El diez de mayo/May 10th

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Photo/Image from scholastic.com. Click HERE. 
¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Ellen Ochoa! (1958)

An engineer and veteran astronaut who is currently the director of The Johnson Space Center, Ochoa is the first Hispanic women to have gone to space (with the space shuttle Discovery in 1993) and the first Hispanic director of The Johnson Space Center. Ochoa's paternal grandparents were immigrants from Mexico who came to the United States to provide their family with more opportunities. Of them, Ochoa has said that she could only imagine the astonishment and pride they would feel upon knowing that their granddaughter had travelled to space, as they had been born in Mexico in the 1870s and had come to this country to lift up their family ("Sólo puedo imaginar el asombro y el orgullo de mis abuelos, quienes nacieron en México en la década de 1870, hubieran sentido al saber que su nieta creció para viajar al espacio. Vinieron a Estados Unidos para levantar a su familia. Junto a la pasión de mi madre por el aprendizaje, tuve la oportunidad y la motivación para educarme y proponerme metas altas" (from bbcmundo, click HERE). Ochoa studied physics at San Diego State University and then got her doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford. She is co-inventor on three patents and has authored several technical papers. She has been recognized with NASA's highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal, as well as many other awards. Six schools are named for her around the country. She and her husband, Coe Miles, an intellectual property attorney, have two sons. For her official biography on NASA, click HERE. For a brief video biography of her (in Spanish), click HERE.

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Other May 10th birthdays of note:

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920): A prolific Spanish writer who has been compared to Dickens, Tolstoy, and Balzac. There is a statue dedicated to him in Madrid's Parque Buen Retiro. (My AP class has read his novel Marianela (the Santillana Press edition) for summer reading in the past).

Salvador Perez (1990-      ): Professional baseball player from Venezuela who was MVP of the 2015 World Series for helping the Kansas City Royals defeat the Mets.



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