1st JUNE 1968

There are certain people in the world who are just so inspirational, so dedicated to what they do, whether it be trying to make a difference or merely just being themselves, that it really makes me think there is hope for our world to one day produce such people again.

On this day in 1968, Helen Keller, who, despite being both deaf and blind, was one of the leading speakers, political activist and author of her time, died at her home in Arcan Ridge, Easton, Conneticut.

Ms. Keller was not born with impairments to her ears and eyes, instead contracting an illness when she was 19 months old, which may have been either scarlet fever or meningitis, that left her with no hearing and no sight. Whilst at first communication with her family was hard, by the time she was seven Ms. Keller had over 60 home signs to communicate effectively with.

Determined to allow her communicate with others as best as she possibly could, Ms. Keller's family employed the help of Anne Sullivan, a 20-year-old visually impaired student herself, a former pupil at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in South Boston. A 49 year partnership between the two only ended with Ms. Sullivan's death in 1936.

After learning what words to use and indeed how to have a language of her own, Ms. Keller began to learn how to speak, doing this so well that she spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures. She learned to listen to other peoples speech by reading their lips with her hands, her sense of touch being heightened as compensation for her lack of other senses.

Ms. Keller became a fluent user of Braille and reading sign language with her hands. Indeed her hands became her eyes, her ears, basically her everything.

She went on to become a world-famous speaker and author and is remembered as an  advocate for people with disabilities, a suffragist, a pacifist, a radical socialist and a birth control supporter. Many of these opinions and her understandings of the world were further explained in her 12 published books and several other articles.

In September of 1964, three years after having suffered a series of strokes and being confined to her home, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Ms. Keller the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After her death on this day, a service was held in her honour at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. Her ashes were placed there next to her companions Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.

Her life has been depicted in various films, television movies, a Bollywood movie and a Broadway show.

She truly was incredible.

If you want any more information on how to support those with visual or hearing impairments visit the Helen Keller website.




Image available: http://notesforpakistan.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/helen-keller-summary.html 

31st MAY 1998

Be prepared for some hard hitting journalism right here, right now people, because today's event will shock you to your very core!

On this day in 1998, Geri Halliwell, also known as Ginger Spice, announced that she was leaving the Spice Girls over rumoured differences between other band members.

Formed in 1994, the British "Girl Power" pop group consisted of Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown, Emma "Baby Spice" Bunton and Melanie "Sporty Spice" Chisholm. They released their debut single 'Wannanbe' under Virgin Records in 1996 which rose to be a number one hit in more than 30 countries, establishing the group as a somewhat 'global phenomenon', whilst their debut a,bum 'Spice' sold more than 28 million copies worldwide.

As the biggest  pop. culture figures of the 1990's, the Spice Girls earned an estimated $500-800 million between 1996 and 1998, earning up to $75 million per year.

And today Ginger Spice thought she would just leave all that, release three solo albums and publish a book series titled 'Ugenia Lavender'.

It was all fixed in 2007 though, when the group reformed for their Reunion Tour in December, as well as for the release of their Greatest Hits album.

Spice Girls. Crazy.

What more is there to say really?





Image available: http://spicegirls.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page 


Video available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ 

30th MAY 1997 - FINAL LECTURE

I didn't actually go to the last lecture. I know! Such a bad student! In my defence, I was in Gympie and it's a little hard to attend a lecture in Brisbane when you're three hours by train away.

I knew that writing this post was going to be a bit hard then, having not attended a lecture I was suppose to discuss. But, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I kind of felt that listening to the lecture recording gave me a good sense of what the lecture was like.

So the lecture was all about this Steve Molk guy. A blogger apparently, although that is apparently a cringeworthy title. So, a TV commentator first who blogs about TV. But blogger nonetheless.

I don't understand why he was so upset by that. Or indeed why being a blogger has this sort of 'cringeworthy' feeling tied to it. I mean, as Steve mentioned, blogging helped people in Egypt get their opinions across, that's what a blog is for. To help people and to give people a voice.

