Lincoln-Kennedy Assassination Coincidences

It is not that unusual to have a coincidence or two occur between two events in life but the sheer number of them that exist between both Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, who served a century apart is really uncanny. Consider some of them:
1. Lincoln was elected to Congress for the first time in 1846. J.F.K. in 1946.
2. Lincoln elected president in 1860, J.F.K. in 1960. Lincoln was also nominated for vice-president in 1856 and John Kennedy was nominated for vice-president in 1956.
3. Both had last names containing 7 letters and both had assassins who's names contained 15 letters.
4. Both men suffered the loss of a child while president.
5. Both men were shot on a Friday and both were shot in the head.
6. Both had Vice-Presidents named Johnson who succeeded them.
7. Lincoln's V.P. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Kennedy's V.P. Lyndon Johnson born in 1908.
8. Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth shot him in a theater and attempted to escape by running to a warehouse. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot him from a warehouse and attempted to avoid capture by running into a theater.
9. Both assassins were killed before going to trial.
10. President Lincoln was shot in a theater called Ford's Theater and president Kennedy was shot in an automobile built by the Ford Motor Company. The car was called a Ford Lincoln Continental.

There is one myth however that has lingered for a while and as it turns out is not true. The one that states President kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln and that president Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy. While it is true that Kennedy had a personal secretary named Evelyn Lincoln there is nothing to indicate that President Lincoln had anyone in his administration who was named kennedy at all. Lincoln's two White House secretary's were named John Nicolay and John Hay. But even here there is almost a coincidence sort of. Both of Lincoln's secretary's had President Kennedy's first name.

India Enters Space Race With Rocket Moon Launch

Along with the growing number of nations around the world that will be joining the club of countries with nuclear weapons and capabilities there are also a number of nations that are now entering the space race for the first time. The latest one is India. On october 22nd The Asian nation of 1.2 billion people launched an unmanned spacecraft it calls Chandrayaan 1 (translates to Mooncraft 1). The rocket is set to orbit the moon for two years during which time it will attempt to map the lunar surface. This launch comes only a year after China launched its first rocket into space. The launch took place from the Satish Dhawan space center which is located in the southern part of India. This now makes 4 the number of countires that are active in their space exploration. The list would be 5 if you included the European Space Agency (E.S.A.) which is a joint effort on the part of several European nations that combine their resouces and efforts. The total list now includes the U.S., Russia, China, India, and the E.S.A.

God Bless The U.S.A. As They Say

Some people take it for granted in this country that you can say whatever you want to say, for the most part anyway without getting into any real trouble. In some parts of the world it is not the case. Take Afganistan for example. An Afgan man was recently convicted of blasphemy because he was critical of womens rights under Islam and he dared to say so. His original sentence was death. The powers that be over there had second thoughts and commuted his sentence to a mere 20 years in prison. If This is the kind of stuff that goes on in countries that are supposed to be our allies well then God help us all. Imagine going to jail for 20 years because you expressed an opinion that someone else did not like. The world can be a crazy place sometimes and it keeps proving that over and over again.

Study Says Panhandlers Do Better Than Workers

A new study that was recently undertaken in the city of Spokane, Washington indicates that being a panhandler may actually be a more lucrative choice in terms of making money than actually doing the old 9-5 jobs in some instances. The report indicated that some successful panhandlers are capable of making somewhere between $30-$40 an hour. Minimun wage in the U.S. right now is about $7 an hour and the average American worker is currently making about $19 an hour. The study also indicated that most panhandlers are not actually homeless as they claim to be and many of them suffer from substance abuse problems and alcohol issues and that very often the money they collect goes towards these ends and also in many instances they have criminal records.

