees' manager urged him to play in the World Series. His mother recovered.

More major threats to Gehrig's record of continuous games played took place in nineteen twenty-nine. His back, legs and hands were injured. He was hit on the head by a throw one day as he tried to reach home plate. Another Yankee player said: "Every time he played, it hurt him."

Gehrig felt good in nineteen thirty. He said his secret was getting ten hours of sleep each night and drinking a large amount of water.

Lou Gehrig now was becoming one of the greatest players in baseball history. He hit three home runs in the World Series of nineteen thirty-two. His batting average was five-twenty-nine. The manager of an opposing team, the Chicago Cubs, said of Gehrig: "I did not think a player could be that good."

In nineteen thirty-three, Gehrig married Eleanor Twitchell. Eleanor helped him take his place as one of baseball's most famous players. The younger Lou Gehrig had stayed away from strangers when he could. The married Lou Gehrig was much more friendly.

As time went on, Gehrig played in game after game. He appeared not to have thought about his record number of continuous games played until a newspaper reporter talked to him about it.

An accident during a special game played in Virginia almost broke the record. Gehrig was taken to a hospital after being hit in the head with a pitch. He played the next day, though. He just wore a bigger hat so people could not see his injury.

Gehrig completed his two-thousandth game on May thirty-first, Nineteen thirty-eight. That was almost two times as many continuous games as anyone ever had played before.

Gehrig finished that season with a batting average of almost three hundred. He scored one hundred fifteen runs. He batted in almost as many runs.

But the Lou Gehrig of that year was not the Lou Gehrig of earlier years. He walked and ran like an old man. He had trouble with easy catches and throws. Yet his manager commented: "Everybody is asking what is wrong with Gehrig. I wish I had more players on this club doing as poorly as he is doing."

Gehrig thought his problems were temporary. Then he fell several times the next winter while ice skating with Eleanor. He had trouble holding onto things. And he failed to hit in three games as the next season opened. In May, nineteen thirty-nine, he finally told his manager he could not play.

Lou Gehrig had played in two thousand one hundred thirty games without missing any that his team played.

Gehrig observed his thirty-sixth birthday on June nineteenth. That same day, doctors told him he had a deadly disease that attacks the muscles in the body. The disease is called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Today, it is known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Gehrig did not act like a dying man, though. He refused to act frightened or sad.

On July fourth, nineteen thirty-nine, more than sixty thousand people went to Yankee Stadium to honor one of America's greatest baseball players. Gehrig told the crowd he still felt he was lucky. His words echoed throughout the stadium.

LOU GEHRIG:

"I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you."

Gehrig fought his sickness. But he became weaker and weaker. He died on June second, nineteen forty-one. He was thirty-seven years old.

America mourned the loss of a great baseball hero. Those who knew him best - family, friends, baseball players -- mourned the loss of a gentle man.

We begin our explanation in eighteen fourteen, during the second war between America and Britain. A young American lawyer and poet, Francis Scott Key, was being held on a British ship in the Chesapeake Bay. He had gone aboard the ship to negotiate the release of a doctor from Maryland who had been arrested by British forces.

But during the negotiations, Francis Scott Key had learned of some British military plans. So the British refused to free him until after they carried out their plan to attack Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland.

The attack began the morning of September thirteenth. Francis Scott Key watched the shells and rockets fall on Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor.

The American doctor detained on the ship also watched the fighting. He kept asking Francis Scott Key if the Stars and Stripes, the American flag, still flew over the fort. The doctor had difficulty seeing it for himself. The lawyer and poet could see the flag, until darkness fell. The attack went on through the night.

At sunrise the next morning, Francis Scott Key saw the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry. That sight, and the battle that came before it, led him to take an old letter from his pocket. On it he wrote a poem about what he had seen. He called it "The Defence of Fort McHenry."

After his release on September sixteenth, Francis Scott Key worked on the poem some more. His final version was published a short time later. Key had called for it to be sung to the tune of the "Anacreontic Song." The Anacreontic Society was a group of amateur musicians in London.