When I write my blog, I try to link it back to something that happened every single day throughout history. Everyday something does happen. News is constantly being made, the world is constantly turning, people constantly moving and we never know all of it. I don't aspire to know and understand the whole world but I feel like through my blog I can learn something I maybe never would have learned otherwise. I mean, I didn't know about that woman who had a baby with her student. Another thing, I knew there was war, but I didn't realise how much war and rioting and death is happening constantly.

What I found that Steve Molk's blog and Twitter posts do is something similar. He posts reviews, recaps and his basic understanding of certain TV shows. He gives his opinion. He wants to help other people understand these shows better by giving them another perspective, another point of view that maybe they'll be able to align with.

I think that what Steve Molk's is doing can kind of relate back to what I'm doing. In a sense, I'm presenting another point of view, another perspective, by re-presenting news that might otherwise have been lost. In turn, people who see the news might be able to further understand other things. For example, in the hit TV show friends, Ross and Rachel are on a flight to Las Vegas and they are playing practical jokes on another. Ross tells one of the other passengers sitting nearby that Rachel was the teacher that had a baby with one of her students. Although I found the joke slightly funny, I didn't know who the woman was and didn't even know if it had happened in real life. BUT when finding stories for my blog I came across it and now I can understand the joke better. That's what I want other people to experience. Reading something to better understand something else.

So, I'm going to keep going with this blog even after this assessment is finished. I might tweak it a little. The kind of journalist that I want to be is a video journalist and to work in foreign countries. I want to work for the ABC or SBS and make documentaries and travel the world and let other people know what else is out there happening in the big old world. So, with my blog, no more lecture posts. I like writing posts about events across the world, things that happened in different countries. So, my understanding.  To make sure that "Brand Me", as Steve suggested, is strong so that people can clearly see what I am doing, how I want to be perceived as a potential video journalist. Bring on the videos! Whoo!

And finally, on this day in 1997, in Trenton, New Jersey, child molester Jess K Timmendequas was convicted of raping and strangling seven-year-old Megan Kanka.

It was because of this incident that the inspired "Megan's Law" was created, which determines that communities must be notified if a sex offender moves into the area.

There you are. You are now wiser!






Image 1 available: http://www.nj.com/shore/blogs/updates/index.ssf/2011/06/index_7.html 
Image 2 available: http://blogs.abc.net.au/.a/6a00e0097e4e688833016763756ee2970b-popup 

29th MAY 1985

On this day in 1985, a wall at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium, collapsed, one hour before the start of the European Cup Final between Liverpool (England) and Juventus (Italy). As a result, 39 football fans were killed and somewhere between 400 and 600 other fans were injured.

The incident occurred when a large group of Liverpool fans, who were either really excited or maybe a little bit intoxicated, breached a fence bordering "neutral area" that separated them from their Juventus counterparts. The Italian football fans scattered, many running backwards into a concrete retaining wall. Fans seated near the wall were crushed by the oncoming onslaught of people, pushing further into the wall to escape. Whilst many people climbed the wall to safety, the added weight and pressure on the wall caused it to collapse.

Despite the incident, the game was still played in the hopes of preventing further violence.

The incident resulted in all English football clubs being banned indefinitely by the UEFA from all further European competitions. This was however, lifted in 1990, with Liverpool being excluded for an additional year. Fourteen Liverpool fans were found guilt of involuntary manslaughter, each receiving three years imprisonment.

The event was later claimed to be the darkest hour in the history of the UEFA competitions.



Image available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/768380.stm 

28th MAY 1977

On this day in 1977, the third deadliest fire in the U.S history took place, destroying the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky.

Opening in 1971, the club, situated less than three kilometres outside of Cincinnati, was extremely popular, drawing its talent from Las Vegas, Nashville, Hollywood and New York. In 1976 upgrades occurred to the club, creating a complex of intertwining function rooms, corridors, and service areas connected by narrow corridors.

On the night of the fire it is believed that almost 3000 patrons and 182 employees were inside the club. Whilst there is speculation that the fire was started intentionally (with new evidence brought to light in 2008), it is still unknown as to how the fire first started in the Zebra Room.

