A couple interesting links for your consideration:
The following amazing story was sent by a frequent reader of our blog:
Joseph Kittinger - Above His Peers - From Forbes.com
Among parachutists, nobody occupies so high a standing as Joseph Kittinger. On Aug. 16, 1960 Kittinger, then a captain in the U.S. Air Force, rode a helium balloon to the edge of space--19.5 miles up. Breathing compressed oxygen and wearing only a standard high-altitude pressure suit and a parachute, he leaned over the gondola and jumped.
In the 110-degree-below-zero, near-vacuum of space, Kittinger accelerated to 714mph, breaking the sound barrier. [More...]
Click this link... to read what Wikipedia says about him.
This link is from my recently received "Notes from FEE", and it was a reprint of a tale by Davy Crockett.
Not Yours to Give
One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:
“Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.
Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.”
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost. [More...]
