The Sun in 3D!

View image with 3D Glasses

April 23, 2007 — Break out those 3-D glasses and get ready to see the sun in a whole new light.

NASA released the first three-dimensional images of the sun ever compiled, a feat made possible by the agency's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft.

Like a person's two eyes providing depth perception, the two spacecraft orbit the sun at a set distance from each other to offer a stereo view.

"The improvement with STEREO's 3-D view is like going from a regular x-ray to a 3-D CAT scan in the medical field," Michael Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a press release.

Until now, 2-D images of our star (such as the one at top) have allowed scientists to see the sun's weather, but the flat views made it difficult to decipher the exact motion of solar eruptions and the distance they spanned.

Understanding the sun's physics is critical, scientists say, because especially strong events called coronal mass ejections create radiation storms that can disrupt satellites and radio communications and can even knock out power grids on Earth.

The new 3-D images (such as the one at bottom) will help researchers better track these ejections—like meteorologists tracking hurricanes—and thus predict when and where violent storms are headed.

"Previous imagery did not show the front of a solar disturbance as it traveled toward Earth, so we had to make estimates of when the storm would arrive," STEREO investigator Russell Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory told Space.com.

"These estimates were uncertain by a day or so. With STEREO, we can track the front from the sun all the way to Earth and forecast its arrival within a couple hours."

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

I broke out an old pair of 3D glasses and checked out the images... AWESOME! These satellites have delivered more than I expected they would when they were launched last year!

I'd be very interested to see images of Earth if they would develop Earth Stereo satellites!

Be sure to check out all of the Stereo images at the NASA website.

Gun Control???

The police might arrive in time to call for the clean-up crew.
A quicker response is required to ensure the corpse isn't you!

"We have created a shopping list for madmen! If guns are the problem, why don't we see things occurring at skeet and trap shoots, at rifle and pistol ranges, at gun shows, at NRA conventions? We only see it where guns aren't allowed. The sign of a gun with a slash through it is like a neon sign for gunmen, 'We're unarmed. Come kill us.' "

-Suzanna Hupp, Texas State Representative

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy.
It is our job to see that it stays there.

-George Orwell

I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness,
nor the arrow for its swiftness,
nor the warrior for his glory.
I love only that which they defend.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Jan. 31, 2006 - A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the Virginia General Assembly.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Last spring a Virginia Tech student was disciplined for bringing a handgun to class, despite having a concealed handgun permit. Some gun owners questioned the university's authority, while the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police came out against the presence of guns on campus.

Check out the Roanoke Times article.

It's sad how quickly a terrible tragedy such as this is exploited by the anti-gun politicians. They sight mass killings as the reason for the need of a new gun ban! They don't mention that guns were already banned on the Virginia Tech campus and that shooting people is already 'banned' by Federal law. It seems that criminals don't pay attention to the laws... imagine that!

So, if criminals do not acknowledge or obey the law, what could possibly come of a new gun ban?... Why, the disarming of your average law-abiding citizen, of course! The conversion from armed citizen to helpless victim - totally dependent on the government for protection of life, liberty and property.

Yeah, I'm going to depend on the local cops to be my family's personal bodyguards. Maybe they'll arrive 15 minutes later to fill out the paperwork and call the coroner, while some thug is miles away with my TV.

I don't think so... we don't need more government control!

It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!

If you're interested in preserving your 2nd amendment rights, contact your State Representatives and sign this Online Petition against HR-1022!

Check out this article: Gun Control: Myths and Realities.

Check out this article: Self Defense: Common or Rare?.

Read about Texas State Representative Suzanna Hupp's first-hand encounter with mass murder, and how she is forever changed by it.

Join the NRA!

The Pirate of the Pacific

62nd Anniversary of Kamikaze Attack on the USS Kidd

A vessel docked on the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge was flooded with heartfelt stories of courage and spirit Wednesday.

A gun salute marked memorial services for the 62nd anniversary of the kamikaze attack off Okinawa by a Japanese aircraft against the USS Kidd.