A combination of a lack of sprinkler systems and audible automatic fire alarms, as well as overcrowding and poor oversight by staff members, resulted in the death of 165 people and the injury of 200 more.  There are those who raise the death toll to 167, to include two unborn children of two pregnant women who died.

The last victim of the fire, a woman, died on March 1 1978, nearly ten months after the fire.

As of 2012, the case still remains unopened and unanswered.





Image available: http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2002/05/26/loc_beverly_hills_blaze.html 

27th MAY 2011

On this day in 2011, American actor Jeff Conaway, aged sixty, died after his family made the decision to take him off life support.

Mr. Conaway had been placed into an induced coma as a result of pneumonia related complications and the degenerative brain condition known as encephalopthy.

Mr. Conaway was famous for starring as Kenickie in Grease, Bobby Wheeler in the television show Taxi as well as starring in Babylon 5 and The Bold and The Beautiful.

Throughout his career however, Mr. Conaway battled with drug and alcohol addiction, which he claimed began after incurring a back injury during the filming of Grease.

It's actually extremely sad how many talented actors/actresses die from substance abuse related problems. Scratch that, it's sad how many people in any profession, in any place across the world, die each day from substance abuse.

And as hard as you try to tell somebody that it's not good for them, or try to convince them that it will kill them, humans always like to think in the, "it won't happen to me" mentality.

And then they die.

Like I said, it's sad really.






Image available: http://www.chronillogicaldisorder.com/2011/05/jeff-conaway-he-gone/ 

26th MAY 2012

Yes. That's right. The date does say 2012. That means I'm going to talk about something that happened today, right now, in the present and we all know what that means.

RANT TIME!!!

On this day in 2012, Florence and the Machine came to Brisbane to perform at the Brisbane Riverstage and I REALLY WANTED TO GO!! But of course, tickets sold out in like a second and no matter how many times you go back and refresh the page, the tickets just won't reappear as if by magic. If only.

Florence and the Machine are a British indie pop band, lead by singer Florence Welch, who released their first album 'Lungs' in July 2009 and their second album 'Ceremonials' in October 2010. Both achieved great popularity and success in the UK and US charts and, for that matter, in many other countries (including Australia). Their sound has been described as a combination of various different genres, including rock and soul.

So I didn't get tickets. And then that made me wonder whether or not I was a good enough fan. I mean, I didn't buy tickets and I didn't try that hard to buy tickets (I could have been much more manic about it). And then that made me think about all the people out there who would have bought tickets just because their friends were going, or because they remotely liked Florence and the Machine, or because they just wanted to be cool and go to a concert. You know who I'm talking about: the Hipsters.

I think that in some ways we are all a little bit Hipster. I mean, when we like something and then it becomes popular, we  have to try very hard not to be all "I liked it first! I'm a trendsetter! Yay for me, I'm cool!" Or maybe that's just me. But if it is just me then I apologies for categorising all Hipsters in this way. For stereotyping Hipsters in this way. For using a stereotype within a stereotype.

Anyway, furthering my Hipster-ness I find that in some cases it can get to the point where we begin to dislike the thing that we loved so much in the first place, just because it's getting so popular. Now I'm being a little bit self-centred in classifying myself as a Hipster. I think I'm cool like that (not really, but for the point of my argument we are going to assume as such that I am that Hipster). It can also get to the point where a Hipster will refuse to like something just because everybody else likes it. Or am I getting confused now with some other 'cool' people group?

Anyway, the point of all this ranting, of calling myself a Hipster, basically has just one goal.

To justify WHY I DIDN'T GET TICKETS!!!

Guess I'll just have to watch all her music videos instead.

This song, 'Cosmic Love' was the first I ever listened to by Florence and the Machine after a friend gave me a mixed CD with all sort of soul/ballad/indie songs on it. It is my favourite song.





Image available: http://www.instyle.com/instyle/package/general/photos/0,,20475181_20475183_20925822,00.html 
Video available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EIeUlvHAiM