The first wave of hustling writers turned their hard-boiled experiences into unflinching street fiction.

The oldest and most respected of the street lit scribes, Himes began publishing his pulp fiction in newspapers and magazines during an eight year bid for armed robbery. After his release in 1936, Himes, who was originally from Jefferson City, MO., immigrated to France, where he became a contemporary of James Baldwin and Richard Wright, and where his tales of the black underbelly were hailed as great literature.

Arguably the greatest influence on rap's current pimp-centric culture, Chi-town native Iceberg Slim spent more than 20 years in the world's oldest profession before the grind wore him down. In 1969, Slim penned his first novel, which depicted the gritty existence of Chicago's underclass and introduced the hustler's vernacular to the masses. It earned him street lit immortality.

Detroit-born Goines enlisted in the Air Force at age 15 and returned from the Korean War two years later with an honorable discharge and a heroin habit. He supported his addiction by stealing, pimping, and gambling. After more than a decade in and out of jail, Goines, influenced by Iceberg Slim, began writing. Working at a feverish, drug-fueled pace, Goines churned out 16 novels in under five years before he was murdered in 1974.

-The Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World Are:

Language	Approx. number of speakers
1. Chinese (Mandarin)	1,075,000,000
2. English	514,000,000
3. Hindustani	496,000,000
4. Spanish	425,000,000
5. Russian	275,000,000
6. Arabic	256,000,000
7. Bengali	215,000,000
8. Portuguese	194,000,000
9. Malay-Indonesian	176,000,000
10. French	129,000,000

Source: Ethnologue, 13th Edition, and other sources

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-Many children have written books that have been published. One of the first we know about is Francis Hawkins. In 1641, when he was 8 years old, he wrote a book of manners for children called Youth Behavior. Listed below are other children who have had their writing published. You may be able to find their books in a library or bookstore.

-Dorothy Straight of Washington, D.C., was only 4 years old when she wrote How the World Began. Her book was published in 1964, two years later.

-When he was 9, David Klein wrote “Irwin the Sock” for a school assignment. The story of Irwin and Irma, matching argyle socks, was submitted to the Raintree Publish-a-Book Contest and won. It was published in 1988.

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-Measuring Motion

Speed is the measure of motion. You can find it by dividing the distance covered by the time it takes to travel that distance.

Speed of Light

If a star is 10 light-years away, it is about 60 trillion miles distant.

Light-Year

Star Distance

More Earthly Speeds

White-tailed deer: 32 mph
Human being: 27.89 mph
Garden snail: 0.03 mph
Fastest automobile: 205 mph
Fastest train: 252 mph
Fastest helicopter: 249.10 mph
Fastest jet: 2,193.167 mph

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Horsepower: A workhorse can lift 550 pounds 1 foot in the air in 1 second; that is 1 horsepower. Engines are measured in horsepower. A 10-horsepower engine can do the work of ten horses.

Candlepower: The amount of light given off by a candle of a specific size, shape, type of tallow, and type of wick. The brightness of an electric light is measured in candlepower.

Megaton: A megaton is the blasting power of a hydrogen bomb. One megaton has the power of 1 million tons of TNT.

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African American Scientists
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806)	Born into a family of free blacks in Maryland, Banneker learned the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic from his grandmother and a Quaker schoolmaster. Later he taught himself advanced mathematics and astronomy. He is best known for publishing an almanac based on his astronomical calculations.
Rebecca Cole (1846-1922)	Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cole was the second black woman to graduate from medical school (1867). She joined Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first white woman physician, in New York and taught hygiene and childcare to families in poor neighborhoods.
Edward Alexander Bouchet (1852-1918)	Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Bouchet was the first African American to graduate (1874) from Yale College. In 1876, upon receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Yale, he became the first African American to earn a doctorate. Bouchet spent his career teaching college chemistry and physics.
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931)	Williams was born in Pennsylvania and attended medical school in Chicago, where he received his M.D. in 1883. He founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago in 1891, and he performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893.
George Washington Carver (1865?-1943)	Born into slavery in Missouri, Carver later earned degrees from Iowa Agricultural College. The director of agricultural research at the Tuskegee Institute from 1896 until his death, Carver developed hundreds of applications for farm products important to the economy of the South, including the peanut, sweet potato, soybean, and pecan.
Charles Henry Turner (1867-1923)	A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Turner received a B.S. (1891) and M.S. (1892) from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. (1907) from the University of Chicago. A noted authority on the behavior of insects, he was the first researcher to prove that insects can hear.
Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941)	Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Just attended Dartmouth College and the University of Chicago, where he earned a Ph.D. in zoology in 1916. Just's work on cell biology took him to marine laboratories in the U.S. and Europe and led him to publish more than 50 papers.
Archibald Alexander (1888-1958)	Iowa-born Alexander attended Iowa State University and earned a civil engineering degree in 1912. While working for an engineering firm, he designed the Tidal Basin Bridge in Washington, D.C. Later he formed his own company, designing Whitehurst Freeway in Washington, D.C. and an airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama, among other projects.
Roger Arliner Young (1889-1964)	Ms. Young was born in Virginia and attended Howard University, University of Chicago, and University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a Ph.D. in zoology in 1940. Working with her mentor, Ernest E. Just, she published a number of important studies.
Dr. Charles Richard Drew (1904-1950)	Born in Washington, D.C., Drew earned advanced degrees in medicine and surgery from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, in 1933 and from Columbia University in 1940. He is particularly noted for his research in blood plasma and for setting up the first blood bank.