Later a music store published the words and music under the name “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Congress passed a bill declaring it the national anthem in nineteen thirty-one. President Herbert Hoover signed the bill into law.

The Library of Congress says there is strong evidence that the members of the Anacreontic Society liked to drink. But it says there is little basis to the belief that the national anthem was an old English drinking song.

Junot Diaz is an American writer who was born in the Dominican Republic. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was six years old. Several critics listed his latest book, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” as one of the best books of last year. This month it won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. The book tells the story of Oscar de Leon, his family, and their Dominican roots. But the book is also about language, popular culture and the role of history in a family’s life. Faith Lapidus has more.

The hero of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is a fat, smart and lonely young man who spends his time writing science fiction stories. Oscar’s sister Lola and her boyfriend tell the story of Oscar and his family. You learn about Abelard Cabral, Oscar’s grandfather whose life is destroyed because he opposed the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. You learn about Oscar’s mother Belicia who moves to the United States after a painful love affair. And you learn about the life of Oscar and Lola as they grow up in the Hispanic neighborhoods near New York City.

One critic said this book establishes Junot Diaz as one of the most important voices in current literature. Diaz's writing is funny, intense and imaginative. It is also informative because he describes historic events in the Dominican Republic. He includes many Spanish words in the book to express the cultural ties of his characters. Here is a recording of Junot Diaz talking about the effect of using a language that some readers will not understand. He spoke at the Key West Literary Seminar in Florida in January.

JUNOT DIAZ: “There’s always a part of every message that gets lost and misinterpreted and not heard. The dream of perfect communication is a wonderful dream. It doesn’t exist. And unintelligibility is not a misfire of language, it’s a very vital and important component of it. And I always thought that in real life we have no problems with unintelligibility. You know, we’re more than happy not to hear ten, to fifteen or twenty percent of conversations and we sort of accept it. But in a book it becomes a different matter, right?”

Junot Diaz teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. His first book, “Drown,” was published in nineteen ninety-six. In this collection of stories, Diaz tells about the experiences of Dominican Americans like himself. He has said that even though he has lived in the United States most of his life, he still feels like an outsider. He says his children might feel American. But he says he is an immigrant and will stay an immigrant forever.

On a foggy October night in seventeen-oh-seven, four English navy ships hit rocks in the Atlantic Ocean and sank. Two thousand men drowned. The ships had been sailing in the thick fog for twelve days. There was no sure way to know where they were. The commander of the ships had been worried that they could hit rocks if they were not careful. He asked his navigators for their opinion on their location in the ocean.

The navigators did not really know. They told the commander they thought they were west of a small island near the coast of northwestern France.

They were wrong. Instead, they sailed onto rocks near a small group of islands southwest of England's Atlantic coast. The navigators' lack of knowledge led to the loss of four ships and two thousand lives.

When people began sailing out of sight of land, sailors did not know how to tell where they were on the open sea. Land travelers can look at a mountain, or a river, or an object that shows them where they are in relation to where they came from. On the ocean, however, there is no sign to tell a sailor where he is.

The most important device for knowing directions on the ocean is a compass. A compass is a device containing a metal object that points toward the magnetic north pole. This shows navigators the direction of north, and therefore also south, east, and west. But sailors need more information to sail safely on the open sea.

Most maps of the world show lines that are not on the Earth's surface. One line is the equator. It is an imaginary line around the widest part of the Earth. There are similar lines both north and south of the equator. These circles become smaller and smaller toward the north pole and the south pole.

These lines, or circles, are parallel - meaning that they are equally distant from each other at any point around the world. These lines show what is called latitude.

A navigator can know the latitude of his ship by observing the location of stars, where the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, and what time of year it is. With this information he knows where his ship is in relation to the north or south pole and the equator.

