Oct 25, 1999: A private jet carrying golfer Payne Stewart flew across half the country with everyone on board unconscious, until it ran out of fuel and crashed in South Dakota.
Stewart was one of the most popular players in golf, known for wearing old-fashioned knickers and flat caps on the course. That June he had won the US Open at Pinehurst by sinking a 15-foot putt on the final hole. In September he helped the US win the Ryder Cup.
On Oct 25 he took off from Orlando in a Learjet headed for Dallas with five others. Shortly after takeoff the plane lost cabin pressure. Without oxygen at that altitude, everyone on board would have passed out within moments.
When the plane stopped responding to air traffic controllers, the Air Force sent fighter jets to check on it. The pilots could see the windows frosted over and no movement inside. The Learjet kept flying on autopilot for about four hours, drifting northwest across the country, while the whole nation watched it on the news.
It ran out of fuel and crashed into a field in South Dakota. Everyone on board was killed. Stewart was 42.
There's a statue of him at Pinehurst, fist raised, frozen in the moment he made that putt to win the US Open.
What’s actually going on in Ukraine is that there is a massive incentive difference between the elites and the people.
The former have grown very rich off the hundreds of billions flowing to Ukraine, while the latter’s children are conscripted to die in trenches.
Sì racconta che un giorno Winston Churchill passeggiasse per Londra insieme alla moglie Clementine.
I passanti riconoscevano il Primo Ministro, lo salutavano e cercavano di scambiare qualche parola con lui.
A un certo punto, uno spazzino si avvicinò alla coppia. Ma anziché rivolgersi a Churchill, si fermò a parlare con Clementine, con una confidenza che incuriosì il marito.
«Chi era quell’uomo?», le chiese. «Un vecchio corteggiatore. Molti anni fa era innamorato di me.»
Churchill sorrise, compiaciuto: «Pensa, cara. Se lo avessi sposato, oggi saresti la moglie di uno spazzino.»
Clementine lo guardò e, senza perdere la calma, rispose: «Ti sbagli, Winston. Se avessi sposato lui, oggi sarebbe lui il Primo Ministro.»
Karoline Leavitt reveals what President Trump told her when critics said she was too young to be the White House press secretary.
MAHER: “So is there anything that could make you... not be loyal to whatever he was doing?”
LEAVITT: “He was my boss, but to me, he’s also a friend, and he gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. I mean, I don’t think I’d be sitting on your show right now if not for him giving me that chance.”
“I’ve also seen him behind the scenes, as you have, and I know his heart... He’s been nothing but kind, uplifting, encouraging. He did name me the youngest press secretary ever, and a lot of people told him he shouldn’t.”
“He told me that. He said, ‘Honey, lots of people said you were too young, and I told them I was building buildings in Manhattan when I was your age, and you can do it.’”
[Applause]
Appreciation post 👏
As another league winning season comes to a close at Tallaght Stadium, we take a moment to thank our excellent team of matchday volunteers who consistently give their time and effort to make it work for everyone else 💚
Thank you and enjoy the celebrations ☘️
The four Stoic virtues in daily life…
Courage: speak up, stand up, have skin in the game
Temperance: fasting, exercise, get up early
Justice: vote, give, leave this place better than you found it
Wisdom: always stay a student, always be reading
The British army once sentenced Daniel Morgan to 500 lashes, a punishment that usually killed a man, for the crime of knocking out an officer who struck him. He survived every stroke. And he spent the rest of his life joking that the drummer had miscounted and only given him 499, so the British still owed him one. He collected that debt at a place called Cowpens.
Morgan was not born to anything. He was a rough, barely educated frontiersman who made his living hauling freight by wagon on the Virginia frontier, a big, powerful, hot-tempered young man. During the French and Indian War, serving as a civilian teamster with the British army, a British lieutenant struck him with the flat of a sword. Morgan answered with his fist and dropped the officer cold. For a colonial to strike a British officer was close to a capital offense, and the court-martial sentenced him to five hundred lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails, a flogging meant to flay a man and very often to kill him.
They tied him up and laid it on, and Daniel Morgan did not die. He carried the ridged scars on his back for the rest of his life. But instead of breaking him, that brutal punishment forged something. It left him with a cold, permanent hatred of the British army and its contempt for colonial men like him, a hatred he would one day repay with interest. And it gave him his lifelong joke: the drummer lost count and stopped at 499, so the British, he liked to say, were still one lash short of paying him in full.
When the Revolution came, that uneducated wagoner turned out to be a natural soldier of rare gifts. He raised a company of frontier riflemen, crack shots who could kill at distances that terrified British regulars, and he led them north to Saratoga, where his marksmen helped shatter Burgoyne's army and win the turning-point victory of the war. Morgan had a feel for battle that trained European officers lacked, an instinct for ground, for timing, and above all for the men he led. He understood that his militia were not professional soldiers and could not be asked to do what professionals did, so instead of cursing them for it, he built his tactics around what they could do.
