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Never Give Up
Diana Nyad, a long distance swimmer, finally succeeded on her fifth try at attaining her arduous swimming goal today, Monday, September 2, 2013, at the age of 64. She swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. Although the area is shark infested, she did not use the protection of a shark cage. Let her be an example to us all in the principle of never giving up. Read More at NBC News
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Hong Kong Typhoon on September 13, 2009
I grew up in tornado alley, so many tornadoes have come and gone over me, beside me, yet thankfully, not through me, in my life. However, a typhoon, something you don’t see when surrounded by plains land, was not something I had ever experienced until 2009. I was visiting Hong Kong at the time and ignorant of the danger, while walking along one of the streets located in Hong Kong’s Central business district. Needless to say the winds were high, high enough to blow a large heavy sign off a business. We were almost hit. It was time to dash indoors of the large skyscraper hotel where we were staying. The following morning…
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Napoleon Hill: Habits of Success
It was the late 19th century, during the industrial revolution, a time when some men made riches well beyond the average American, that Andrew Carnegie made his great wealth in the steel industry. A philanthropist he funded an important and influential project that would take 20 years to complete. The 1908 Carnegie funded project was conducted by Napoleon Hill. Napoleon interviewed hundreds of men based on their common defining factor of great power and success in the world. He compiled his data and extrapolated from it a list of common core principles. He proposed that if you follow the laws of success that great men held to, you too could succeed in a significantly large scale manner.…
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North Korean Victory Day Parade Marks 60th Anniversary
Many remember, what is sometimes called the “Forgotten War” , that ended sixty years ago on July 27, 1953. It would be another six years before my birth, but my father, alive and serving in the United States Marine Corp, fought in and survived the Korean War, as well as, World War ll. Why is it that the Korean War, lasting from 1950-1953, is sometimes referred to, as the Forgotten War, despite the devastating loss of life, two million deaths for the Chinese and North Koreans and 450,360 for the U.S.-led United Nations coalition?One answer is that the other wars eclipsed it. There was World War II, Vietnam, Desert Storm and the recent conflict in Iraq…
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Historical Heroics: Ten Boom Family
Heroes are not born with super human powers or created from alien DNA, but are everyday people who rise to the occasion when needed. Ben Levy, a passenger of Asiana Flight 214, during an interview with Anna Werner stated, “Heroism is not one person saving the world. I think it is about every single action you can take together, combined to create this real heroic event . . . .” The Ten Booms as a Family exemplified Mr. Levy’s definition of heroism. When Hitler’s troops invaded the Netherlands, the Ten Boom’s door opened to anyone and everyone in need of shelter. As the Reich began herding Jews and dissenters, the Ten Boom family took them in and hid…
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Iron Man has Nothing on These Heroes
We run to the theaters in mass to watch movies about larger than life fictional action heroes, yet we minimize the real life heroes in our midst. Real people, whose heroics surpass the fake magnificence of those portrayed on the big screen. We should be guiding our children toward the real heroes of history. These are the men and women we want to teach our children to emulate, men and women who placed their lives in danger for others: stories of Corrie ten Boom and Oskar Schindler, real flesh and blood heroes, who stood against the villainous injustices and monstrous persecutions of dictators, Kings, and governments. Some of our heroes…
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Lady Liberty’s Modern Day Visitors
There have been throngs of eager visitors, since The Statue of Liberty’s reopening Thursday. Cleanup is complete from Hurricane Sandy’s torrential wrath on Liberty Island. Sandy inflicted destruction on nearby structures, thankfully sparing the Lady, America’s gift from France, representing our celebration of liberty in a country based on democracy. The Lady Liberty arrived in a dismantled 350 pieces to New York Harbor on June 17, 1885. Statue of Liberty arrives. (2013). The History Channel website. Retrieved 2:22, July 4, 2013, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/statue-of-liberty-arrives. Read the NY Times Article : Crowds Line Up to See Storm Survivor, Statue of Liberty
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Gunfight at the Ok Corral as in the Movies
The movies Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, from the early 1990s, were not quite historically accurate dramatizations of the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral. See Facts A shootout of all shootouts having great popularity in the history of the American Wild West, though rumored to have lasted a mere 30 seconds or so. It was 3pm on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. At the rear of the Ok Corral and then several doors west, outlaws (Billy Claiborne, Ike & Billy Clanton, and Tom & Frank McLaury) and lawmen (Marshal Virgil Earp, Marshal Morgan, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday) shot it out.
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Tornado History
It has been confirmed that the Friday, May 31, 2013 tornado, that brought destruction and death to El Reno, OK, was the widest ever in recorded history. Per the National Weather Service and a leading researcher, Howard Bluestein, no other tornado has ever reached such a mammoth breadth. The El Reno tornado stretched a maximum width of 2.6 miles. Read More
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Keynes Essay of Possibility
In John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren , he comments on the then current “prevailing world depression” and the general feeling of pessimism hanging as a dark cloud overhead. The cloud being filled with joblessness, soup lines, and in some cases, suicide, in response to sudden financial ruin. The aftermath of economic disaster was so tremendous that its destruction created The Great Depression. Keynes purpose in putting forth this essay was to look beyond the 1930 economic state of affairs, and past the present malaise, to future generations and what possibilities there could be for them. He believed that there were redeeming, underlying trends, buried beneath the rubble of the fallen financial structure; and that these trends pointed to a…







