Showing posts with label hero. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hero. Show all posts

November 7 – Railroader Day in Mexico

Posted on November 7, 2017


This is a very sad story, but it is the story of a hero. A man died to save many, so the least we can do is to keep his
name known and retell his story of heroism.

Once upon a time a Mexican teen named Jesús García Corona got a job in railroads with Moctezuma Copper Company. Since he was only 17, he worked at the lowest level, as a waterboy.

But García worked hard and got a promotion to switchman, and then eventually to brakeman.

When he was 25 years old, García was resting at one of the train tracks, at the town of Nacozari, Sonora, in Mexico. But then he saw that some hay on the roof of one of the railroad cars had caught fire - apparently the locomotive's firebox was failing, and some sparks were coming out of the locomotive's smokestack!

But the railroad car that was a bit on fire was filled with dynamite!! Once the dynamite caught fire, there was going to be a huge explosion!

The whole town was in danger!

García ran to the train and drove it full-speed, in reverse, down a hill and away from town. He was able to get the train six kilometers (a bit more than 3 and a half miles) away from town before the car exploded. Of course, García died in the explosion, but he died while saving the entire town.


In García's honor, a statue was raised to "the hero of Nacozari," and the name of the town was actually changed to Nacozari de García. García's sacrifice has been celebrated all through Mexico, with many streets, plazas, and schools - plus a sports stadium - named for him, a ballad written about him, and the day of his heroic death celebrated by railroad workers in his honor.



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June 9 – National Heroes' Day in Uganda

Posted on June 9, 2016

I read that National Heroes' Day is actually quite divisive for Ugandans. Everyone seems to disagree about who should be recognized as heroes! 

Officially, the day seems to have been created to celebrate people who fought and died in the civil war, but since both sides of the war committed horrible crimes, it's hard for many to celebrate fallen soldiers. Some people want to celebrate non-soldiers such as the Ugandan doctor who detected a deadly Ebola outbreak and was able to institute a quarantine that stopped its spread.

Yeah, I agree! Let's celebrate that guy (or gal)!

Actually, I was unable to discover the doctor's name. So let's check out a few other Ugandan heroes:


Stephen Kiprotich is the reigning Olympic marathon champion,
having won the gold medal in the 2012 London Summer Olympics.
He also won gold at the 2013 World Championships.

John Akii Bua was the first Olympic champion from
his country. He ran the hurdles.
Chameleone is one of the most popular Ugandan musicians,
and he sings in Luganda, English, and Swahili.
His popularity has spread to other nations, and so
he is responsible for spreading consciousness of and
appreciation for Ugandan folk music and AfroBeat.

Mildred Barya is a prize-winning writer and poet.
She is a founding member and serves on the advisory
board of African Writers Trust.


I found it interesting that so many beautiful photos of Uganda center on water...since the country is landlocked. “Landlocked” means that it doesn't touch on an ocean or on a sea that connects to an ocean.

So why do we see photos like this one?



Uganda includes a substantial “chunk” of Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake. And there are islands in that lake. And there are beaches on at least some of those islands. Beaches that look like tropical island beaches in the Pacific!

Here are some more beautiful-water photos of Uganda:














By the way, there are other amazing photos of Uganda that feature wildlife rather than water. Like this gorgeous pic:


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March 22 – Happy Birthday, Marcel Marceau

Posted on March 22, 2016


When I think of Marcel Marceau, I think of “Bip the Clown.” I think of mime, the art of silence.


I didn't realize that he was a World War II hero, too!

Marceau wasn't the kind of wartime hero who flies planes and shoots down Nazis. Instead, he lived in hiding, worked with the French Resistance, worked as a liaison officer with General George Patton's U.S. forces, and saved a lot of kids from the Holocaust!

Actually, he used mime to save those children.

Marcel was born who was born Marcel Mangel on this date in 1923. His family was Jewish, and his father was a kosher butcher. When France entered World War II, Marcel was 15 or 16, and he and his family fled from the Nazis. Unfortunately, his father was captured and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed. 

France fell to Germany, and Nazis occupied Marcel's nation. That's when he and his younger brother changed their last name to Marceau. They went to work to resist the Nazis and to save fellow French citizens from Hitler -- and especially fellow Jews from the concentration camps. 

The reason that Marceau was used as a liaison officer was because he could speak two other languages, English and German, in addition to French – a very useful skill during a world war!

