| Prior Date | Archive Index | Next Date |
|
WITandWISDOM(tm) - March 25, 2002 ISSN 1538-8794 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "Home is the place where the great are small and the small are great." - Glen Wheeler Source: Heart Touchers, http://storiesfrommyheart.com/home_page Subjects: Home, Importance ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: Johnny Fulton was run over by a car at the age of three. He suffered crushed hips, broken ribs, a fractured skull, and compound fractures in his legs. It did not look as if he would live. But he would not give up. In fact, he later ran the half-mile in less than two minutes. Walt Davis was totally paralyzed by polio when he was nine years old, but he did not give up. He became the Olympic high jump champion in 1952. Shelly Mann was paralyzed by polio when she was five years old, but she would not give up. She eventually claimed eight different swimming records for the U.S. and won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. In 1938, Karoly Takacs, a member of Hungary's world-champion pistol shooting team and sergeant in the army, lost his right hand when a grenade he was holding exploded. But Takacs did not give. up. He learned to shoot left-handed and won gold medals in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. Lou Gehrig was such a clumsy ball player that the boys in his neighborhood would not let him play on their team. But he was committed. He did not give up. Eventually, his name was entered into baseball's Hall of Fame. Woodrow Wilson could not read until he was ten years old. But he was a committed person. He became the twenty-eighth President of the United States. From: Heaven-Bound Living: Light for the Journey, By Staton, Knofel, Published by Standard Pub (Jan 1, 1989), ISBN: 087403485X, http://isbn.nu/087403485X Source: My Daily Dose of Inspiration, http://www.quietstones.com/mydailydose Subjects: Handicaps, Olympics, Perseverence ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: Melanie Oswalt, 24 and three others were passengers on a Cape Air Cessna 402 flight from Martha's Vineyard to Hyannis. The plane had gone off-course and descended to just 300 feet. One, Roger Carchrie-Feltus, was so scared that he called his wife on his mobile phone and told her: "We're going to end up in the Atlantic Ocean or a tree somewhere," before it went dead. Melanie Oswalt had never flown anything as complicated as the Cape Air Cessna 402 before and had never flown alone. She never flown a plane with landing gear before and did not know how to bring down the wheels. Melanie took over the controls after the pilot passed out. She could not contact ground staff over the radio and her mobile phone went dead before she began the landing procedure. She brought the plane up to about 1,000 feet, then headed to Provincetown's unmanned airport, putting the plane down on its belly for a bumpy but safe landing. The pilot was taken to hospital and his condition is still unknown. Michelle Haynes, spokeswoman for Cape Air, said: "She just took over. It was like something out of one of those airplane movies. You always think, 'What if I had to take over the controls?' She did." As a reward, Ms Haynes said, Ms Oswalt will be given free lessons by Cape Air, with the hope that she'll become a licensed pilot one day. The passengers on board will also be offered free flights, she said. Adapted from: WhiteBoard News for February 11, 2002, http://www.joeha.com/whiteboard Subjects: Pilots ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: A 4-year-old son was eating an apple in the back seat of the car, when he asked, "Daddy, why is my apple turning brown?" "Because," his dad explained, "after you ate the skin off, the meat of the apple came into contact with the air, which caused it to oxidize, thus changing the molecular structure and turning it into a different color." There was a long silence. Then the boy asked, "Daddy, are you talking to me? Source: Clean Laffs, http://www.shagmail.com/sub/sub-jokes.html Subjects: Apples, Explanations ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: Get Your Tickets Early. By 2010 California expects to have a 92-mile stretch of MAGLEV roadbed over which it will run trains to 240 mph. http://www.calmaglev.org/page10.php?page=10 Source : Cool and New, http://thepocket.com/ Subjects: Trains, Speed |