Billy Lesko, age 10, of Stratford, Conn., for his question:

WHAT WAS BLACKBEARD'S REAL NAME?

The American Colonists called him Blackbeard because he had a thick black beard  and braided it with pride. His real name was Edward Teach, and nobody knows much about his childhood. Some say he was born in England, perhaps in the town of Bristol. Others suspect that he was born in Jamaica, late in the 1600s. In any case, Edward Teach grew up to be a cruel, sneaky character, a backward type who liked to scare people.

In 1716 Edward Teach became a plundering pirate. He gathered a gang of greedy cutthroats, and they put to sea in a ship called "Queen Ann's Revenge." For two firghtful years he raided ships along the shores of Virginia and the Carolinas. Then the people had had enough and a ship was sent out to take him, dead or alive. He was captured and killed in 1718. And everybody felt safer when they saw Blackbeard's head on the top of a pole.