African American Inventors
Thomas L. Jennings (1791-1859)	A tailor in New York City, Jennings is credited with being the first African American to hold a U.S. patent. The patent, which was issued in 1821, was for a dry-cleaning process.
Norbert Rillieux (1806-1894)	Born the son of a French planter and a slave in New Orleans, Rillieux was educated in France. Returning to the U.S., he developed an evaporator for refining sugar, which he patented in 1846. Rillieux's evaporation technique is still used in the sugar industry and in the manufacture of soap and other products.
Benjamin Bradley (1830?-?)	A slave, Bradley was employed at a printing office and later at the Annapolis Naval Academy, where he helped set up scientific experiments. In the 1840s he developed a steam engine for a war ship. Unable to patent his work, he sold it and with the proceeds purchased his freedom.
Elijah McCoy (1844-1929)	The son of escaped slaves from Kentucky, McCoy was born in Canada and educated in Scotland. Settling in Detroit, Michigan, he invented a lubricator for steam engines (patented 1872) and established his own manufacturing company. During his lifetime he acquired 57 patents.
Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1929)	Born in Chelsea, Mass., Latimer learned mechanical drawing while working for a Boston patent attorney. He later invented an electric lamp and a carbon filament for light bulbs (patented 1881, 1882). Latimer was the only African-American member of Thomas Edison's engineering laboratory.
Granville T. Woods (1856-1910)	Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio, and later settled in Cincinnati. Largely self-educated, he was awarded more than 60 patents. One of his most important inventions was a telegraph that allowed moving trains to communicate with other trains and train stations, thus improving railway efficiency and safety.
Madame C.J. Walker (1867-1919)	Widowed at 20, Louisiana-born Sarah Breedlove Walker supported herself and her daughter as a washerwoman. In the early 1900s she developed a hair care system and other beauty products. Her business, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, amassed a fortune, and she became a generous patron of many black charities.
Garrett Augustus Morgan (1877-1963)	Born in Kentucky, Morgan invented a gas mask (patented 1914) that was used to protect soldiers from chlorine fumes during World War I. Morgan also received a patent (1923) for a traffic signal that featured automated STOP and GO signs. Morgan's invention was later replaced by traffic lights.
Frederick McKinley Jones (1892-1961)	Jones was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. An experienced mechanic, he invented a self-starting gas engine and a series of devices for movie projectors. More importantly, he invented the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks (1935). Jones was awarded more than 40 patents in the field of refrigeration.
David Crosthwait, Jr. (1898-1976)	Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Crosthwait earned a B.S. (1913) and M.S. (1920) from Purdue University. An expert on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, he designed the heating system for Radio City Music Hall in New York. During his lifetime he received some 40 U.S. patents relating to HVAC systems.

WASHINGTON, After years in the literary underground, "street lit" -- a sort of hip hop black literature that is often self published and sold on U.S. street corners -- may finally hit the big time. Street lit stories are rough in every sense -- the language, the violence, the explicit descriptions of sex and the determination of the characters to escape desolate inner city neighborhoods. Religion, obsession with brand names and explicit struggles between right and wrong play a large role in the books, making them a combination of morality tales, Mario Puzo's most violent Mafia novels and chick-lit shopping fiction. "It wasn't really a phenomena at first," said Simba Sana, who co-owns the small Karibu book chain in suburban Washington, D.C. "They basically.......

- People who like to curl up with a good novel are much more likely than their bibliophobic friends to participate in other activities, including visiting musuems, volunteering and playing sports, according to a recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts(NEA). -Beth Kanter (Shape Magazine)