Here's a story from NPR regarding an early Russian cosmonaut who plunged to his death in the early stages of the space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union. The story puts a human face on the highly politicized competition between super-powers.
Here's Vladimir Komarov's story: "I'm not going to make it back from this flight."
Over 2000 people were killed in Johnstown PA back in 1889 when a Dam failed on this day (May 31) sending a mountain of water roaring through the town.
From the NYTimes article of the time:
"One telegraph operator says he counted sixty-three bodies in twenty minutes floating past his office.
A telegraph operator at Sang Harbor, in the Pennsylvania Railroad tower, twelve miles this side of Jamestown, says that at least seventy-five dead bodies have floated past that point."
Some survivors stories from the Johnstown Flood Museum website regarding the flood:
Anna Fenn Maxwell, who lost all of her children in the flood:
"The water rose and floated us until our heads nearly touched the ceiling. . .It was dark and the house was tossing every way. The air was stifling, and I could not tell just the moment the rest of the children had to give up and drown. . .what I suffered, with the bodies of my seven children floating around me in the gloom can never be told."
Rev. H.L. Chapman who survived by racing up the attic of his home just in time:
"I think none of us was afraid to meet God, but we all felt willing to put it off until a more propitious time,"
Read these and other survivor stories HERE.
From the NYTimes article: "At a point near New-Florence eighty-five persons have been seen floating down the river on driftwood."
Go HERE for some pictures of the devestation
I've never heard this quote - but it's a good one apparently erroneously attributed to Ben Franklin expressing what democracy is like without a bill of rights.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
Learning something new: I was looking at the timeline from this Civil War website and learned that Abraham Lincoln was shot only 4 days after Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomatox - and that many confederate forces didn't surrender until after Lincoln had died.
Note this final photo of Lincoln taken the day he was shot.
I'll post the answers to the most most common counties soon, but one of the more common county names on the list is "Jefferson."
Here is a quote from the last letter of Thomas Jefferson as he looks back nearly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In the letter he declines attending a 50th anniversary celebration of the signing due to ill health. He has a way with words doesn't he?
"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them." - Thomas Jefferson