Since that time, shipmates have gathered each year, first at a small church in Massachusetts and now aboard their former vessel that's docked in Baton Rouge.

William Barnhouse, who travels from Albuquerque each year to honor his crew members' memories, says, "It's just like it was yesterday. It's as clear in my mind as the day the airplane hit."

38 crew members were lost and 75 wounded aboard the USS Kidd April 11, 1945.

Check out the article at WAFB.com.

USS Kidd (DD-661), a Fletcher-class destroyer, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, who died on the bridge of his flagship USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Admiral Kidd was the first flag officer to die during World War II.

Kidd (DD-661) was launched 28 February 1943 by Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Kearny, NJ; sponsored by Mrs. Isaac C. Kidd, widow of Rear Admiral Kidd, and commissioned 23 April 1943, Commander Allan Roby in command.

During her initial cruise to the Brooklyn Naval Shipyards, she sailed across New York Harbor flying the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger on the foremast. Subsequently, during outfitting, her crew adopted the pirate captain William Kidd as their mascot, and commissioned a local artist to paint a pirate figure on the forward smokestack.

Check out the article at Wikipedia.

It's great to have the opportunity to visit such an amazing piece of history! I never get tired of spending a day, or night, on board - imagining what it was like on the open ocean, never knowing when a wave of Japanese planes were going to appear over the horizon. It makes me realize how lucky I am to live in this place and time, and it reminds me even more of the sacrifices our countrymen have made for us.

I encourage you to come to Baton Rouge and walk the decks of the KIDD in person. See the aircraft that soared through the skies of Southeast Asia during two eras of conflict. Examine the dented helmet of an infantryman who stormed the beaches of Normandy. Touch the names of the fallen Americans whose names are carved into the black granite walls of the Louisiana Memorial Plaza... you won't be the same afterward.

Be sure to check out the USS Kidd Veterans Memorial website.

Happy Easter!

Easter is the annual festival commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the principal feast of the Christian year. It is celebrated on a Sunday on varying dates between March 22 and April 25 and is therefore called a movable feast. The dates of several other ecclesiastical festivals, extending over a period between Septuagesima Sunday (the ninth Sunday before Easter) and the first Sunday of Advent, are fixed in relation to the date of Easter.

Connected with the observance of Easter are the 40-day penitential season of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday and concluding at midnight on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday; Holy Week, commencing on Palm Sunday, including Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion, and terminating with Holy Saturday; and the Octave of Easter, extending from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday. During the Octave of Easter in early Christian times, the newly baptized wore white garments, white being the liturgical color of Easter and signifying light, purity, and joy.

The Christian festival of Easter probably embodies a number of converging traditions; most scholars emphasize the original relation of Easter to the Jewish festival of Passover, or Pesach, from which is derived Pasch, another name for Easter. The early Christians, many of whom were of Jewish origin, were brought up in the Hebrew tradition and regarded Easter as a new feature of the Passover festival, a commemoration of the advent of the Messiah as foretold by the prophets.

Check out the article at The History Channel.

Easter is more than chocolate, eggs and bunnies. Remember the orgins of the holiday, and have a Happy Easter!

Twin Sunset

The latest data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that the universe might be brimming with planets that have two suns like the desert world that Luke Skywalker called home.

More than half of all known star systems are binaries, with twin stars locked in a gravitational dance, NASA scientists say.

The new data show that dusty disks of debris that could be indicators of planet formation are just as abundant around binaries as they are around single stars.

"There could be countless planets out there with two or more suns," lead study author David Trilling of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a press release.

Twin Suns

Existing techniques for looking directly for planets don't work very well when searching around binary stars.

Normally, planet hunters look for the so-called Doppler wobble as evidence of a planet's gravity tugging on its host star.

"But everything in a binary system is more complicated," Trilling told National Geographic News.

That's because, in addition to any planets in orbit, both stars are tugging on each other, he said. Each star's effect on the other would be great enough to mask the planet's effect.

So Trilling's team used Spitzer's infrared cameras to scan for planetary disks instead.

