User:BartBenjamin

I started work on Wikipedia as BartBenjamin on January 27, 2005.

As a child growing up in Peoria, Illinois, I spent countless hours reading and browsing my family's set of World Book encyclopedias. Within those bound volumes and innumerable pages, I researched my current hobbies, worked on school assignments, and (perhaps most importantly) gained a life-long appreciation for learning.

In January of 2005, I discovered Wikipedia, which rekindled this same "browsing for knowledge" that I first experienced so many years ago. I quickly realized Wikipedia's limitless potential, and I was excited by the prospect of adding my own knowledge to the collective knowledge contained in Wikipedia's thousands of digital pages.

My first contributions related to my now former position as Director of the Cernan Earth and Space Center, a planetarium in west suburban River Grove, Illinois, USA. My primary interests include astronomy (particularly eclipses, occultations and transits), American history (particularly the Civil War era), historical events (e.g. marine disasters such as the Titanic, Andrea Doria and Morro Castle and the rise and fall of airships), natural disasters (e.g. tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes), Mesozoic Era paleontology (a.k.a. dinosaurs), numismatics and philately, to name just a few. My future writing/editing efforts will largely be drawn from this list. I am particularly proud of those articles listed below that are preceded by a red star. ()