The 4Star-9Rattan Blog

  Sunday Special-An undaunted 'Moose Bull'   Theodore Roosevelt was climbing into his car outside the Gilpatrick Hotel, headed to give a campaign speech, when a man pushed through the crowd and fired a .38 caliber revolver directly at his chest. https://www.history.com/videos/teddy-roosevelt-shot The shot rang out. Roosevelt staggered but didn't fall.His aides tackled the gunman a  man named John Schrank who believed the ghost of President McKinley had told him to kill Roosevelt. The crowd surged forward, ready to lynch the assassin on the spot.Roosevelt, bleeding, shouted at them to stop."Don't hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him." They brought Schrank forward. Roosevelt looked at the man who had just shot him and said calmly, "What did you do that for?" Then he ordered his men to take Schrank to the police, unharmed. Roosevelt's aides insisted he go immediately to the hospital. He refused.Instead, he did something that seemed impossible...

Saturday Reading-An Extraordinary Human Being!                                                                                                       Robbin Island, South Africa: A freedom fighter's prison                                                           – Orange County Register -Prisoner No.46664                                           Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who became the nation's first black president, serving from 1994 to 1999. Born...

Sunday Special-   An Imperturbable & Masterful Hero! June 24, 1982. Over the Indian Ocean.British Airways Flight 009 a Boeing 747 carrying  263 people was cruising peacefully at 37,000 feet when the night sky began behaving strangely.First came St. Elmo's fire an eerie blue glow crackling across the cockpit  windows like electricity dancing on glass.Then shimmering streaks appeared along the wings, as if the aircraft were trailing sparks through darkness. Captain Eric Moody and his crew had never seen anything like it. Beautiful. Unsettling. Wrong.Then came the engine failure alarm.Engine four had failed CGI illustration of  British Airways’ SPEED BIRD 9  descending without power, surrounded by St. Elmo’s Fire illustration of British Airways’ SPEED BIRD 9  descending without power, surrounded by St. Elmo’s Fire.  Before they could process that, engine two quit.Then engine one.Then engine three. In less than 90 seconds, all four engines on Brit...

Sunday Special-Marry had a Lamb   Mary Sawyer Tyler : 1806-1889 "Mary had a little lamb" wasn't just a nursery rhyme it was a real 9-year-old girl who saved a dying lamb, and that lamb's wool eventually helped save a piece of American history. You sang it as a child. Maybe you've sung it to your own children: "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb..." But did you know Mary was real? Her name was Mary Sawyer, and this is the true story behind one of the  most famous poems in the English language. March 1815. Sterling, Massachusetts. A cold morning with frost still clinging  to the barn walls.Mary was born New York Public Library“Birth-place of Mary Sawyer and the little lamb. Sterling, Mass.” Nine-year-old Mary Sawyer was helping her father with the morning chores when they discovered one  of their ewes had given birth to twin lambs overnight.One lamb was healthy, nursing contentedly. The  other lay motionless in the straw rejected by its mothe...