5 Year Bodybuilder in Record Books After TV Stunt
By Daily Mail
Oct. 26, 2009
A muscle-bound boy has been entered into the Guinness Book of Records after performing an incredible physical stunt.
Romanian Giuliano Stroe, five, has been training since the age of two in Italy – where he lives with his family – and now the hard work has finally paid off.
He was entered into the record books earlier this year after performing some impressive ‘hand-walking’ skills to a panel of judges and an astonished audience on an Italian TV show .
The exceptional pre-schooler performed the fastest ever 10m hand walk with a weight ball between his legs to the delight of the studio audience.
And he has now become an internet hit after hundreds of thousands of people watched a clip of him performing the stunt on YouTube.
Father Iulian Stroe, 33, said: ‘He has been going to the gym with me ever since he was born. I always took him with me when I went training.’
He added there is no danger of the youngster harming himself, saying: ‘I have been training hard all my life myself.
‘He is never allowed to practice on his own, he is only a child and if he gets tired we go and play.’
Giuliano, the oldest of four children, says his stardom has not gone to his head and he still enjoys normal kids stuff like painting, watching cartoons and playing in the park when he is not weightlifting.
But it seems he has picked up a taste for fame during his incredible exploits, revealing he enjoys it when he is applauded after performing.
It sparks memories of Richard Sandrak, who, after his father trained him to become a bodybuilder, aged just three in 1995, was declared The Strongest Boy In The World.
Nicknamed Little Hercules, Ukrainian-born Richard could bench press 210 pounds at the age of six after undergoing a strict regime.
After moving to the U.S., he became a movie star, starring in Tiny Tarzan, after his fitness schedule attracted media attention.
Interviewed this year, Richard, now 16, said that he had lost interest in working out.
Source: Daily Mail
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com
Teen Charged with Elizabeth Olten Murder
by AP
Oct. 23, 2009
ST. MARTINS, Mo. — Authorities have charged a 15-year-old with first-degree murder for the death of 9-year-old girl in central Missouri.
Cole County Juvenile Court Administrator Michael County said Saturday that the 15-year-old is being detained for the death of Elizabeth Olten.
Police did not release the teen’s gender or name.
Elizabeth’s body was found Friday — two days after she vanished — after the suspect led police to a wooded area near her home west of Jefferson City.
Cole County Sheriff Greg White said Saturday that the girl was found in an area that had previously been searched but she had been “very well concealed.”
White said Elizabeth was acquainted with the suspect but declined to elaborate.
Source: Fox News
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
NDS: Walking for a Cause
By Dan Samaria
Publisher/YC
Oct. 21, 2009
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. And if one of your children has NDS, we would love to hear their story. That we can share it with others and to help those families that are going through this.
Remember your child is a blessing from God……
We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
We hope you will enjoy this special and blessing story:
By Beverly Beckham
Oct. 21, 2009
Before Lucy was born, I spent months trying to imagine my first grandchild. I pictured a boy with dark hair and olive skin and warm brown eyes, just like his father’s. I pictured strolling him in a pram all over town, taking him to church, reading him books, singing to him, and watching Disney movies together. Nicholas was the name my daughter and her husband had chosen for a baby boy and so it was to Nicholas I began writing letters.
In them, I told him stories about his mother and his father and the family he would soon come to know. I told him what was going on in the big bad world and in our own small and much happier worlds. I told him how many centimeters long he was and how much he weighed at two months in utero, at three months and at four months.
And then an ultrasound technician took a picture and said there was an 80 percent chance that Nicholas was a girl.
Dear Lucy, I wrote after that.
From the beginning I sang to this baby I’d yet to meet: “The very thought of you and I forget to do, the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do.” And from the beginning, I recited a prayer every day, which I tore from a “Daily Word.” “I am committed to letting you learn and grow at your own pace…. Throughout life you will be both a student and a teacher, for you have much to learn and perhaps even more to teach.”
Lucy came to us on June 20, 2003, the image of her mother, blond and blue-eyed, with all ten fingers and toes.
And one extra chromosome. Lucy had Down syndrome. And this eclipsed the miracle of her.
Six years later we know the miracle she is. Some people understood right away: There will be challenges but everyone has challenges. There are things that Lucy may not be able to do but there will be a lot more things that she will do. It’s all going to be okay, they said.
But most people were as misinformed as we were.
Raising Awareness and Promoting Acceptance
October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month and throughout the
country and around the world there are Buddy Walks. The National Down Syndrome Society began the walks 13 years ago to integrate people with Down syndrome so they will be accepted and included in schools, in the workplace, and in life. Because for decades and decades, the medical establishment shortchanged them, said they couldn’t learn, said they weren’t worth teaching, and said they should be institutionalized.
And this misinformation lingers
When Lucy was a baby, I strolled her in a pram all over town just as I’d imagined strolling any baby. I took her to church. I continue to take her to church. We read books. We sing songs. (”The Very Thought of You” is one of her favorites.) And we watch Disney and all kinds of movies together.
Last week we walked in our local Buddy Walk, Lucy, her family, and friends along with 2,000 other people around beautiful Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, Mass.
Karen Gaffney, a young woman who was part of a relay team that swam the English channel, who swam across San Francisco Bay seven times, and who swam across Boston Harbor on October 8, spoke to the crowd about what it’s like having Down syndrome, what it’s like to look different on the outside but feel what everyone feels on the inside. What it was like for her growing up, wanting friends, wanting someone to sit next to her in the cafeteria, wanting to belong.
It was a speech that many of us could have given.
People with Down syndrome are shorter than average and slower to learn. They have trouble enunciating because of low muscle tone (think how hard it is to speak clearly after a Novocain). And they have trouble with fine motor skills.
But they feel and hurt and think and wish and dream the same things we all dream.