That genius reached its peak at the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781, one of the most perfectly fought battles in American history. Facing the dreaded Banastre Tarleton, Morgan set a trap built entirely on human nature. He put his unreliable militia in the front line and asked them only for two volleys, then permission to fall back, which they gladly did. Tarleton's British, seeing the Americans retreat, charged forward in a confident rush straight into Morgan's real line of hardened Continentals, and then Morgan sprang the jaws, hitting the British on both flanks at once in a double envelopment while his cavalry rode down their rear. In minutes Tarleton's command was destroyed, hundreds killed and captured, one of the most crushing and complete victories of the war, and Tarleton himself barely escaped. It was the frontier wagoner out-generaling the darlings of the British army.
So the debt was paid. The boy they tried to flog to death grew up to be the man who methodically dismantled the British in the field, who understood soldiers because he had been treated like dirt as one, and who turned the hard lessons of his own back into some of the finest tactics the Revolution ever saw. Remember Daniel Morgan. The British gave him 499 lashes and made an enemy who never forgot, and he collected the last one at Cowpens, with interest.
On Lindsey Graham.
Stay with me on this.
The worst kept secret in Washington DC came out today because 3 brave men came out and told the truth and it doesn’t matter if it is after he’s dead.
Brave?
Yes brave.
Why are they brave?
They had to go on camera and tell intimate details of their personal lives.
To the world.
That is extremely difficult to do. Yes it’s brave. And Stressful. They walked into the public square opening themselves to the opinions of the entire world.
No matter your opinion on the issue, they took a courageous leap in coming forward.
If you are critical, would you go on camera and tell your secrets to the entire world?
I would bet a lot of money you wouldn’t.
Ok but there is more to this.
Because this is the world I saw up close in Washington.
I saw behind the curtain and saw ALL the wizards.
Everyone in the highest levels of power in Washington DC are keeping secrets that would destroy their entire lives.
And that’s exactly why they have power.
Not because they are so smart or qualified or the best choice for leadership.
I mean really, if you think our best and brightest are in charge then do some critical thinking and look at the pathetic state of our debt, our dollar, and how our government is run, and the outcome that affects your life.
Their secrets are the only reason these people rise to the top.
Because their secrets are not secrets.
We all knew Lindsey Graham was gay. Everyone did.
Their secrets are levers of control. Keeps them in line. Makes them a team player. And will make them fight the hardest on issues that don’t make sense in order to keep their secrets just that. Secrets.
So everyone is arguing about how this is old news, why now? Or arguing about being gay, and gay issues. Or arguing because that’s what everyone does on the internet, just argue with each other and with bots about issues they don’t have the real truth on, but throw out their strongest opinion anyways.
I’m here to tell you the granular issue you need to dial in on and block out the rest of the noise.
Three gay men just bravely pulled back the curtain and tried to teach you all the most important lesson America needs to learn.
It’s this.
America’s most powerful leaders keep secrets that comprise them in the most dangerous ways for the security, safety, and prosperity of our nation.
That’s the whole point.
I tried my hardest to fight the entire system on both sides of the aisle and couldn’t beat it because YOU ALL keep voting these people back into office and back into power.
By the way, I always cosponsored the Term Limit bill and no matter who is in charge, Pelosi, McCarthy, or Johnson, Dem or Rep, that bill never ever got even close to getting a vote on the House floor.
So the question for you, The American People, is are you able to learn the lesson and if so, what exactly are YOU going to do about it?
Ask yourself, what are you voting for? Donating to? Volunteering for?
And are you really satisfied with the outcome election cycle after election cycle?
When Mick McCarthy took over as Wolves manager in July 2006, he arrived at a club that was struggling financially and had just lost several important players.
Glenn Hoddle had resigned a few weeks earlier, and McCarthy had been brought in to rebuild the team and get Wolves challenging for promotion.
But one of his first conversations at Wolves wasn’t with a footballer.
It was with a man called Dan Morgan, who worked as a cleaner at the training ground.
McCarthy was meeting the staff when he came across Dan and asked what he did at the club.
“I’m Dan.”
“I’m just the cleaner.”
McCarthy immediately stopped him.
“Never say you’re just the f****** cleaner.”
“You’re the cleaner, and you’re doing a job, and that’s important!”
He explained that if the players arrived on a Monday morning and found the dressing room hadn’t been cleaned, they would all be complaining.
“Don’t ever say that to me again.”
“You’re one of us, come on.”
McCarthy had always believed that everybody working at a football club should feel part of the same team, regardless of their job.
“There’s nobody beneath me.”
For Dan, that first conversation was something he never forgot.
“From that first moment he always made me feel so comfortable, like a part of the team.”
McCarthy made sure Dan was included in everything going on around the training ground.
“He always involved me in the dressing room banter.”
Over the following six years, McCarthy transformed Wolves and guided them back into the Premier League as Championship winners in 2009.
He developed a close relationship with the staff and made a point of getting to know people working in every department of the club.
Dan was still there when Wolves eventually sacked McCarthy in February 2012 after a 5-1 defeat to West Brom.
McCarthy had spent almost six years at Molineux, and his departure was an emotional moment for many people at the club.
But a few weeks later, Dan received an unexpected phone call.
He and his partner Sarah had recently welcomed a baby and moved into a new house.
McCarthy knew about it and had been clearing out his own house in Seisdon.