Billionaire Nearly Loses A Billion Betting On Auto Stocks

For most people the name does not ring familiar to them like that of other billionaires like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates and he may not have quite the billions that they have but he has done quite well for himself anyway thanks. His name is Kirk Kerkorian and he is living proof that even the most successful among us do not always get it right. Kerkorian is 91 years old this year. He is president and C.E.O. of his own private holding company called Tracinda Corp. Forbes magazine estimated that his net worth in 2008 was about 18 billion dollars and that placed him at number 41 on the worlds list of richest people. He recently placed his faith in the future of the Ford Motor Company when in the spring of 2006 he bought up about 1 billion dollars worth of the companies stock when the price was hovering between $8 and $9 a share. Well as of this monday the price for a share of Ford stock was fluctuating between $2 and $3. Kerkorian has apparently had enough and is looking to get rid of the stock and is willing to take a loss of about 800 million dollars in the process. This is proof positive that the stock market is a gamble even for the most successful among us and sometimes it can go really badly for even the most experienced investor.

What Really May Have Caused The Hindenburg Disaster

It is one of the most memorable disasters ever to have been captured on film. On May 6th, 1937 The great German airship Hindenburg was reduced from a majestic, soaring collossis hovering peacefully in the sky to a roaring ball of flames crashing into the ground while mooring at a naval air base in lakehurst, New Jersey. The 800 foot airship took less than one minute to destruct and of the 97 aboard (36 passengers and 61 crew) 35 died (13 passengers and 22 crew) leaving 62 survivors. Most people have heard the audio commentary of reporter Herbert Morrisson and his famous exclamation "....Oh The Humanity..." as he witnessed the disaster first hand and was overcome with so much emotion that he could no longer speak.
For decades it has been suspected that the cause of the accident may have been the fact that the airship was filled with a flammable gas called hydrogen instead of the much safer and non-flammable helium with which most airships were inflated. It is well known from the footage of the disaster that when the Hindenburg was attempting to moor it was a rainy day with thunder and lightning booming in the area. The theory goes that perhaps with all the static electricity in the atmosphere on that day that it somehow must have sparked the hydrogen on board the airship and caused it to explode in a fireball. This sequence of events has been accepted ever since the accident occured but in more recent years has been challenged by some scientists and experts and been replaced with other possibilities. One of the more interesting ones is that it was not the hydrogen that caused the explosion that occured but instead may have been the paint that coated the entire surface of the airship. Research has uncovered that the paint that was used to give the Hindenburg its shiny mirror like metallic appearance contained iron oxide which is an ingredient that is used to make rocket fuel in addition to some other chemicals which would have made it extremely flammable. They claim that the proof lies in the footage of the disaster itself. On the tape of the tragedy it can be seen that after the initial spark starts a fire in the tail of the airship that it is the outer surface of the ship that is consumed by flames first and that the flames ran along the outside and spread. That is the part of the ship where the metallic paint was present. If it had been the hydrogen exploding then there would have been additional explosions following the initial one and they would have originated from within the sections of the airship where the hydrogen was stored in its internal tanks. Another fact revealed in the footage is that the Hindenburg was still air born for several seconds while it was being consumed by flames on the outside of the ship which would indicate that the hydrogen inside the internal tanks had not yet caught fire and was still functioning to keep the ship floating above the ground.

The Truth About Botox

We have all seen them on TV by now. The current batch of aging female celebrities mostly who all have that familiar swollen face botox look. Probably the most noticable among them would be people like Meg Ryan and Nicole Kidman but there are in fact a universe of stars who use the drug in an attempt to lessen the wrinkles and laugh lines that appear on ones face as they age and can often be fatal to an actresses movie career. What they may not know is that the drug that they are turning to in order to turn back the hands of time is in fact one of the more seriously dangerous poisons out there.
Botox, (A.K.A. Botulinum toxin) is a neurotoxic protein and a powerful bacteria that can cause sickness and death. It also has the brand names Dysport and Myobloc. It does have the ability to improve the appearance of wrinkles around the eyes and face and because of this has become popular as a cosmetic treatment. The way it reduces wrinkles is by paralizing the muscles underneath the skin at the injection site. When it does this it reduces and diminishes the appearance of laugh lines and frown lines on the face causing a more youthful appearance. The effect is temporary however usually lasting about 4 months or so. After that time the treatment has to be repeated to maintain the desired effect.
There are side effects. Among them are the fact that for some reason the botox treatments may in some cases cause the patient to have droopy eyelids. This usually lasts a few weeks. It also causes Flu like feelings which may last a few weeks as well. Headaches may occur and also upset stomachs. The biggest risk is that of botulism (poisoning). If the doctor injecting the botox is not careful enough and injects too much of the stuff it will lead to a life or death illness known as botox poisoning which when aquired makes it hard for the patient to move their arms or legs (paralasis). Usually however the cause of death in these instances is due to the fact that the patients lungs become effected and they lose their ability to breathe and this causes death. This has occured in some patients in a few reported instances.
A form of botulinum toxin has also been used as a terror weapon in an attempt to kill a large number of people in a rather famous incident of bio-terror in Japan that took place in March of 1995. A religious group that had declared war on the government of Japan went down into the subway of Tokyo and released a poisonous gas that containd a neurotoxin that is related to botulinum toxin. The attack killed 12 people and injured 6000. It could have been much worse. The reason it was not was because the group that lauched the attack failed to properly weaponize (prepare) the neurotoxins and as a result the gas when released into that subway was not nearly as effective as it would have been had it been prepared correctly. Instead of having thousands dead you had thousands who were badly effected but lived. The only people that died were the 12 people who were in the immediate area where the gas was initially released. The U.S. has even studied the possibility of using Botulinum toxin as a chemical weapon for use in war but they abandoned the idea in favor of easier, cheaper, and more proven poisons.

