Calgary HomeSchoolers Association (CHSA)

Coming March 2nd: a brand-new History Plus Community! FREE along with a valid subscription to History Plus!

Soon, you will be able to log in to your History Plus account and access our full community page! Some of the new things coming:

• Behind-the-scenes videos
• Fun polls and voting
• Monthly challenges
• Interactive activities
• And lots more family-friendly learning fun!

𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗮 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗻 - 𝟮𝟭𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝘆 𝗧𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1J1TLpRuGS/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Thanks to What Did I Just See? for this most inspiring post!

“She was 9 when she noticed kids covering their ears in bathrooms. At 13, she proved they were right—in a medical journal."

Nora Keegan from Calgary noticed something adults kept ignoring.

In fourth grade, she watched children rush out of public restrooms with their hands clamped over their ears. She felt it herself—after using hand dryers, her ears would ring for minutes.
Adults said it was fine. "They're just loud."
But Nora wondered: What if they're not just loud—what if they're dangerous?

So in fifth grade, she turned her observation into a science experiment. She convinced her parents (both doctors) to drive her to 44 public bathrooms across Alberta. She brought a professional decibel meter, a ruler, and a hypothesis: hand dryers hurt children's ears because children stand closer to the sound source.

For two years, she took measurements. 880 of them. Different heights. Different distances. Hands in the airstream, hands out. She measured at adult ear level. Then at children's ear level.

The results stunned her.

Xlerator dryers measured over 100 decibels—every single one. Several Dyson Airblade models hit 105 decibels at a 3-year-old's height. The loudest? A Dyson at 121 decibels—as loud as an ambulance siren.

Here's what makes this terrifying: Health Canada prohibits children's toys from exceeding 100 decibels because they know it damages hearing. Yet hand dryers in public spaces where children go daily—libraries, schools, restaurants—were routinely blasting sounds that could cause learning disabilities, attention difficulties, and ruptured eardrums.

Manufacturers claimed their dryers operated at 70-80 decibels. Nora's real-world testing proved otherwise—many were operating at levels four times louder than advertised.
In seventh grade, she didn't stop at exposing the problem. She started building a solution—a synthetic air filter prototype that could reduce the noise by 11 decibels.

Then she wrote a scientific paper. She submitted it to a journal. They rejected it.
She revised. She resubmitted.
In June 2019, Paediatrics & Child Health—Canada's premier peer-reviewed pediatric journal—published her study. The title? "Children who say hand dryers 'hurt my ears' are correct."

She was 13 years old.

Dyson responded by inviting her to meet with their acoustic engineers. Health officials took notice. Nora's research is now cited by the National Institutes of Health and used to educate parents worldwide.

All because a 9-year-old believed children when they said something hurt.

The next time a child tells you something's wrong, maybe—just maybe—you should listen.

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗠 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀: https://tinyurl.com/2r7b3s8u

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗠 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗲𝗲𝗻𝘀: https://tinyurl.com/32b7xdzs

𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗠 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗞𝗶𝗱𝘀: https://tinyurl.com/bddtbdry

Great perspective!

His Fingers Bled as He Wrote.
His Government Ordered Him to Stop.
So He Wrote Anyway — and Saved the World of Thousands.

July 1940.
Kaunas, Lithuania.

Chiune Sugihara woke up to a sound no diplomat expects to hear.

Not music.
Not traffic.
Not routine.

Human desperation.

Outside the gates of the Japanese consulate stood hundreds of people. Then thousands. Men clutching worn suitcases. Mothers holding children who hadn’t eaten properly in days. Elderly parents leaning on trembling sons. Jewish families who had fled Poland, escaped Nazi-occupied territories, crossed borders with nothing but hope — and now had nowhere left to go.

This was the end of the road.

Unless Chiune Sugihara helped them.

They needed transit visas through Japan — the last remaining escape route out of Europe. Without them, they would be trapped. And being trapped in 1940 meant one thing.

Death.

Sugihara was 40 years old.
A disciplined career diplomat.
A man who had spent his entire adult life following orders.

He believed in duty.
He believed in structure.
He believed in serving his country faithfully.

