He missed the wide blue sky and tall palm trees of his village. He missed running and playing with his friends. He wished he could be back home with them, fishing in the river. He thought sadly about his family. So much time had passed since he had seen them.
Along with his 32 cellmates, Kali had been kidnapped in Africa and snatched away from his family by slave traders. The acknowledged leader of the Africans was Sengbe Pieh (also referred to as Joseph Cinqué). Pieh was a strong, powerfully built man in his mid-twenties.
He also was kind, gentle, and concerned for his fellow captives. Almost all the men were married. They all shared the pain and heartache of being separated from loved ones. Strangers in a strange land, they had been fighting for their freedom for nearly two years.
Two Years Earlier
In the spring of 1839, two Spanish slave traders purchased a group of Africans at an illegal slave market in Havana, Cuba. The slave traders planned to bring the people to a sugar cane plantation. They loaded the Africans onto a ship, the Amistad, for the trip.
Several days into the journey, the Africans revolted. Led by Pieh, they freed themselves from the shackles that constrained them. They killed the ship's captain and the cook. They then order that the Amistad sail back to Africa. But the sailor steering the ship secretly turned the ship north instead of east across the Atlantic Ocean. After two months, the schooner was sighted off the coast of New York. It was seized by a U.S. merchant marine ship. The Amistad and all aboard were taken into U.S. custody. The Africans were charged with murder and mutiny and jailed in Connecticut. The murder charges eventually were dropped, but the fate of the Africans remained in question.
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Eye in the Sky
An interview with Joe Piotrowski
Airborne Animals
Humans have taken to the skies in balloons, gliders, and airplanes-but we're not alone among the clouds. Animals of all sorts have evolved to harness wind power.
TAKING OFF
The Wright brothers expected airplanes to “take off,” but even they might be amazed at the way the airline industry has become big business. In the past, it was expensive to send something by plane.
GROWTH OF AN INDUSTRY
After their historic flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright returned to Dayton, Ohio. They spent the next few years making adjustments and building additional versions of their powered aircraft in their bicycle shop.
WHY KITTY HAWK?
The Wright brothers searched carefully for the best place to test their gliders and flying machines. Their main concern was for good, steady winds. But they also hoped to find a remote location to allow them to perform tests away from the public eye.
Two Brothers From Ohio
Most people do not realize that the Wright brothers—Wilbur, born in 1867, and Orville, born in 1871—performed various scientific experiments before inventing their aircraft. For as long as anyone in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio, could remember, the Wright boys had worked on mechanical projects.
A Helping Hand
May 6, 1896. A group of people who had gathered beside the Potomac River, just south of the U.S. capital, grew quiet. Then, it erupted in cheers as a small, unmanned aircraft took to the skies and flew for more than half a mile. The flight came seven years before the Wright brothers’ first manned, powered flight. The inventor of the aircraft was Dr. Samuel Pierpont Langley.
THE IDEA MEN
People dreamed of flying thousands of years before the Wright brothers found success near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. These dreamers, such as Leonardo da Vinci, studied birds flying and imagined how humans might do the same—if only they had wings. Other men developed a more hands-on approach to the topic. Early inventors made wings of cloth, glue, and feathers and tied these creations to their arms in an attempt to imitate nature.
Da Vinci's 4 Designs
Have you ever wondered how a bird flies? Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) did. He thought that understanding how a bird flies would provide the key to human flight. So, what did da Vinci learn from birds?
Silken Wings
Seven hundred years before the Wright brothers began experimenting with human flight, the Chinese had already mastered its secrets—with kites.
