Kevin R. Jones, age 7, of Newport News, Virginia, for his question:

Who discovered the Gulf Stream?

The first map of the Gulf Stream was made by wise Benjamin Franklin. He learned about it when he was Deputy Postmaster General of the Colonies. Mail ships from New England to England sailed faster when they followed a strong current in the ocean. Whalers and fishermen also told Franklin about this eastward current. They called it the Gulf Stream, because it came from the far south near the Gulf of Mexico. Franklin thought all the mail ships should follow the CfAlf Stream on the eastward voyage to England.

The many sailors who had known of the strong ocean current had been running into it and out of it for more than 200 years. Around 1769 Franklin gathered all of this information. He then put it together and traced its complete path across the ocean, drawing the Gulf Stream on a map of the North Atlantic. He was not the first to discover it was there, but he was the first to chart its entire journey across the ocean.