Tag: summer

Black History Fun Fact Friday – Lonnie Johnson and the Super Soaker Water Gun

Black History Fun Fact Friday is back!

May has always been an exciting month. As a kid, I looked forward to the school year ending and the warm weather welcoming me just in time for my birthday at the end of the month. Summer also means swimming and dancing in the water from the fire hydrant and water guns!

Introducing Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the super soaker!

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Lonnie Johnson was born in Mobile, Alabama, on October 6, 1949. Signs of Lonnie’s brilliance could be seen when he was a child reverse-engineering his sister’s baby doll to understand how the eyes closed. He also built his own go-cart from a lawnmower engine he attached to scraps he found in the junkyard. 

Before enlisting in the Air Force, he worked as a research engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He also worked at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the acting chief of the Space Nuclear Power Safety Section.

Johnson holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering, an M.S. degree in Nuclear Engineering, and an honorary Ph.D. in Science from Tuskegee University.

In 1989, Johnson formed his own engineering firm and licensed his most famous invention, the super soaker. It generated over $200 million in retail sales and became the number-one-selling toy in America.

Today, Johnson is president and founder of Johnson Research and Development Co., Inc., a technology development company, and its spin-off companies, Excellatron Solid State, LLC; Johnson Electro-Mechanical Systems, LLC; and Johnson Real Estate Investments, LLC.

As of 2023, Lonnie Johnson’s net worth was an estimated $160 million. This substantial fortune is primarily the result of the royalties he received for the Super Soaker, which generated billions of dollars.

So the next time your child plays with a super soaker, be sure they know about its amazing inventor!

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For More Black History Facts You Didn’t Learn in School, Be Sure to Get Your Copy of the Book Here!

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Yecheilyah’s 2nd Annual Poetry Contest 2018: Coming this Summer!!

It’s that time of the year again!

April is National Poetry Month and I am gearing up to host my 2nd Annual Poetry Contest this summer! This year we have stepped it up BIG time with some AMAZING prizes! Be sure you’re following this blog, my IG, and my Facebook business page to stay updated. Details on how to enter, rules and guidelines will be published to this blog next month (May). Next week, I’ll be introducing our sponsors and judges.

Like my Facebook Business Page to stay updated:
https://www.facebook.com/literarykornerpublishing

Follow Lisa Here
Follow Tehilayah Here
Follow Kathy Here
Follow Tinzley Here

“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” – Annie Dillard

“When you get, give. When you learn, teach.” – Maya Angelou

Stella Summer Sale: The Road to Freedom – 7/12 – 7/19

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I will be running a Stella Summer Sale on Amazon for the third book in The Stella Trilogy: The Road to Freedom, ebook edition starting Tuesday July 12th – Tuesday July 19th. I am dropping the price from $2.99 to $1.99.

If you are already following me on Twitter you will notice the promo campaign when it kicks off. If you are not following me on Twitter, well, you won’t.

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To Learn More About The Road to Freedom Visit it’s Amazon Page Here. My Author Website Here. Or click on the Online Book Store image below to Jason Cushman’s Bookstore where my book is featured as part of his promo for authors. online-book-store-1

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May you join me? – New writing challenge

Sounds fun! Plus May is my birthday month…yesss.

KL Caley's avatarNew2Writing

Hello Blogging World,

May I take this moment to invite you all to join in a brand new challenge. The Challenge is pretty simple. The word MAY is not just a month such a popular word, I’d like you to use it every day in May and create a post on your blog.

I’ll post a quote every day at 9.00am bst featuring the word may on it to inspire you. You may use that or indeed create your own. Try to write a memory, short flash fiction, poetry or whatever may take your fancy and pingback.

Let’s prove the adage that “Everyday maynot be a good day but there is something good in every day”.

May your words make you happy and help find your voice.
May inspiration find its way to you and help keep you writing.
May others find you and enjoy the peice you create.

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Summer Smells

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I love the smell of summer. Though you really can’t experience it until the sun starts to set and darkness sets in. Right now the sun is overtaking any whiff of delicacy in the air with its blazing heat, so you’d have to wait a while to experience what I mean. It has to be the perfect mixture of cool and warm mixed in a giant bowl called your backyard. I would describe it like freshly cut grass or the new growth of leaves on tree branches. Or maybe we can associate it with the smell of a coming rain. These aren’t very good descriptions. I know I have not enticed your creative mind to the extent of sight. I know you have not tasted the air of freshness melting on your tongue and all, but I have no other way to describe it aside from these basic examples. Besides, how does one explain the fragrance of life? Sometimes you can see a flower pouring all of its insides out, and cracking shells; shedding the once imperfect exterior to one more fitting for the season. Its growth is in many ways like our own. On first sight it looks like total destruction, and there is no gold at the end of the rainbow, at least not until we have weathered the storm. Always the hard stuff first, pain, suffering, tears, loneliness, doubt. I imagine it is a difficult process too for the flower. So much work to be done and change to endure early on. Only when it has shed its old casing do we begin to see the pretty pinks and reds of softer petals peek out from under the new coat of skin, see the dazzling beauty of what it has now become, and taste of the fresh smells of life.