"Spitzer is very good at detecting emitted thermal radiation from dust," Trilling said. "When we're searching for the dust disks, we're looking at a wavelength at which the stars are faint but the dust is bright."

Of the 69 binary systems the team studied, 40 percent were shown to have these dusty disks, meaning they could very well have planets in orbit.

Tatooine Plausible

Astronomers had previously found that planetary disks exist in binary systems where the twin stars are very far apart from each other—about a hundred times farther apart than the distance between Earth and the sun.

Nearly 200 planets outside our solar system have been discovered so far with the wobble technique. About a quarter orbit one star in a binary system.

The latest project focused on binary stars that are much closer together—less than 500 times the distance between Earth and the sun.

What really astonished astronomers was that 60 percent of the tightly circling twin stars they saw had dusty disks—a setup that could create a scene like the Tatooine sunset in Star Wars.

Check out the article at National Geographic.

That would be quite a sight! Imagine how bad global warming would be with 2 suns!

It's amazing how binary star systems work! For more information, check out the Binary Star article at Wikipedia.

Lady Tigers Four-for-Four

LSU Women's Basketball Team
taking their fourth Final Four trip in four years!

FRESNO, Calif. — There had been three prior trips for the LSU basketball team, but never like this, to reach the game’s Holy Grail.

Faced with having to conquer one of the game’s most preeminent programs — Connecticut — to return to the Women’s Final Four, the Lady Tigers enjoyed arguably their finest moment in three decades as a program.

Third-seeded LSU made it look rather easy behind West Regional most outstanding player Sylvia Fowles, leading by double-digits at halftime and pulling away during crunch time for a dominating 73-50 victory Monday over top-seeded UConn for the regional championship before 3,046 at Fresno State’s Save Mart Arena.

“We’ve done a lot of great things here at LSU,” LSU acting head coach Bob Starkey said. “We’ve gone to Finals Fours and won SEC championships, but the thing we haven’t done is beaten Connecticut. And that’s important in women’s college basketball because that’s where they are, that’s who they are. They’re one of those marquee programs.”

LSU (30-7) continues its nation’s best streak, reaching its fourth consecutive Final Four.

The Lady Tigers will face Rutgers on Sunday in Cleveland.

Rutgers, a No. 3 seed, beat fourth-seeded Arizona State 64-45 in the final of the Greensboro, N.C. Regional.

“They believed they would come out and do it,” Starkey said. “They were focused. I had a real good feeling coming in, though UConn is a very good team.”

Fowles scored a game-high 23 points, part of a group scoring effort for LSU, which shot 52.2 percent in the second half and 48.1 percent for the game. The 6-foot-6 junior center also grabbed 15 rebounds, blocked six shots and had three steals.

“We were just thinking about taking it possession by possession,” Fowles said. “They went on their little runs and we had our runs. Then after halftime we talked about coming out with a bang after losing to them at our house. We wanted to let it be known early that we were ready.”

LSU, which had its 43-game home-court win streak snapped by UConn on Feb. 11, also denied the Huskies (32-4) their ninth Final Four trip and first in three years.

“I felt good about the way we played and certainly the game was closer than the final score,” Starkey said. “They started fouling at the end and that created a little more separation. But from start to finish, that’s about as well as we played this year.”

“This game was important for me and my teammates,” Fowles said. “We were ready to go out there — as a team. This was special because our team just came together. We feel really good about ourselves.”

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Congratulations Lady Tigers! Good luck in Cleveland!

Follow all of the Final Four action at LSU Sports or NCAA Sports.

Space-Plane Travel

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism venture of billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, is the first step toward hypersonic travel between Earth-based cities, according to a company executive.

Hypersonic speeds are greater than five times the speed of sound. An aircraft flying that fast could theoretically reach London from New York in less than an hour.

Virgin Galactic's space flights will accustom passengers to flying at the extreme altitudes likely necessary for hypersonic travel, said Alex Tai, the venture's chief operating officer.

"The experiential rides that we're providing with Virgin Galactic are the first rung, or the stepping stone, for us to use space for other activities," Tai said.

"And the first one of those we'd like to look at is point-to-point travel on the planet," he continued.

