JAMES STIRLING

   Stories,  games, jokes and 'Did you know' stuff ...

          Hey Kids!          

   YOUR  Ideas, jokes,  stories, and 'Did you know?' stuff  can be sent to me at the following email:   James.Stirling@Ymail.com

Don't be shy! have a go at writing a story and send it to me at the above email address and if it is good enough it will be published on this page!

 No money I'm afraid, but think of the millions of people around the world that could be reading your story!

 (You are allowed to have your Mum or Dad or other family member to help you if you wish!)

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 Two thousand four hundred years ago the great Chinese philosopher Confucius said, "Tell me and I forget, Show me and I remember, Let me do and I will learn"

     Games, Stories, and other interesting things....       

 Here's three neat (and safe) websites where you can find great stuff for kids for  FREE!

                        http://www.prongo.com/

  Cool games and loads of jokes

                       www.mygames.co.uk/KidsGames

  Enough games here to keep you from being bored in the school holiday!

                       www.byGosh.com

  byGosh has LOADS of  classic Children's stories for all ages such as Edgar Rice Burroughs "Tarzan of the Apes" plus "Huckleberry Finn"  "Peter Pan" and for younger children; "Three little pigs"  "The Princess and the Pea" etc.

All free for you to read and perfectly legal. You don't have to buy anything and you dont even have to  register, just click the links and read.

  Now read the best bedtime story ever...."The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear...it is wonderful!

click this link: http://the-office.com/bedtime-story/owlpussycat.htm

   Have fun!  

        Groan jokes....

      1       Why did the house go to the doctor? Because it had window panes!!!

      2       Why was the skeleton laughing? because of its funny bone!!!

      3      What kind of plane does an Elephant travel in? A Jumbo Jet of course!!!

     4      What lays on the ocean bed and shivers?  A nervous wreck!!!

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       Did you know?

Why do the British drive on the left side of the road?

     Seven hundred years ago everybody used the British system. In the Middle Ages you kept to the left for the simple reason that you never knew who you'd meet on the road in those days. You wanted to make sure that a stranger passed on the right so you could go for your sword in case he proved unfriendly.  This custom was given official sanction in 1300 AD, when Pope Boniface VIII invented the modern science of traffic control by declaring that pilgrims headed to Rome should keep left.

    The papal system prevailed until the late 1700s, when teamsters in the United States and France began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses.   These wagons had no driver's seat. Instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team.  Since you were sitting on the left, naturally you wanted everybody to pass on the left so you could look down and make sure you kept clear of the other guy's wheels. Ergo, you kept to the right side of the road. The first known keep-right law in the U.S. was enacted in Pennsylvania in 1792, and in the ensuing years many states and Canadian provinces followed suit.

     In France the keep-right custom was established in much the same way. An added impetus was that, this being the era of the French Revolution and all, people figured, hey, no pope gonna tell ME what to do. (See above.) Later Napoleon enforced the keep-right rule in all countries occupied by his armies. The custom endured even after the empire was destroyed.

     In Britain though, they didn't use monster wagons that required the driver to ride a horse. Instead the guy sat on a seat mounted on the wagon.  What's more, he usually sat on the right side of the seat so the whip wouldn't hang up on the load behind him when he flogged the horses. (Then as now, most people did their flogging right-handed.)  So the British continued to drive on the left.  Keeping left first entered English law in 1756, with the enactment of an ordinance governing traffic on the London Bridge, and ultimately became the rule throughout the British Empire.

    The trend among nations over the years has been toward driving on the right, but Britain has done its best to stave off global homogenization.  Its former colony India remains a hotbed of leftist sentiment, as does Indonesia, which was occupied by the British in the early 19th century. The English minister to Japan achieved the coup of his career in 1859 when he persuaded his hosts to make keep-left the law in the future home of Toyota and Mitsubishi.

    Nonetheless, the power of the right has been growing steadily. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, it brutally suppressed the latter's keep-left rights, and much the same happened in Czechoslovakia in 1939.  The last holdouts in mainland Europe, the Swedes, finally switched to the right in 1967 because most of the countries they sold Saabs and Volvos to were righties and they got tired of having to make different versions for domestic use and export.

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The first electric light was made in 1800 by Humphrey Davy, an English scientist. He experimented with electricity and invented an electric battery. When he connected wires to his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon glowed, producing light. This is called an electric arc.

Much later, in 1860, the English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) was determined to devise a practical, long-lasting electric light. He found that a carbon paper filament worked well, but burned up quickly. In 1878, he demonstrated his new electric lamps in Newcastle, England.

In 1877, the American Charles Francis Brush manufactured some carbon arcs to light a public square in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. These arcs were used on a few streets, in a few large office buildings, and even some stores. Electric lights were only used by a few people.

The inventor Thomas Alva Edison (in the USA) experimented with thousands of different filaments to find just the right materials to glow well and be long-lasting. In 1879, Edison discovered that a carbon filament in an oxygen-free bulb glowed but did not burn up for 40 hours. Edison eventually produced a bulb that could glow for over 1500 hours.

Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928) improved the bulb by inventing a carbon filament (patented in 1881); Latimer was a member of Edison's research team, which was called "Edison's Pioneers." In 1882, Latimer developed and patented a method of manufacturing his carbon filaments.

In 1903, Willis R. Whitney invented a treatment for the filament so that it wouldn't darken the inside of the bulb as it glowed. In 1910, William David Coolidge (1873-1975) invented a tungsten filament which lasted even longer than the older filaments. The incandescent bulb revolutionized the world.

NOTE: You can find out about other inventions by clicking this link; EnchantedLearning.com

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    Who invented the Internet 'www' ?

(That's the three little letters you must put in front of any website address you

 wish to access for information)

 AND, do you know what 'www' stands for?

click on this link to find out the answer and also the Englishman that invented it.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

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Who invented the 'windows' operating system and 'Microsoft'© ?

  click on this link and read for yourself....

   http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_the_Windows_Operating_System

  and the computer mouse...

  http://www.build-gaming-computers.com/who-invented-the-computer-mouse.html 

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