Fun Facts: Part 2

1. During WWII, Americans tried to train bats to drop bomb.

2. Elizabeth I of England suffered from anthophobia, a fear of roses.

3. Alexander the Great was an epileptic.

4. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. (Funny.)

5. M & M's were developed so that soldiers could eat candy without getting their fingers sticky.

6. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

7. First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

8. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

9. Cleopatra's last name was Ptolemy, and she was Greek rather than Egyptian.

10. Cleopatra used pomegranate seeds for lipstick.

A Cry for Help

Bullying has been pretty rampant these days. Well, it happens everywhere, left and right. We always see teenagers poking and beating one schoolmate because his weird or just plain 'different' or we see girls making up disgusting and embarrassing names to another girl they dislike. Some of say it's JUST normal and it's part of growing up. Just. That's the problem. C'mon! Wake up, people. Bullying is somehow connected to the word suicide. Bullying has already brought some serious and heartbreaking damages to people around the globe, particularly teenagers who are just starting to witness and feel life's amazing gifts and blessings. They still have a lot of life to live, a lot of jaw-dropping sights to see, a lot of "I love you" 's to hear, and loads of laughter to share. But thanks to the word bully, lives were shattered and dreams were ripped into pieces. There is so much evil in the world, it makes me want to cry. People have gone mad and they're completely out of control. Yes, there's still hope for those people who destroy lives because they know the word, 'forgiveness'. But the damage has been done, and there's no way, no way at all, to put things back the way they used to be. Sladjana and Eric are JUST 2 of the many young adults who were seriously affected of bullying and so took matters into their own hands:

1. Sladjana Vidovic, a 16 year old Croatian native, killed herself because of constant bullying. she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.


2. Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007 beacuse of deppression. He was picked on most of the time JUST because he loves to wear pink. Seriously?!

Hopefully this grievous issue ends soon.

The Crazy Little thing called Love

"Love is about grand gestures. Love is about airplanes pulling banners over stadiums, proposals on jumbo-trons, giant words in skywriting. Love is about going that extra mile even if it hurts, letting it all hang out there. Love is about finding courage inside of you that you didn't even know was there..."

-Little Manhattan




Love is. I believe there is no perfect definition of the word love. No words can explain what it really means. That's because love is everything. Love is both good and bad. Love makes us stupid and makes us do crazy and unimaginable things. Love is making ourselves happy. Love can make us see and discover the other side of us. It can put a smile on our face even if things are way out of control. But one thing is for sure, when love sweeps you off your feet, things would never be the same again.

Seasons of Life

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.

It's just life. Just live it.

Goodbye, E-mail

Goodbye, electronic mail. Say hello to bottle-mail! It would be remarkable to receive a reply, an actual reply, from someone in another side of the world who will receive your 'message in a bottle'. It would be a dream come true, a gift, a blessing. It's like a dramatic scene from Nicholas Spark's best-selling novel of the same title, Message In A Bottle. It creates friendship and it forms an everlasting bond between two human beings. Most of us would just laugh about it thinking of the impossibilities but hey, it happened and can still happen again. Here below is an article sharing how a high school student had his 'dream come true':

Message in a Bottle Survives Epic Journey

Last year, a high school student named Corey Swearingen put a letter in a bottle, sealed it up, and dropped it in the Atlantic Ocean, off the Florida coast. It was kind of an experiment for school. In the letter, he appealed to whomever came across the bottle to contact him and let him know where in the world it showed up. Amazingly, someone did.

About 16 months after the bottle was dropped, Swearingen's marine science teacher heard from someone in Ireland. The letter had made its way across the Atlantic Ocean and washed up on the shores of the Emerald Isle, found by a 17-year-old and his Dad while out for a stroll. In an interview with Florida Today, Swearingen said he never expected the message to be found.

Can't blame him for pessimism. After all, the wine bottle, which, according to Swearingen, is being put up on display in an Irish pub, did face long odds. But it's hardly the first message in a bottle to survive a perilous journey.

In 2009, a message in a bottle washed up on the shores of England. It had been tossed into the waters near the Bahamas nearly five years previous. Incredible, but that pales in comparison to a bottle sent by Emily Hwang. True, Hwang's bottle traveled "only" 1,735 miles from Seattle to Alaska, but it took an amazing 21 years to do so.

There's even a case of a message in a bottle helping a family find a new life. In 1979, Dorothy and John Henry Peckham dropped a message in a bottle in the Pacific Ocean while on a cruise. Amazingly, the bottle found its way to Southeast Asia where it was picked up by 31-year-old Hoa Van Nguyen.

Nguyen wrote back and began a correspondence that eventually led to the Peckhams helping to sponsor Nguyen and his family's immigration to the United States.

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Impressive, right?