The venture will explore the possibility of hypersonic travel as part of a memorandum of understanding it signed last month with the U.S. space agency NASA.

"If Virgin's going to go off and build a high-speed transoceanic passenger service craft of some sort, NASA's of course very interested," said Dan Coughlin, NASA's lead for the Virgin Galactic agreement at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Unique Skills

In 2004 NASA twice flew a demonstration vehicle successfully at hypersonic speeds. Since the demonstration flights, NASA researchers have continued to hone their engineering tools, but budget cuts and other priorities have put plans to build a hypersonic space plane on the back burner.

Nevertheless, "NASA has unique capability and unique engineering skills and facilities that we've developed over 40 or 50 years that could benefit Virgin," Coughlin said.

According to Tai, Virgin Galactic sees that benefit. The collaboration with NASA will allow the venture to tap the agency's engineering prowess to assess the feasibility of a hypersonic passenger service.

"We can't do it ourselves, so we've gone to the experts in the world, which are NASA," Tai said.

Virgin Galactic plans to take customers into space aboard SpaceShipTwo beginning in 2009. The round-trip flights will take off from Mojave. Tickets cost U.S. $200,000.

The two-and-a-half-hour trip, according to Tai, will accustom civilians to space travel much in the same way pilots returning from World War I accustomed civilians to air travel.

World War I pilots went from town to town taking people up for joy rides in their planes as a way to kick-start the airline industry, he said.

Virgin Galactic's spaceflights will also give passengers "an appreciation for the fragility of the Earth and a fantastic view," Tai noted.

"But the long-term goal—going from A to B—is probably where the larger market is," he added.

Check out the article at National Geographic.

I can't wait to book a seat on that flight! Just imagine the photo opportunities!

For more information on this awesome technology, check out A Closer Look at the X-43 Mission and X-43a Raises the Bar to Mach 9.6.

Of course, there are always military implications when dealing with technology such as this, check out my blog entry: Hypersonic Cruise Missile.

Water on Mars!

Mars's southern polar ice cap contains enough water to cover the entire planet approximately 36 feet (11 meters) deep if melted, according to a new radar study.

It's the most precise calculation yet for the thickness of the red planet's ice, according to the international team of researchers responsible for the discovery.

Using an ice-penetrating radar to map the south pole's underlying terrain, the scientists calculated that the ice is up to 2.2 miles (3,500 meters) thick in places, said the study's leader, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The radar, from the Mars Express orbiter, also revealed the surprising purity of the ice, Plaut added.

On average, the ice cap contained less than 10 percent dust, he said. The study will appear in the March 16, 2007 issue of the journal Science.

A Solid Find

The polar ice cap may also contain some frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, Plaut said. But there can't be much of it, because such a thick layer of dry ice would start to ooze sideways under its own weight.

"Only water ice could support itself that way," Plaut said.

Check out the article at National Geographic.

Amazing discovery! All of that water is sure to benefit future manned missions to Mars.

Vicarious

Tool - Vicarious

Eye on the TV
Cause tragedy thrills me
Whatever flavor
It happens to be

Like:
"Killed by the husband"
"Drowned by the ocean"
"Shot by his own son"
"She used a poison in his tea
and kissed him goodbye"
That's my kind of story.
It's no fun 'til someone dies

Don't look at me like
I am a monster
Frown out your one face
But with the other
Stare like a junkie
Into the TV
Stare like a zombie
While the mother holds her child,
Watches him die
Hands to the sky crying,
"Why, oh why?!"

Cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
Vicariously, I Live
while the whole world dies
You all need it too - don't lie.

Why can't we just admit it?
Why can't we just admit?
We won't give pause until the blood is flowin'
Neither the brave nor bold
Will write as the stories told
We won't give pause until the blood is flowin'

I need to watch things die
From a good safe distance
Vicariously, I Live
while the whole world dies
You all feel the same so
Why can't we just admit it?

Blood like rain, come down
Drawn on grave and ground

Part vampire
Part warrior
Carnivore and voyeur
Stare at the transmitter
Synched to the death rattle...