Florida Man Jailed For Neglecting His Front Lawn

Sometimes the neighbors that we end up stuck with can be the biggest problems that we face in life and civic associations can be funny things. Here is a case in point. Recently in Florida a retiree named Joseph Prudente had to spend a night in jail for failing to maintain the front lawn of a house he has been living in for ten years.
In 1998 Prudente retired and moved to florida after buying a home there. Everything has been going well until the recent economic downturn began to effect his family. His step daughter had to move into his house along with her husband and her two kids. Prudente's retirement income has been stretched to the limit while he tries to help feed and clothed his family and so he has been forced to neglect matters such as the front lawn due to a lack of money. A neighborhood watchdog group called The beacon woods civic association which runs around worrying about these kinds of things began to notice that Prudente's front lawn just was not being maintained according to a standard that is set out in a neighborhhod rule book about the maintanance of lawns and property. They sent him a warning letter telling him to resolve the issue or they would take action. Prudente, who did not have the money to resolve the issue ended up having to ignore the lawn and instead opted to use his limited funds to buy things like food for his family and to pay his mortgage. The Civic association once they saw no action being taken on the lawn decided to take him to court. The judge in the case did not want to hear about any of Prudente's problems and ordered him to fix his lawn within 30 days or face the possibility of going to jail. After 30 days Prudente still did not have the money to fix his lawn so he turned himself in and had to spend 1 night in jail.
The matter got resolved by a kind neighbor who came to Prudente's rescue the following day, Andy Law. Mr. Law organized some helpers from the neighborhood and gathered up some supplies and they went to work fixing up Prudente's front lawn. The civic association dropped its complaint against Mr. Prudente the next day and he was released from jail after the lawn had been taken care of to the associations satisfaction.

Species Disappearing At An Excellerated Rate

It is no surprise to anyone that more and more of the world's animal species are going extint but they are doing so at a rate that is faster than in the past. According to The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (I.U.C.N.) They estimate that about 20% of the worlds mammals are now threatened with extinction and that within the next few years the figure could rise to almost 40%. They believe that 1/5th of all mammals, 1/7th of all birds, and 1/3rd of all amphibians are all threatened in a serious way with extinction in the next several years. Their research covered a five year span and cullled data from over 1700 scientists around the world to shape their findings and conclusions. They believe that almost 1200 species are at risk to some degree or other but that about 200 of those are seriously at risk and they consider them critically endangered. The biggest reasons according to the I.U.C.N. is the loss of habitat due to the encroachment of man and also to a lesser degree hunting.

