Lizzie's Morning

7 a.m. The clock radio blasts Jamaican reggae into Lizzie's room in Washington, D.C., and the music wakes her. As she comes to life, she thinks about school and the day ahead. She doesn't think about Guglielmo Marconi of Italy, who patented the radio. And she doesn't know that the first experimental radio broadcast took place in Massachusetts in 1906.

Lizzie gets dressed, heads to the kitchen, and makes a pitcher of orange juice, using frozen concentrate that was preserved by a process developed in Florida during the 1940s. The very same round, golden fruit was popular in ancient China.

Lizzie's mom uses an electric appliance to grind coffee beans from Brazil. The first version of this machine was invented in Ohio in the 1930s. (Before then people used manual grinders, which date to the 1800s.) Her mom pours the ground beans into a cone-shaped filter invented in Germany around 1900.

For breakfast, Lizzie eats a bowl of Kellogg's corn flakes, named after the American family that developed the cereal in the 1890s. As she eats, she glances at the newspaper. (The first regular weekly newspapers appeared in Germany in the early 1800s.)

After breakfast, Lizzie brushes her teeth. (The Chinese claim they invented the toothbrush in the 1400s.) She then says good-bye to her father, who is shaving with a safety razor—patented in 1901 by a salesman from Wisconsin. The earliest safety razors date from France in the late 1800s. Centuries ago, people used shells and sharks' teeth as razors.

Lizzie gathers her stuff for school, including her saxophone—invented in Belgium by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. She puts on her Walkman, developed in Japan in the 1970s. Then, when her mom isn't looking, she pops some gum into her mouth. People have enjoyed gum since ancient times, and the Indians of Mexico and Central America chewed chicle, a substance from wild sapodilla trees. Chicle was introduced to the United States in the 1860s.

Rain begins to fall as Lizzie leaves the house. She races back inside for her umbrella, which was made in Taiwan. Umbrellas have a long past. They appear in artwork from ancient Egypt, and they've been used in various cultures—both practically and ceremonially.

Back outside, Lizzie dashes across the street once the traffic light turns green. The first working traffic signal was installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London, the capital of the United Kingdom. Modern traffic lights were invented in the early 20th century.

The smooth, solid road that Lizzie crosses is paved with macadam, a surface developed in part by English engineer John McAdam. Lizzie waits a few minutes for the bus that will take her to school. The first bus line was established in Paris, France, in the 1600s, but it didn't last long. Not until the 1800s were horse-drawn buses a regular part of life in cities such as Paris, London, and New York.

Lizzie climbs aboard the bus, pays her fare, and heads off to school.