But standing at that window, looking at the faces pressed against the iron gates, he understood something that no rulebook prepares you for.

Following orders today would mean burying thousands tomorrow.

So he did what protocol demanded.

He sent a telegram to Tokyo.

“Request permission to issue transit visas to Jewish refugees.”

The reply came quickly.

Denied.

They lacked proper documents.
They lacked final destinations.
They failed to meet requirements.

Japan’s position was absolute.

No visas.

Sugihara sent another telegram.

“Refugees facing imminent danger. Request humanitarian visas.”

Denied.

He sent a third.

“Hundreds of families will die without help. Please reconsider.”

The response was colder this time.

Denied.
Stop immediately.
This is a direct order.

Sugihara stood still.

Outside, the crowd grew larger. Word had spread. People arrived carrying nothing but rumors that a Japanese consul might be kind.

He thought of his wife, Yukiko.
Their three small children.
His career.
His future.

Then he thought of the families outside who had no future at all.

And he picked up his pen.

Chiune Sugihara began writing visas by hand.

Every single one.

Name.
Birthdate.
Route.
Destination.
Purpose.

No errors allowed. One mistake could mean rejection at a checkpoint. One smudge could mean death.

He wrote for eighteen to twenty hours a day.

Day after day.

Yukiko stood beside him, silently heroic in her own way. She massaged his swollen fingers when they locked in pain. Brought him food he barely touched. Cared for their children while her husband quietly dismantled his own career to save strangers.

She never once told him to stop.

The lines outside stretched for blocks. When the consulate doors opened, families surged forward. Sugihara would take their details, fill out the form, stamp it, sign it, and hand it over.

Next person.
Next family.
Next life.

His hand cramped until he could barely close his fingers. His eyes burned. His back ached. His vision blurred.

Telegram after telegram arrived from Tokyo.

Stop immediately.
You are violating orders.
There will be consequences.

Sugihara kept writing.

For twenty-nine days straight, he did nothing else.

Some estimates say he wrote 2,000 visas. Others say 6,000. No one knows for sure — because at some point he stopped keeping records.

He was too busy saving lives.

Each visa was a lifeline. Families could cross the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, then sail to Japan. From there, they scattered to Shanghai, Australia, the United States, South America — anywhere that would take them.

Ink became survival.

On September 4, 1940, the order came.

Close the consulate.
Leave Lithuania immediately.

The Soviets were taking over. Japan was withdrawing.

Sugihara had to go.

But the families were still there.

On his final day, he wrote visas until the last possible moment. He wrote in the car on the way to the train station. He wrote on the platform as refugees crowded around him, crying, begging, praying.

When the train began to move, people ran alongside it.

Sugihara leaned out the window.

He signed blank visa forms — blank — and threw them down to the crowd. They could fill them in later. It was dangerous. It was imperfect.

It was all he had left.

As the train pulled away, he bowed deeply and called out words survivors would remember for the rest of their lives:

“Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best.”

And then he was gone.

The punishment came swiftly.

When Sugihara returned to Japan, he was dismissed from the Foreign Ministry. Officially, it was “downsizing.”

Everyone knew the truth.

He had disobeyed.

At forty years old, with a wife and children to support, his diplomatic career was finished.

For the next four decades, Chiune Sugihara lived quietly. He sold light bulbs door to door. Worked small trading jobs. Lived modestly. Never spoke much about Lithuania.

Not because he was ashamed.

Because he didn’t think he had done anything special.

When asked years later why he helped, his answer was simple.

“They were human beings, and they needed help. How could I do otherwise?”

Meanwhile, the people he saved built lives. Families. Entire bloodlines. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren scattered across the world.

Most had no idea who had saved them.

Until 1969.

A man named Yehoshua Nishri saw Sugihara’s name on a list of Japanese diplomats and froze.

That’s him.

That’s the man who saved us.

Survivors began to find each other. Stories resurfaced. The truth spread.

In 1985, Israel’s Yad Vashem honored Chiune Sugihara as Righteous Among the Nations.

He traveled to Israel, eighty-five years old, frail, overwhelmed. Survivors lined up to meet him — holding children who existed because of his pen.

One said, “I exist because of you.”