Election To Decide Future Of Supreme Court

The presidential election that is set to take place in just over 3 weeks from now will have a big impact not only on the direction that the country is going to take politically for the next 4 to 8 years but it will be big in determining the future bent of the Supreme court for decades to come. The current make up of the Court has a heavy lean to the right with 7 of the current 9 justices having been appointed by republican presidents. Only 2 of the current justices serving were appointed by a president who was a democrat, Bill Clinton. Currently 6 of the 9 justices who are serving on the court are 70 years old or over (well one of the six i counted is 69, David Souter) If John McCain prevails in the November election it is possible that during his term he could appoint enough new justices to actually turn the entire court conservative. The court would in effect have a total lean to the right and this would be the case for decades likely since the appointees are set in place for life. Below is a list of the current make up of the Supreme Court. It lists each member of the court, the year they were appointed, the president who appointed them, and their current age:

John Roberts -------2006--- Bush Jr.--------- 53 years old
Samuel Alito --------2006----Bush Jr.---------58 years old
Steven Breyer------ 1994---- Clinton----------70 years old
Ruth Ginsburg------1993---- Clinton---------- 75 years old
Anthony Kennedy---1988---- Reagan----------72 years old
Antonin Scalia------1986---- Reagan--------- 72 years old
David Souter--------1990---- Bush Sr.-------- 69 years old
John Paul Stevens--1975-----Ford------------ 88 years old
Clerence Thomas---1990---- Bush Sr.-------- 60 years old

Post script - On August 8th, 2009 the newest Supreme Court Justice was placed on the court. Sonia Sotomayor was appointed by President Obama in May of 2009 after Justice David Souter announced his desire to retire from the court by the end of June 2009. Sotomayor is 55 years old.

Golden Gate Bridge To Get Suicide Net

On Friday October 10th Officials in charge of The Golden Gate Bridge In San Francisco voted overwhelmingly in a vote 14-1 to build a net on the bridge that will prevent people from jumping off to their deaths. The Golden Gate Bridge was opened in 1937. It was built in the middle of the Great Depression and ever since it was opened to the public it has attracted some people who have used the bridge as a suicide machine. In the 70 years that the bridge has existed there have been over 1200 people who have jumped from the span to their deaths. So far in 2008 there have been 19. In all of 2007 a total of 38 have died this way. The estimated cost of the project will be somewhere between 40-50 million dollars. Officials considered several plans including doing nothing but settled on a net that will be placed about 20 feet below the walkway where most of the jumpers usually jump from. A similar net idea was considered both in the 1970's and then again in the 1990's but in the end both times nothing was done.

A Simple New Weapon In The Fight Against S.I.D.S.

Doctors are saying that there is a new way to fight the tragedy of S.I.D.S. (sudden Infant death syndrome) and the weapon that you need to fight it with you probably already have in your home. A new study has indicated that running a simple fan in the room where your baby is sleeping will reduce the risk of an occurance of S.I.D.S. by over 70%. The reason for this doctors believe is that fans may prevent an infant from breathing in exhaled carbon dioxide simply by circulating and recirculating the air in the room. Doctors suspect that one of the reasons for the occurance of S.I.D.S. is that infants become oxygen deprived while they are sleeping. They also advise parents to place their infants on their back when they put them in their beds to sleep. Children sleeping on their stomachs is not advised. Having children sleeping on their backs is believed to have cut the number of S.I.D.S. deaths in the United States in half as a practice on its own over the last 15 years.

CEO Knocked Out After Announcing Bankruptcy

It seems that some people are getting a little bit punchy about the bad economy and the meltdown that is currently under way on wall street. Lehman Brothers Chief executive officer Dick Fuld could probably attest to this in a seriously personal way. After having announced the bankruptcy of a company that he has headed for nearly 25 years last Friday on that following sunday he was working out in the companies Gymnasium when suddenly another man in the gym who was weight lifting came over to him and knocked him out. Fuld was on a treadmill and attatched to a heart monitor when the incident happened and according to some sources that are high up in the company was knocked out cold.
Lehman brothers is heavily involved in the current sub prime mortgage mess that is effecting many companies these days. They were the biggest underwriter of subprime debt in 2006 and the nations 4th largest investment bank overall. Despite the poor performance over the last few years Fuld still was paid $22 million in 2007 and handed a bunch of restricted stock that totaled $41 million. The person doing the knocking out was apparently someone who has suffered losses due to Fuld's mismanagement of the company.

