Happy birthday, George Washington Carver

We celebrate the birth of botanist and inventor George Washington Carver today, though his exact birthday is not known, nor is the year but scholars believe it was 1864 or 1965. Carver is known for researching and promoting the use of alternative crops to cotton such as sweet potatoes, soybeans, and most notably, peanuts. He is credited with finding 300 uses for peanuts, including cosmetics, shoe polish, talcum powder, and mayonnaise. Time magazine called him the “Black Leonardo” in 1941. He taught agriculture at Tuskegee Institute for 47 years. Carver wrote a memoir, My Larger Education : Being Chapters from My Experience (1911). In the 1920s he wrote a newspaper column, Professor Carver’s Advice.