Another said, “My family exists because of you.”

Sugihara bowed and replied softly, “I just did what any decent person would do.”

But that wasn’t true.

Most decent people followed orders.
Most protected their careers.
Most looked away.

Sugihara looked at a crowd of strangers and chose humanity.

He died on July 31, 1986 — just one year after the world finally learned his name.

Today, more than 40,000 people are alive because of what he did in one summer.

Not with a weapon.
Not with power.
Not with authority.

But with a pen.

Twenty hours a day.
Twenty-nine days.
Six thousand visas.
Forty thousand lives.

Remember his name: Chiune Sugihara.
Remember his wife: Yukiko Sugihara.

And remember this:

Heroism is not always loud.
Sometimes it is quiet, exhausted, and handwritten.

Sometimes it is choosing people over policy.
Compassion over compliance.

Chiune Sugihara made that choice.

And because he did, the world is fuller — by tens of thousands of lives.

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In 1871, Charles Darwin declared—under the banner of science—that women were intellectually inferior to men. Four years later, one woman dismantled his argument so completely that he never dared respond.

Her name was Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and by the time she challenged Darwin, she’d already made history. In 1853, at 28, she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States, stepping into a pulpit that centuries of theology insisted belonged only to men.

But Antoinette was never content to stay in one lane. Her mind ranged across philosophy, theology, and science—especially the emerging theory of evolution. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, she read it closely. In 1869 she published Studies in General Science, one of the first serious engagements with evolutionary theory by any American thinker, let alone a self-taught woman scientist. Darwin himself wrote to thank her for her insight.

Then came The Descent of Man in 1871—and with it, Darwin’s claim that women were biologically and intellectually inferior. He argued that evolution had produced men who were more courageous, inventive, and intelligent, while women had evolved to be emotional, nurturing, and limited in abstract thought. These weren’t cultural beliefs, he insisted—they were scientific fact.

Victorian society accepted his conclusions immediately. Scholars cited him. Doctors invoked him. Politicians used him as ammunition against women’s education and suffrage. Darwin’s authority turned old prejudice into “proof.”

Antoinette refused to let that stand.

For four years, she gathered evidence, dissected Darwin’s logic, and built a counterargument stronger than anything the scientific establishment expected from a woman. In 1875, she published The Sexes Throughout Nature—a direct, devastating refutation of Darwin’s claims about male superiority.

She demonstrated that Darwin had cherry-picked species where males were larger or more ornamented, then treated those cases as universal. She showed that in many species—spiders, birds of prey, insects—the females were larger, stronger, or more complex. She exposed Darwin’s unexamined Victorian assumptions, revealing how he’d mistaken cultural bias for biological law.

Most importantly, she argued that women’s limited opportunities—not evolutionary destiny—explained the differences Darwin called “natural.” Denied education, barred from universities, and excluded from scientific societies, women had been systematically prevented from developing the very qualities Darwin claimed they naturally lacked.

“It is the special philosophic problem of the ages,” she wrote, “to account for anomalies in human society created not by nature, but by the artificial conditions imposed on women.”

Her critique hit the foundation of evolutionary sexism: male scientists had assumed male superiority, interpreted the natural world through that lens, and then declared nature confirmed what they already believed.

Darwin never wrote a word in response.

But Antoinette’s book circulated among suffragists, educators, and early women scientists. She proved that even the most towering scientific figure could be challenged—if the evidence was sound and the reasoning airtight. The male scientific establishment ignored her not because she was wrong, but because she was a woman who had proven them wrong.

Still, Antoinette kept going. She wrote widely on science, philosophy, and women’s rights. She traveled the country lecturing. She raised five children while sustaining a formidable intellectual life. She became not only a critic of sexist science but a pioneer of women’s suffrage.

Born in 1825, she attended the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1850. Seventy years later—in 1920, at age 95—she cast her first vote. She was the only woman from that convention still alive to see the movement’s victory.

Antoinette Brown Blackwell lived 96 years proving that women’s intellect was not limited by nature, but by the barriers men built around it. And when Darwin tried to claim otherwise, she didn’t just say he was wrong.

She proved it.
Methodically.
Brilliantly.
Irrefutably.