Sarah Palin --- Book Banner

Some people who never heard of Sarah Palin's name until a couple of months ago are now beginning to understand her a lot more than they did and their initial enthusiasum about her is beginning to wain a little bit. Her near disasterous interview with CBS new anchor woman Katie Couric has shed some real light on just how little she is prepared to handle the job of even vice president let alone president should the 73 year old John McCain be elected and fail to live to the end of his term in office. Even when she tries to take a shot at her democratic counter part for V.P. Joe Biden by claiming that he is too old and says things like "I remember some of his speaches from when i was in grade school" it came back to bite her because every news person after the remark came up to her to remind her that the person that she is running with on her ticket is the oldest candidate ever to run for the office. John McCain is even older than Ronald Reagan was when he was elected to his first term in 1980. Few people however know about Sarah Palin the book banner. When she first became mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska (population 6000) one of the very first things she did was run out to the town library and ask the librarian who worked there how she could begin to go about banning certain books that she objected to that were on the shelves of the library. The librarian responded back to her with an incredulous look and informed her that they dont ban books here. She proceeded to have her fired. That whole incident too ended up blowing up in her face and she eventually had to have the said librarian returned to her job.
It can make you wonder about how well informed she is about the contents of the Constitution. I would refer her to The Bill Of Rights. Its the first amendment, that refers to freedom of speech among other freedoms. It was the intent of the founding fathers that anyone be free to say and write anything in this country and that it would be up to any individual listening or reading it to determine whether or not they believed it or thought it was valid. They never meant for any politician or government official to ban any type of speech ever. This was one of the reasons the Revolution was fought. 230 years later why is it that this kind of stuff is still around? Because people like Sarah Palin are still around who dont get it all these centuries later. The Nazi's used to ban books and burn them not the Founding Fathers. People like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were too intellectually curious for that kind of nonsense.

Gun Crazy In The U.S.A.

The love affair that has been going on between Americans and their guns has been both a crazy and a long standing one. The United States by far is the country that has the most firearms per person and some of the weakest restrictions to owning guns. It is no wonder in light of these facts that for a long time the United States had the highest murder rates in the world and those rates while they have fallen over the last years still remain high relative to the rates of other countries in the world that are not so "gun Crazy." Here below is a list of the top 5 countries for gun ownership in the world. You will notice that the U.S. is far and away first on the list.

1. U.S. ---------- 89 guns per 100 civilians
2. Yemen ------- 55 guns per 100 civilians
3. Switzerland --46 guns per 100 civilians
4. Finland ------ 45 guns per 100 civilians
5. Serbia ------- 38 guns per 100 civilians

Another Marine Rapes A Japanese Girl This Year

The young women of Okinawa and their families live with a special kind of fear due to the presence of U.S. servicemen there and rightly so. Earlier this year another U.S. marine stationed there raped an underage girl. It is not the first time. On february 10th, 2008 Staff Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38 stationed at camp Courtney in Okinawa raped a 14 year old japanese girl who lived in a nearby town. The case brings to mind a similar incident that took place in 1995 when in which 3 U.S. servicemen basically "gang banged" a 12 year old japanese girl. The incident back then caused horror and outrage among the people of Japan and actually strained relations between the two countries for a while. This time as well the same effect has resulted. The women of Okinawa actually wrote a letter to President George W. Bush in protest. In the letter they demanded U.S. withdrawal from Okinawa claiming the the U.S. servicemen stationed there posed a threat to the safety of their children and are a constant source of fear for them.

Student Goes On Shooting Spree In Finland

We in the United States have had so many school shootings in our country by now that we are all numb to it and have accepted it as a new reality but sometimes these shootings go on overseas in other countries as well. In Finland a 22 year old student went on a shooting spree at a trade school that he attended in the town of Kauhajoki which is about a little less than 200 miles northwest of Helsinki which is the capitol. His attack on the school took the lives of 11 people in total before he died himself. This is the second killing spree that has taken place at a school in Finland since last November when 9 students were killed in a similar attack. Both Incidents have factors that are in common. The most striking of which is that each individual attacker before each incident had uploaded a video onto the website You Tube that was ominous and threatening in its tone. In this latest case the shooter, Matti Juhani Saari had actually been interviewed by police before the attack and questioned about the video and the threats that it contained. After questioning he was released.