Still, there is one more important piece of information necessary for safely sailing the oceans. For many centuries, scientists, astronomers and inventors searched for a way to tell longitude. The lines of longitude go the other way from latitude lines. They stretch from the North Pole to the South Pole, and back again in great circles of the same size. All of the lines of longitude meet at the top and bottom of the world.

In her book, “Longitude,” writer Dava Sobel tells the story about longitude and how the problem of knowing it was solved.

For centuries, the great scientists of the world struggled to develop a way to learn longitude. To learn longitude at any place requires knowledge about time. A navigator needs to know what time it is on his ship and also the time at another place of known longitude - at the very same moment.

The Earth takes twenty-four hours to complete one full turn or revolution of three-hundred-sixty degrees. One hour marks one twenty-fourth of a turn, or fifteen degrees. So each hour's time difference between the ship and the starting point marks a ship's progress of fifteen degrees of longitude to the east or west. Those fifteen degrees of longitude mark a distance traveled.

At the equator, where the Earth is widest, fifteen degrees stretches about one thousand six hundred kilometers. North or south of that line, however, the distance value of each degree decreases. One degree of longitude equals four minutes of time all around the world. But in measuring distance, one degree shrinks from about one hundred nine kilometers at the equator to nothing at the north and south poles.

For many centuries, navigators hoped they could find longitude by observing the movement of stars at night. During the day, the sun provided information about the time on a ship, and its direction. However, it did not provide necessary information about the time somewhere else. In the sixteenth century, one astronomer suggested that navigators could observe the moon as it passed in front of different known stars to tell longitude. But, there was not enough information about the stars to use this method effectively. Astronomers could not tell exactly where the moon would be from one night or day to the next.

Yet it seemed to those seeking to solve the longitude problem that the only solution was in the moon and stars.

During the seventeenth century, English astronomers began a major effort to map the stars and their relationship to the moon as it passed across the sky. Royal astronomer John Flamsteed worked at this task for forty years. The next royal astronomer, Edmund Halley, spent another forty years gathering information about the moon's orbit.

After many years of gathering the necessary information, it became possible to learn longitude by observing the stars and the moon. In seventeen sixty-six, Royal Astronomer Nevil Maskelyne published the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris.

It contained all the necessary information about the moon and stars that sailors would need to help them learn their longitude.

This new method was not simple. A navigator had to use complex observing instruments to note the position of the moon and stars. Then he had to seek the correct information in the Nautical Almanac about the moon and stars at that time of night or day. The final step in the process was to take the mathematical information from the book, link it to the current information and solve the resulting problem. This took an average of four hours to do.

While scientists were studying the stars and moon to solve the longitude problem, a man named John Harrison was working on another project. He was trying to build a clock that would help sailors learn longitude. His task also was difficult and complex. Mister Harrison had to develop a clock that was not affected by the movement of a ship on the ocean or changes in temperature or atmospheric pressure.

He began developing his clock in seventeen thirty. It took five years to complete. The complex device weighed thirty-four kilograms. Several years later, Mister Harrison built a second clock. It was smaller, but weighed more than the first. Mister Harrison was not satisfied and began working on yet another device.

Twenty years later, he completed a device that was smaller than the first two, and weighed less. But still Mister Harrison was not satisfied.

Two years later, in seventeen fifty-seven, he produced a small clock that he could hold in his hand. The clock could tell the correct time in two places, meeting the requirements for learning longitude on the sea.

For many years after Mister Harrison's work was completed, the idea of using a clock to learn longitude was rejected. However, that opinion changed when manufacturers learned how to make better and less costly versions of Mister Harrison's clocks. The clocks became known as chronometers.

By eighteen fifteen, five thousand chronometers were in use on ships sailing the world's oceans. The complex documents and mathematical work were no longer necessary. Almost any sailor could tell what his longitude was by simply looking at a clock. The world had changed.

John Harrison's clocks can be seen today at the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. The first three are still operating, showing the correct time. To look at them is to see the simple solution to a problem that worried people for many centuries. Today, the solution to the problem is so common that it is difficult to understand that there was a problem at all.