I hope you are wondering how Marceau used mime to save Jewish children. When he was a child, Marceau had been inspired by a Charlie Chaplin film, and he had acted and performed for other children many times. Now an older teen and young adult, Marceau was able to communicate with youngsters silently as they were in hiding and on the run from the Nazis. He was also able to keep them quiet and calm by performing for them, as they escaped.

Documentarian Philippe Mora said of Marceau, “He was miming for his life.”

Marceau pretended to be a Boy Scout director leading campers on hikes in the Alps. But what he was really doing was smuggling Jewish kids into Switzerland. He did this journey from France to Switzerland three times.


Marceau also developed skills in forgery. He used red crayons and black ink to alter the ages of Jewish French youths on their identity cards. That way he “proved” that the kids were too young to go to labor camps. He forged papers, helped kids look younger for ID photographs, and when he had to, he even bribed officials to accept the cards and papers.

I'm not sure how many people Marceau was able to save, but several sources said “hundreds.” Which is amazing!

Marceau's first big performance as an adult was to Americans in an army tent, just after the liberation of Paris. There he did his mime acts in front of 3,000 U.S. soldiers.

Another mime act in front of soldiers, earlier than that, may have saved his life. Marceau accidentally ran into a unit of German soldiers, and he used his acting skills to make those soldiers think he was the advance guard of a large force of French soldiers. Instead of killing the lone Marceau, the German soldiers panicked and retreated!

Talk about acting for your life!




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April 28 – National Heroes Day in Barbados

Posted on April 28, 2015



 In 1998 this holiday was created by Parliamentary Act to celebrate ten national heroes.

One of them was a slave! 

Bussa was born free in Africa and was captured and taken to the Caribbean island of Barbados, which was a British colony. He may have been a “ranger” on a plantation; he planned and led the first large-scale slave rebellion in the British West Indies.

Although Bussa's Rebellion was put down by better-armed British forces, and Bussa himself was killed, the influence of this rebellion was great. Slavery was ended in Barbados – actually, all of the British West Indies – in 1834, just 18 years after the rebellion.

Another of the ten Barbadian heroes was Sarah Ann Gill, whose mother was black and whose father was white. During Gills' life during the first half of the 19th Century, Barbadian society was very racist, and so Gill's mixed-race ancestry was seen as a taint her. She married another mixed-race Barbadian.

Gill embraced the Methodist faith, and when the plantation owners in Barbados ousted the Methodist missionaries, Gill offered her home as a church. She faced physical abuse and death threats and thus won her status of being a national hero.

Samuel Prescod, too, was the child of a black mother and white father. He grew up to become the first person of African descent to be elected to Barbados's Parliament (in 1843).

Another hero, Charles O'Neal, was a medical doctor who had a high position in Barbadian society. He went against the racism of that society, however, and dedicated his life to helping people in poverty. He worked for improved working conditions and women's rights, for example, and he fought for free education ad dental care for kids.

Barbados is a beautiful island nation.
I have already written about Errol Barrow, who led Barbados to independence and also worked to make progressive reforms.  

Clement Payne and Huge Springer were pioneers in unionization of workers in the Caribbean, and Frank Walcott also worked in the labor movement and served as an ambassador to the United Nations. Walcott was also famous for being an excellent cricket umpire...

Which brings us to our ninth national hero, Sir Garfield Sobers, who is considered by many to be cricket's greatest all-rounder.

Barbados is a small island located near the eastern (righthand) area of the map.

Our tenth hero is Grantley Adams. He was a politician. He was the president of the Barbados Workers' Union before he started his political career; he worked for a more democratic government and for more rights for the average Barbadian and especially for the poor.

Today is Adams's birthday. I'm not sure how his birthday was selected as a the date to celebrate all ten heroes...


Cricket


By the way, Adams also played cricket. He played just one match of first-class cricket for Barbados, in the 1925-1926 season, as a wicket-keeper.


Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players each.


It is played by 120 millions players around the world, making it the world's second most popular sport. Because it was first played in England (in the 1500s, or possibly even earlier), cricket is especially popular in the United Kingdom and in countries that were once part of the British Empire, such as India, Southern Africa, the West Indies (like Barbados!), and Australia.


By the way, if you are wondering, football (in the U.S., it's called soccer) is the most popular sport in the world.



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Anniversary of Maryland's statehood














Astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort's birthday
























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