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More events on that day (taken from http://www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi):

1896 German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen's discovers x-rays
1945 Pepe LePew debuts in Warner Bros cartoon "Odor-able Kitty"
1956 Elvis Presley records "Heartbreak Hotel"
1961 US breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba
1973 Netherlands recognizes German Democratic Republic
1982 Arkansas judge rules against obligatory teaching of creation

Amongst many other events one might like to celebrate/commemorate.

other things that happened on the 14th of july. yay for too much information!

the most interesting/relivant: 1958 Iraqi army overthrows monarchy; republic replaces Hashemite dynasty -- otherwise known as Iraqi Republic day.

This is the 10th year birthday of the web using a decent tool-- but it is also Einstien's birthday (14 March, 1879), google has a cool einstien image.

Is that a cool coincidence or what? Must be something special about March 14th.
Here's an interesting site of other events that happened today in history. Among them I found the following interesting:

TODAY IS ALSO THE RIAA's BIRTHDAY!! HOW SCARRY!!

1958 RIAA (Recording Industry Association of American)is created and certifies 1st gold record (Perry Como's Catch A Falling Star)

1950 FBI's "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" program begins

1967 JFK's body moved from temporary grave to a permanent memorial
1971 The Rolling Stones leave England for France to escape taxes
1995 1st time 13 people in space
1997 President Clinton trips & tears up his knee requiring surgery

Well, Cliff,

There's plenty of good stuff out there, but you'll have to do some editing. As somebody who grew up around teachers and has worked in textbook publishing I can assure you that teachers all have to do it too. Their stuff sucks far worse than anything referenced here.

While Project Gutenberg is great, you should also check out on-line encyclopedias like NuPedia, and Everything2 which are all open source, as is The Open Directory Project . A great source of fiction, which can be a wonderful learning tool, is Baen Books who have put hundreds of book online and are eager to have them downloaded and spread around.

For science materials, there are lots of great sites for kids done by educators pursuing whever they're into. All of which you'll want to use to spice up access to sites like Science Daily that are handy but a bit too serious some days for young minds.

Which brings me to Make Stuff which should fill in quite nicely for the "arts and crafts" part of most school curricula.

For biography I'ld check out American National Biography and for history a good start can be made with pages like Anyday which can be amazing or useless, all based on where *you* go from the starting point that they provide. Places like Colonial America are designed just for this but again, check out more than one.

For reference material you should check out Theodora which, while not meant to be open source, is very handy, Geographic.Org, which is open source and student-oriented, should do the rest. I've found that the CIA sourcebook is terrible, as folk should have long since figured out. Biased, misinformed, and sometimes just wierd; leave it behind. However if you hunt you'll find that within various.gov sites there's tons of great stuff, from manuals on camping to stuff on solar panels.

The space science community is very kid friendly, from NASA down to the local Mars Society chapter, having plenty of materials on quite a range of topics that you're free to reproduce and spread around. If you can handle it, the neopagan community is reliably eager to provide information and links on ancient indo-european history, from the government of Sumeria, to Celtic ironwork. (You might be surprised at how many neopagans have advanced degrees in history and/or literature.)

Speaking of limits, you'll always have to be careful that your kids aren't ending up places they shouldn't be but again, every teacher and librarian faces that one.

Lastly, the reason that I've got all this ready to hand is that I took it from my source database, more of which can be found on my web site, which is primarily oriented towards adults and older kids but does have plenty of other links like the ones here.

Best of luck to you and be sure to post back to slashdot in a few years about how it's going.

Rustin H. Wright - Information Geek
"It's all about the information, Marty. Little ones and zeros!"

• 1609, Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan island.
• 1922, Britain is granted mandate of Palestine.
• 1990, In a statement to the Congress, President Bush promises retaliation of Iraq's invation in Kuwait.

• Sep. 9, 1993. Yassir Arafat agrees on the "Declaration of Principle", i.e., the Oslo-agreement. A signing ceremony is hosted by President Bill Clinton on Sep. 13.
• Sep. 12, 2001. Two bin Laden supportered terrorists (the Tanzania US embassy bombing) were supposed to be convicted by a judge in a federal court just beside World Trade Center.

"There never was a good war or bad peace."

Why the September 11? Well, here's a list of possible causes. I've picked this from scopesys and filtered to leave everyting that might have pissed off somebody. Pick your choice! 1919 US marines invade Honduras 1922 British mandate of Palestine begins 1926 Aloha Tower dedicated in Honolulu 1926 US defeats France for their 7th straight Davis Cup championship 1935 US captures Davis Cup for 7th straight year 1941 FDR orders any Axis ship found in American waters be shot on sight 1954 1st Miss America TV broadcast 1961 Bob Dylan's 1st NY performance mont 1973 Chile's President, Salvador Allende, deposed by Pinoche in a military coup