A History of Thanksgiving

Hi! as you can guess from my title, since it's the third Thursday of November, I'm going to tell you a history of Thanksgiving. I just finished Thanksgiving dinner, and I enjoyed it. Anyway, here it is, and please excuse any typos.
A History of Thanksgiving
By Evan
In 1620, England was still a total monarchy and America hadn't been founded yet. In fact, only a few people had visited it so far! And England had no first amendment that America would have in 1791. That meant, among other things, there was no such thing as religious freedom in England. King George ruled all, and was in complete control.
So, a large amount of people wanted to move to America to worship whoever they chose. But wait! There was a problem! The journey to America would be a long and dangerous one, and what if the natives were hostile to them? They were OK to, say, Christopher Columbus from Spain, who had “discovered” America 128 years ago, but that didn't necessarily mean they would be to the Pilgrims. So, only the fit men and women went, and the kids and older people stayed. If America was safe, the people who had made the journey would come back and everyone else would go.
But there was another problem. They needed money for a ship, and one large enough for a 3,000 mile trip cost a lot. So they borrowed a ship! They would pay back the company they borrowed it from with any riches they found in America, keeping only enough for themselves to live.
And the journey was a hard one. It was crowded and cramped, and, believe it or not, some people kept skunks as pets! And they preferred to eat in the dark because their food was crawling with bugs.
Finally, though, they arrived in Plymouth Harbor! The natives were pretty friendly, and a few even spoke English! There were a few drawbacks, as well. They (the Pilgrims) never had time to sit down for dinner, and that's assuming they even HAD enough food for dinner! They could barely catch any animals, so they had to trade items such as knives to the Native Americans for venison.
Luckily, named Squanto taught them how to plant corn Indian-style. They learned to fertilize the seeds with haddock. However, there was a drawback to that, too. The rotting haddock attracted wolves, and they couldn't dig up the fish, because that would ruin they corn, so kids had to guard them (the corn) by throwing rocks at any wolves that came near.
Fortunately, after the first few years, their life got better, and they celebrated by having a huge feast. They invited just about everyone in the colony and the chief of the nearby natives that had helped them. What they didn't know was that 90 other Indians were coming along with him! But the Indians realized the problem, and captured nine deer. Problem solved! And that dinner was the first Thanksgiving.
In the early 1900's, though, Thanksgiving was kind of dying out. It wasn't a national holiday yet, and pretty much only the people in the East Coast celebrated it. And Sarah O'Hale did not like that. She wrote letters to James Buchanan, the current President, but he had more important matters to worry about. But, when Abraham Lincoln succeeded him, Sarah wrote 13 letters, and finally, he agreed. Thanksgiving was made an official national holiday!
And that's the history of Thanksgiving! Bye!
P.S. Stay tuned for my 25th post in 3 more posts!

The Best of Foxtrot Post No. 2

Hi! As you can recall from my earlier post, a comicbook called The Best of FoxTrot was going to come out. Well, it did, and I, yes, I have my own copy! And, I'm giving it a five-star review! in five categories, I'll describe the new Foxtrot book! Here it is:
Category No. 1: Strip selection Fantastic! Bill Amend did an incredible job of picking the best ones. It has everything from the longest storyline ever, (Camp Bohrmore)to the most touching, (When Peter gets sick on Thanksgiving) to, 'course, the first one, to my personal favorite! (When Paige can't figure out what Jason and Marcus see in comicbooks.) My only complaint in that category is that he left out the second appearance of Phoebe!
Category No. 2: Organization This category was only so-so. While the years were in the right order, and the strip story arcs were too, the months and dates were kind of jumbled. But, on the other hand, as I said, you wouldn't find a 2002 strip before 1999.
Category No. 3: Special features I notice that most of the Foxtrot anthologies have an "extra" in it, like the smaller Garfield collections. Well, this book didn't let me down. Aside from the obvious selection of strips, there was also an introduction, AND there was a slipcase cover to house the two volumes. So, in that respect, it was pretty good.
Category No. 4: Annotations as I said in my previous post, mentioned above, there's annotations by Bill Amend in the book,kind of like The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary book. Well, while they weren't as plentiful as the ones in Seven years of Highly Defective People by Scott Adams, they are pretty informative and they are by Bill himself.
Category No. 5: Overall To conclude this post, I'm going to write an overview.
Strip selections: 4 3/4 out of five stars.
Organization: 2 1/2 out of 5 stars
Extras: 4 out of five stars
Annotations: 4 out of five stars
I also award the book another 2 points for sheer funniness of the strips. The oldest one in there ran more than two decades ago!
Final score: 17.25 out of 20 stars
So, not bad at all! And to bring the number of words in this post to an even 400, aloha!

Original Idea or Not?

If you're more than five years old, you've probably seen the movie Back to the Future. So, you probably remember how at the end, Doc said "Road? Where we're going, we don't need roads!" And then the DeLorean folded up its tires and flew off.
Well, it's possible that the makers of the movie got inspiration for that idea from the comicbooks S.H.E.I.L.D. flying car, as seen here

What do you think?
P.S. you'll notice I got the idea for this post at the August 12th, 2009 post of my favorite blog, Comic Coverage.

All about grasslands

Hi! Today, I'm going to tell you about grasslands. (Apologies for the last post that somehow disappeared.)

Are you clueless about grasslands? Are you unable to tell the difference between a baobab tree and grass? Then this is the essay for you. You won’t regret reading this!
Grasslands can be somewhat rainy or hot and dry, depending on where it is. They’re usually pretty flat, with only an occasional small hill or dip in the ground. There aren’t many abiotic factors, just soil and the sun.
There are few plants in grasslands, besides grass, but a particularly interesting one is the Adansonia tree, or baobab tree.
The tree has very thick bark, which gives it unusual fire-resistant. Another weird feature is that it has leaves only during the rainy season. It is also able to store a large amount of H²O in its trunk. And, in The Lion King, Rafiki the baboon lived in a baobab tree.
The tree is huge, growing up to 124 feet tall, and its trunk it 16-98 feet in diameter. It also has a wide root system.
There are more animals than plants, and one of my favorites is the highly poisonous, (it can kill a man in three hours at the most) very loooong, (it can grow up to 14 feet long) terrifying snake, the black mamba.
It eats bushbabies, bats, and small chickens, and mongooses and cape file snakes eat it. It lives about 11 years in the wild, and their habitats, besides grasslands, are humid swamps, woodlands, rocky slopes, and even dense forests! Here’s an example of a black mamba food chain:
Insect>Bat>Black mamba>Mongoose>Bird
Well, I hope you know more about grasslands!