Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Sorted by date Results 51 - 70 of 70
The Kolyma Highway begins at the port of Magadan on Russia’s Pacific Ocean, heads north some distance, but then veers to the west, and ends at Yakutsk, a city of 311,000 people, deep in a Siberian wilderness called the taiga. Travelers see only spruce and fir trees in every direction. All together, this highway of gravel, mud, ice, and pavement that cuts through the endless forest extends across 2012 kilometers, or 1260 miles, of the Russian landscape. Early in the twentieth-century, the S...
An interesting anecdote appears in Barack Obama’s recently-published memoir, A Promised Hope. He recalls the day, a Friday, October 9, 2009, when he was stunned to learn that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s members, meeting in Oslo, Norway, announced that they had selected him. When told of the honor, Obama was incredulous. “For what?” he asked. The committee’s members explained that they had selected him, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation...
The first people to live in eastern Massachusetts were the Native Americans. A tribe called the Wampanoags lived on that rocky coast for perhaps 10,000 years. The Mayflower arrived at Plymouth Harbor on November 11, 1620, and aboard that ship were about 35 people who belonged to a small but extreme religious faction called the Pilgrims. These were Separatists, Englishmen and women who chose to illegally separate themselves from the Church of England. If not for the Wampanoags, more Pilgrims...
Only Palestinians live inside the Gaza Strip, a skinny stretch of flat coastal plain on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, sandwiched between Egypt and Israel. Gaza is only 25 miles long, and an average of four miles wide. Yet, 1.85 million Palestinians call it home. It is densely populated. It is impoverished. It suffers from 44% unemployment. Electrical power is now down to four hours per day. It is on, then it is off, a daily reminder that the Israeli’s control the flow of Diesel f...
In June of 1967, Israel’s army captured the Sinai and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from the Jordanians. Although Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982, after brokering a deal with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, “its occupation of the rest of the territory seized in 1967 is ongoing.” The West Bank is a landlocked strip of land, 2,263 square miles, sandwiched between Jordan to the east, and Israel to the north, west, and south. It is the geog...
Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and the wrong word is really a large matter. ‘Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Some writers choose big words to fill up a typewritten page. For example, William F. Buckley, Jr. built an extensive vocabulary and pulled it out often to impress his readers. He once wrote, “I react against declamatory rudeness that is coercive in intent.” Now what did he mean? I think he meant to say that when he hears ano...
Ian Fleming divided his 7th James Bond novel, Goldfinger, into three parts: “Happenstance,” “Coincidence,” and “Enemy Action.” Three times Bond intervened in Auric Goldfinger’s diabolical plans to enrich himself, and after the third time, Goldfinger had had enough. He seized 007. “Mr. Bond,” Goldfinger said, “they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.’” Coincidences startle us. Two people discover that they have the same bir...
On a calm summer day in 1823, in northwest South Dakota, a mountain man named Hugh Glass experienced absolute terror when he stumbled across a she-grizzly bear and her two cubs. He was alone. She stood on her hind legs, swatted his rifle away, then his pistol, but he held tight to his knife. Few of us will ever experience first-hand a fright of this magnitude, a life-and-death wrestle with a hot, mad mother grizzly bear. The author Frederick Manfred described in his book Lord Grizzly how at...
In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published her work, The Guns of August. In it, she described the thirty days in August of 1914, when Europe's governments prodded their countries into a Great War. Germany and Austria-Hungary vs. the Allies: France, Great Britain, Russian, and the U.S. One of Tuchman's book reviewers wrote, “The holocaust of August was the prelude to four bitter years of deadlocked war that cost a generation of European lives.” Indeed, the Great War was horrific, and cau...
Certain individuals desire a headstrong official to govern. They submit to that man or woman who claims all power belongs to him or herself. They follow. They obey. They do what they are told. They cease thinking for themselves. They refuse to contradict. They discard their own thoughts. They appreciate a monarch’s talent for quick far-reaching decisions. Politicians call this right-of-center government “authoritarianism.” Other individuals want a democracy, a republic, a sharing of power...
On Saturday night, October 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon instructed Attorney General, Elliot Richards, to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Elliot Richards though refused to comply with Nixon's command, and instead he resigned. Nixon then instructed Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox, but Ruckelshaus also refused to obey, and he resigned. Nixon then ordered Robert Bork, Solicitor General and the third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, to...
Rosa Parks and her husband Raymond lost their jobs in the backlash from Montgomery, Alabama’s successful bus boycott to end segregation on that city’s buses. In the late 1950’s, the couple moved to Detroit, Michigan, in search of better jobs. There, in 1964, Rosa offered her opinion. “I don’t feel a great deal of difference here from Alabama,” she said. “Housing segregation is just as bad, and it seems more noticeable in larger cities.” By Rosa’s words and actions, one can see the circumstances...
In Bill Bryson’s 2003 book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, he writes, “If your two parents had not bonded when they did—possibly to the second—you wouldn’t be here.” Your existence also depends upon countless exact bondings between your grandparents, great-grandparents, all of your forefathers back thousands of years. Bryson has counted up all the people required to make you, You. He says that “if you count back sixty-four generations, to the time of the ancient Romans, the number of peo...
On February 15, 1865, General Beauregard of the Confederate States Army ordered the evacuation of all Confederate forces from Charleston, South Carolina. He knew that his army could not stop General William T. Sherman’s Union troops from capturing Charleston on their march north. Union forces detested South Carolina. It was the first state to secede from the Union, in December of 1860, and it was there, at Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, that the Civil War had begun in April of 1861, when r...
On February 15, 1865, General Beauregard of the Confederate States Army ordered the evacuation of all Confederate forces from Charleston, South Carolina. He knew that his army could not stop General William T. Sherman's Union troops from capturing Charleston on their march north. Union forces detested South Carolina. It was the first state to secede from the Union, in December of 1860, and it was there, at Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, that the Civil War had begun in April of 1861, when...
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israel's Declaration of Independence. He said that the new State of Israel will "uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, or race." Despite Ben-Gurion's promise, war broke out between Arab and Jew. Fearing the worst, the native Palestinian people panicked. They packed their bags, and fled their homes, their villages, expecting to return in days or months, never imagining that their move was...
After Congress and enough states ratified the thirteenth amendment that terminated slavery, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This law declared that “all people born in the United States are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.” The Act equated birth to citizenship. President Andrew Johnson vetoed that Civil Rights Act, but then on April 5, 1866, the Senate, overrode his veto by a two-thirds majority. The...
If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get healthier, you may already be taking the necessary steps, such as improving your diet and increasing your exercise. Of course, physical fitness is important to your well-being – but, at the same time, don’t forget about your financial fitness. Specifically, what can you do to ensure your investment situation is in good shape? Here are a few “healthy living” suggestions that may also apply to your investment portfolio: Build endurance – Just as exer...
With the arrival of the New Year, many of us will pause and ponder the age-old question: "Who knows where the time goes?" And, as is always the case, none of us really do know. However, wherever the time goes, it will usually be a key factor in your success as an investor. Time can affect how you invest, and the results of your investing, in different ways: Growth potential – Contrary to myth, there's no real way to "get rich quick" when investing. To build wealth, you need patience – and time....
At various times, many people may feel frustrated by the performance of their investments. For example, they expect growth, and they don’t get it — or they think the value of their investment won’t fluctuate much, but it does. However, some of this frustration might be alleviated if investors were more familiar with the nature of their investment vehicles. Specifically, it’s important to keep in mind the difference between long-term and short-term investments. What defines long-term and short-term investments? Long-term investments are those ve...