He asked Dan whether there was anything they needed.
Dan went round to see him, and McCarthy had a load of furniture and other belongings ready to give to him.
Rather than arranging for someone else to deliver everything, McCarthy hired a van himself.
Dan helped him load it up before they drove over to his new house and carried everything inside.
“He went and sat in the baby’s bedroom and put all the drawers together for me.”
Once everything was sorted, he sat down on the sofa and had a cup of tea with Dan.
“He didn’t have to do any of that.”
Dan knew McCarthy could easily have paid someone to clear his house and deliver the furniture, especially after spending so many years managing in the Premier League.
Instead, he had spent the day helping somebody who had introduced himself six years earlier as “just the cleaner”.
“That just sums him up for me.”
“And whenever anyone asks what it was like to work for Mick McCarthy, that is the story I tell them.”
#football
Connacht have named a very strong side for Friday night’s United Rugby Championship meeting with Zebre Parma at Dexcom Stadium, with five Ireland squad members included in the starting XV.
Captain Cian Prendergast starts at blindside flanker, alongside Ireland squad colleagues Darragh Murray, Sean Jansen, Ciarán Frawley and Mack Hansen.
There is a debut for prop Jerry Cahir, who starts in the front row with Eoin de Buitléar and Finlay Bealham. Niall Murray partners his brother Darragh in the second row, while Paul Boyle comes into the back row with Prendergast and Jansen.
Colm Reilly continues at scrum-half after an impressive performance against Saracens. He is increasingly making the number nine shirt his own, while Frawley starts again at out-half.
Harry West makes his first appearance of the season after recovering from injury, starting at outside-centre.
Cathal Forde moves to inside-centre, with Hansen and Finn Treacy on the wings and Sam Gilbert at full-back.
The bench is equally encouraging from a Connacht point of view. Will Connors is in line to make his first appearance for the province and would be a huge addition after injury, while Dave Heffernan is included for the first time this season.
Daniel Ryan retains his place among the replacements after making his senior debut against Saracens, while Finlay Bealham and Paul Boyle bring considerable experience to a side which looks far stronger than most would have expected for a home game against Zebre.
James McClean's is the best footballer autobiography I have read in a long time. I admire anyone who is willing to put everything about themselves out there, which McClean has done, and it is brilliantly arranged and written by @McDonnellDan.
Our family is heartbroken by the loss of my dear niece Kyle Francis Kennedy. A bright light and gentle spirit, Kyle was a committed educator and devoted mother to Conor and Declan. Our hearts are with her children, her mother Vicki, her brother Michael and sister Rory. Kyle was the daughter of my beloved late brother Michael and Vicki Gifford Kennedy. May she rest in eternal peace among the angels with her father and daughter Josephine. We love and miss you, Kyle.
Comhghairdeas do na fir roghnaithe d'Éireann ☘🇮🇪
Congrats to our men selected in the @IrishRugby squad for the upcoming Nations Championship Series 🟢🦅
Full squad 🔗 https://t.co/mNGa9ONztv
#OneConnacht
Beautiful. Turkish professional soccer player Semih Güler holds his baby daughter, reminding the world of the humanity and dignity of people with Down syndrome.
“They are actually just like us, even though they have one extra chromosome, but they are more beautiful people than we are.”
Every child with an extra chromosome is worthy of life and love.
When Biden brazenly flew the trans flag alongside the American flag at the White House, most Americans were rightfully appalled. Many of us on the right called out the depravity of what was clearly a calculated gesture, given the flag’s representation of a movement that not only sanctions but encourages the mutilation of children.
At the time, many of us Veterans also argued that the only flag that should be flown at the White House (the People’s House) is the one that represents our nation, our people as a whole. It’s a symbol that should be held sacred—for the sacrifices of those who came before us, and the promise to secure a prosperous future for those who will come after us. This isn’t an edgy stance.
Our criticisms resonated, & the American people agreed that we needed a course-correct and elected President Trump in a landslide in ‘24.
Today, just two years after that mandate was delivered, we have tragically been led into yet another quagmire in the Middle East at the behest of a foreign nation. For their benefit, not ours.
Today, many on the right who justifiably raged against Biden are now noticeably silent while a foreign leader flaunts his access to our President in front of the world. This is an affront to all Americans, the majority of whom oppose U.S. involvement in this foolish war.
We the people must demand more. It’s time for our leaders to cast aside anything that stands in the way of putting our nation’s interests first—the American government should serve the American people only. Don’t let anyone tell you that you must choose one side or the other when reality dictates the only common sense choice for a viable and prosperous future.
Choose America, and America only. https://t.co/dppdV9kUh2
19 years today since my son, Paul, was murdered.
19 years without his smile, his kindness. 19 years of heartbreak, unanswered questions, and a pain that never goes away. Not a day passes that we don’t miss him and wish he were still here.
19 years on..
#JusticeForPaulQuinn
.@amanpour has asked world leaders the hard questions and shown generations of reporters, and her audience, that you can be fair and fearless without losing your humanity. Thank you, Christiane, for decades of telling the truth about the world, to the world. Whatever comes next, I’ll be watching.