On Saturday, May 4, Cab students participated in the state-level competition of National History Day at Gunning Bedford Middle School. This was a culmination of months of sustained historical inquiry on student-selected topics connected to the theme of Triumph and Tragedy in History. They were terrific ambassadors for our school.

Here are the results!

Middle School Junior Division

• Lunger – 1st Place Individual Paper*
• Salvador-Riera, I. March, M. Virani – 1st Place Group Exhibit*
• Arunkumar and K. Movva- 1st Place Group Performance and Women’s History Award*
• Mehta – 1st Place Individual Website*
• Schmeda – 1st Place Individual Documentary*
• Sgroi and B. Ashley – 1st Place Group Documentary, Chronicling America Award, and American History Award*
• Spangler, A. Denesowicz, and E. Kim – 2nd Place Group Documentary, Medical History Award, and Global Studies Award*
• Hemphill and J. Davis – 2nd Place Group Website and Maritime History Award*
• Carp and M. Ting – 3rd Place Group Exhibit
• Yatavelli and D. Tattari – 3rd Place Group Documentary

High School Senior Division

• Natalini – World War II Award
• Ammann and A. Damude – Military History Award
• Mikles – 1st Place Individual Performance*
• Nana-Sinkam – 2nd Place Individual Performance*
• Block and J. Smith – 3rd Place Group Website and Maritime History Award
• Meakin and M. Budzinski – 2nd Place Group Documentary and Medical History Award*
• Anderson, M. Erdman, D. Simon, L. Stark – 3rd Place Group Documentary and American Innovation Award

*First and second place projects will compete at the national competition from June 9-13 at College Park, MD. Congratulations!

Click here to learn more about National History Day.

In the late 18th Century, smallpox was the leading cause of death in England. The disease was mostly spread by face-to-face contact, and coughing and sneezing onto other people. It ended up killing 3 out of 10 people who contracted the disease.

This was a major health problem in England, and little could be done about it. Back then, you couldn’t just pop down to your local General Practitioner and get some antibiotics to help you. People didn’t even know germs existed, so good luck getting sanitary health conditions when your drinking water has been contaminated with rotting garbage. The general medical advice at the time was to drain out some of your blood and pray really hard.

Now, there was a somewhat effective way to prevent smallpox. People would try to get a milder form of smallpox to build up their immunity. While this worked, people were still at the risk of dying from the milder disease.

Edward Jenner, an English country doctor, found a solution. He lived in the countryside, where a lot of milkmaids worked on farms. Many of these women would catch cowpox, a non-deadly disease that would cover the sufferer in sores. Jenner realized that these milkmaids never caught smallpox, and he decided that smallpox could be prevented by giving it to someone.

He tested his theory on the 9-year-old son of his gardener (note to self: experiment on the children of those you hire; you can put “the employer is not responsible for any harm done to your offspring” in their contract). He took the pus out of a milkmaid’s cowpox sore and injected it into the boy’s arm. With some stranger’s pus flowing through his veins, the boy had cowpox for a few weeks. Then, a few months later, Jenner exposed the boy to the smallpox vaccine multiple times, and the boy never caught the disease. Jenner published his findings, and the country quickly adopted it. Almost a hundred years later, they switched from cowpox to the vaccinia virus, giving it the name “vaccine.”

On March 26, the Advanced Treble Choir, Men’s Choir, and 7th and 8th grade Vocal Majors presented a concert, which included the Schubert Mass in G and a West Side Story medley. The choir performed along with and were accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra.

The Schubert Mass in G is a 5 movement piece that is completely sung in Latin. This piece included many solos sung by the vocal students. The Chamber Orchestra comprised of string instruments played a lovely show and showed much skill. The choir also sang this piece quite wonderfully. Both groups played this piece very well together.

The West Side Story medley is a 4 movement piece which features hit songs from the highly acclaimed musical West Side Story. This piece also included solos sung by the vocal students with both the Chamber Orchestra playing and Piano. It was quite a beautiful showcase of both the Chamber Orchestra students and the Vocal students. All in all, it was a very successful concert which great quality and songs.

As the curtains come to a close on the 2018/19 theatre season, one show really stood out: the high school production of The Sound Of Music! The Sound Of Music, produced by Mrs. Eldrith, was well executed and the vocals were top notch. With bubbly characters and a heartwarming story, The Sound Of Music was a hit. In the first act of the show, we were introduced to the main character Maria played by S. Rossi, and with her strong stage presence and spectacular vocal performance, she was captivating to all audiences. Though the first act is lengthy it pays off. The show even included scenes with some of Cab’s very own teachers including, but not limited to, Dr. Morton and Dean Rumschlag. With this show coming to an end we will all miss The Sound of Music! Shows were March 15, 16 & 17 and March 22, 23 & 24.