Credulous at best
Your desire to believe in
Angels in the hearts of men.
Pull your head on out
Your head please and give a listen,
Shouldn't have to say it all again.

The universe is hostile
So impersonal
Devour to survive
So it is, so it's always been...

We all feed on tragedy
It's like blood to a vampire

Vicariously, I Live
while the whole world dies
Much better you than I.

Check out the Official Tool website and the Tool Wikipedia page.

There's something about these song lyrics that really hit home. They describe our news-media-mentality society accurately, where people feed off of bad news on TV.

I'll admit it... no news story grabs my attention more than a tragedy. Not to say that I enjoy tragedy, but then what exactly is it that draws me in?

Is it concern and compassion for fellow man? Not likely.

Is it a carnal desire to witness terrible things happening? Deep down, maybe so.

Is it the fear factor of the unknown... a way for us to feel alive and maybe get a glimpse of our inevitable future? Who knows?

Whatever the reason, this is a kick-ass song from the new Tool album: 10,000 Days.

Top 10 F/X Scenes in Movie History

1. STAR WARS (1977)

Motion-control photography, in which a computer is used to control a long, complex series of camera movements, made possible the spaceship battles in Star Wars. It would have taken too long to film the scenes manually, says Anne Thompson, deputy film editor at The Hollywood Reporter.

2. TRON (1982)

It wasn't the first film to use computer-generated (CG) graphics (and many effects were hand-drawn) but the sci-fi video-game fantasy flick Tron was the first to use computer imagery to create a 3D world, making it one of the pioneering CGI films. "Effects people said, 'Let's see what the computer can do,'" says Harry Knowles, movie critic at Ain't It Cool News.

3. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

"Morphing" was first used in Willow (1988), but in T2 the effect was "jaw-dropping," Knowles says. The liquid-metal robot's humanoid texture, which was layered onto a CG model, looked frighteningly real.

4. CLIFFHANGER (1993)

Faux alpinist Sly Stallone was held up by wires that were later digitally removed. The ability to erase wires changed how stunts are done: Now stars and stuntmen can be put in real-world environments as well as in front of green screens.

5. JURASSIC PARK (1993)

Although they enjoyed only about 6 minutes of screen time, Jurassic Park's digital dinos were a revelation: They introduced CGI live animals with realistic movements, and believably textured muscles and skin. The photorealisitic digital elements were intercut with animatronic dinosaurs.

6. FORREST GUMP (1994)

While most filmmakers in the early '90s used digital effects to create fantasy, the creators of Forrest Gump altered history. Using Kodak's Cineon system, they digitized archival footage, and composited Tom Hanks's character into historical clips.

7. THE PERFECT STORM (2000)

Although much previous work had been done to make CGI water look real, The Perfect Storm's monster wave scene set a new benchmark. "Water is an organic thing that's hard to create in software," says Andy Maltz of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. "To make it look believable was a big thing."

8. LORD OF THE RINGS (2001)

For the huge battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the filmmakers created Massive, a computer program that generates crowds of artificially intelligent individuals "who make their own decisions based on behavior patterns," Knowles says. This makes for more realistic battles.

9. THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004)

Director Robert Zemeckis used a large motion-capture stage and up to 200 cameras to gather data from the performance of Tom Hanks and other actors. This data was used to help animators create digital versions of the actors while maintaining their performances.

10. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)

The creators of the film about worldwide climatic disaster took more than 50,000 photos of New York City and scanned them into a computer, providing "a 3D, photorealistic model of the city," Thompson says. After that, destroying the metropolis with a giant digital wave was a piece of cake.

Check out the article at Popular Mechanics.

That's a pretty good list, but I think they're missing a couple of notable films, such as The Matrix and Back to the Future.

Congratulations David St. Romain!

Baton Rouge singer-songwriter David St. Romain survived to the final night of the USA Network’s “Nashville Star” talent competition but ultimately didn’t take the show’s top spot.

St. Romain placed third behind first-place winner Angela Hacker, a 29-year-old single mother from Muscle Shoals, Ala. Hacker’s brother, Zac, a 23-year-old singer from LaGrange, Ala., was runner-up.

Viewers voted for the winner of the fifth season of “Nashville Star,” the country music equivalent of “American Idol.” St. Romain and the Hackers were the final three of 10 finalists picked from 20,000 hopefuls.

Co-host Cowboy Troy announced St. Romain’s third-place finish less than 15 minutes into the program.

Afterward, co-host Jewel called St. Romain to her side.

“What’s going through your mind right now?” she asked.

“Well, first off, I don’t feel at all empty handed,” St. Romain said. “I feel very honored and blessed to be here. So, thank you to America for voting me this far into the show.”

“Will you sing one more time?” Jewel asked. “What do you say, David?”

“I’ll definitely do it for you,” St. Romain said. “Come on!”

St. Romain sang an encore of a song he performed earlier in the series, the Pat Green hit, “Wave On Wave.” The performance drew one more round of praise from judges Randy Owen, Blake Shelton and Anastasia Brown.

“You know, David,” Owen said, “I told you at the first show you had your priorities in right place — you still do.”

Jewel had kind words for St. Romain, too. “You’re one of my favorites,” she said.

In a New York Times story about “Nashville Star” that appeared Feb. 25, St. Romain was cited as perhaps the show’s most well-rounded entertainer. The Times also mentioned his smoky, R&B-flavored voice.

“Nashville Star” winner Angela Hacker will receive a recording deal with Warner Bros. Nashville. St. Romain’s “Nashville Star” momentum should help him get a record deal as well. He’ll also appear with the show’s top four finalists in the upcoming “Nashville Star” tour.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Congrats on making it to the final show, David!

David St. Romain is a talented artist who definitely deserved to get as far as he did on Nashville Star... and deserves to go a helluva lot further in his career. In addition to being a great performer with an awesome voice, he has a positive outlook on life... which is reflected in his music. Check out his work!

My only complaint is that the 2007 Nashville Star Tour won't be coming anywhere near Louisiana. You'd think that they would at least make a stop in the hometown of each of the singers on the tour, since it's a guaranteed sell out – they'd sell out 3 or 4 shows here in Baton Rouge. Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait until he breaks out on his own tour... I'll be the first in line!

Be sure to check out the Official David St. Romain website.

Two Great Stories

STORY NUMBER ONE

Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn't famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.

Capone had a lawyer nicknamed "Easy Eddie." He was his lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie's skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.

Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him. Eddie did have one soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly.

Eddie saw to it that his young son had clothes, cars, and a good education. Nothing was withheld. Price was no object. And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was. Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he could not give his son; he could not pass on a good name or a good example.

One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done. He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al "Scarface" Capone, clean up his tarnished name, and offer his son some semblance of integrity.

To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great. So, he testified.

Within the year, Easy Eddie's life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street . But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he could ever pay. Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine. The poem read:

The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in time.
For the clock may soon be still.

STORY NUMBER TWO

World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare. He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific. One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission.

After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank.

He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship. His flight leader told him to return to the carrier. Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet.

As he was returning to the mother ship he saw something that turned his blood cold: a squadron of Japanese aircraft were speeding their way toward the American fleet. The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless. He could not reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger.

There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet. Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes.

Wing-mounted 50 caliber's blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another.

Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent.

Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible and rendering them unfit to fly. Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction.

Deeply relieved, Butch O'Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier.

Upon arrival, he reported in and related the event surrounding his return.

The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch's daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had, in fact, destroyed five enemy aircraft.

This took place on February 20, 1942, and for that action Butch became the Navy's first Ace of WWII, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29.

His home town would not allow the memory of this WWII hero to fade, and today, O'Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man.

So, the next time you find yourself at O'Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch's memorial displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It is located between Terminals 1 and 2.

SO WHAT DO THESE TWO STORIES HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?

Butch O'Hare was "Easy Eddie's" son.

Check out the article at Truth or Fiction.

Amazing stories! That took some real balls and self-sacrifice... on both of their parts.