“Throughout life you will be both a student and a teacher, for you have much to learn and even more to teach,” I prayed before Lucy was born, thinking only of what I would teach her, not having a clue about all she would teach me.
Source: Grandparents
Who Were Our Presidents? Part 12
By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
Oct. 22, 2009
Editor’s Note: How many of us along with our children? Know who our Presidents were and what they have done in Office.
Each week we will pick a President and tell you about them and their Accomplishes.
We hope that you will enjoy this series. And let us know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com
12. ZACHARY TAYLOR 1849-1850
Northerners and Southerners disputed sharply whether the territories wrested from Mexico should be opened to slavery, and some Southerners even threatened secession. Standing firm, Zachary Taylor was prepared to hold the Union together by armed force rather than by compromise.
Born in Virginia in 1784, he was taken as an infant to Kentucky and raised on a plantation. He was a career officer in the Army, but his talk was most often of cotton raising. His home was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and he owned a plantation in Mississippi.
But Taylor did not defend slavery or southern sectionalism; 40 years in the Army made him a strong nationalist.
He spent a quarter of a century policing the frontiers against Indians. In the Mexican War he won major victories at Monterrey and Buena Vista.
President Polk, disturbed by General Taylor’s informal habits of command and perhaps his Whiggery as well, kept him in northern Mexico and sent an expedition under Gen. Winfield Scott to capture Mexico City. Taylor, incensed, thought that “the battle of Buena Vista opened the road to the city of Mexico and the halls of Montezuma, that others might revel in them.”
“Old Rough and Ready’s” homespun ways were political assets. His long military record would appeal to northerners; his ownership of 100 slaves would lure southern votes. He had not committed himself on troublesome issues. The Whigs nominated him to run against the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, who favored letting the residents of territories decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery.
In protest against Taylor the slaveholder and Cass the advocate of “squatter sovereignty,” northerners who opposed extension of slavery into territories formed a Free Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren. In a close election, the Free Soilers pulled enough votes away from Cass to elect Taylor.
Although Taylor had subscribed to Whig principles of legislative leadership, he was not inclined to be a puppet of Whig leaders in Congress. He acted at times as though he were above parties and politics. As disheveled as always, Taylor tried to run his administration in the same rule-of-thumb fashion with which he had fought Indians.
Traditionally, people could decide whether they wanted slavery when they drew up new state constitutions. Therefore, to end the dispute over slavery in new areas, Taylor urged settlers in New Mexico and California to draft constitutions and apply for statehood, bypassing the territorial stage.
Southerners were furious, since neither state constitution was likely to permit slavery; Members of Congress were dismayed, since they felt the President was usurping their policy-making prerogatives. In addition, Taylor’s solution ignored several acute side issues: the northern dislike of the slave market operating in the District of Columbia; and the southern demands for a more stringent fugitive slave law.
In February 1850 President Taylor had held a stormy conference with southern leaders who threatened secession. He told them that if necessary to enforce the laws, he personally would lead the Army. Persons “taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang … with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.” He never wavered.
Then events took an unexpected turn. After participating in ceremonies at the Washington Monument on a blistering July 4, Taylor fell ill; within five days he was dead. After his death, the forces of compromise triumphed, but the war Taylor had been willing to face came 11 years later. In it, his only son Richard served as a general in the Confederate Army
Editor’s Note: Todays’ homework: We would like to know some of President Zachary Taylor’s accomplishments as President.
If you can give us some, you can win a prize. You can contact us at dan@goldcoastchronicle.com
Source: White House
Unidentified Body Found in Georgia Landfill
By Fox News
October 21, 2009
Editor’s Note: Please keep this family in your prayers. We hope it is not this child. The sad part is, if it is not than it is someone else child. And they too need your prayers too.
We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
Investigators searching for a missing 7-year-old Florida girl said Wednesday that a girl’s body has been found in a Georgia landfill, though the body has yet to be identified.
Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler says the garbage at that landfill came from Orange Park, Florida, where Somer Thompson disappeared Monday while walking home from her school.
Florida authorities are going to the landfill to identify the body.
Somer’s mother, Dina Thompson, said earlier Wednesday that she assumes someone has her daughter. Police suspect foul play after first investigating whether she had fallen into something or had gotten lost. Thompson made an appeal to Somer’s possible abductors.
“Just drop her off somewhere. I don’t care if you ever get in trouble,” Thompson said. “I just want my baby back.”
SLIDESHOW: Somer Thompson Disappears on Walk Home From School.
Sheriff Beseler said investigators expanded the initial search area and interviewed about 75 known sex offenders in a five-square-mile radius. Teams of volunteers have walked arm-to-arm through the woods, and deputies have used helicopters and search dogs.
The girl vanished on her mile-long walk home from school Monday in Orange Park, near Jacksonville. Since then, more than 100 Clay County deputies, law enforcement officers from neighboring counties, the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have scoured a residential Orange Park neighborhood looking for Somer.
The investigation has produced more than 150 leads, but officials remain baffled as to her whereabouts.
Thompson said Somer was squabbling with another child, and her sister told her to stop. The girl got upset, walked ahead of the group and wasn’t seen again.
Beseler said officers have determined that Somer’s disappearance is not connected to an event that happened in the area on Oct. 10, when three people reportedly tried and failed to lure a 5-year-old girl into a car.
“Investigators located that car and those individuals,” Beseler said. “We are confident that incident had nothing to do with Somer’s disappearance. But I can’t go into any further details about that until we finish our investigation.”
Clay County Public Information Officer Mary Justino said the persons of interest in that case came forward Tuesday when they heard about Somer’s disappearance.
Somer is white, 3 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 65 pounds. She has brown hair that was in a pony tail and was wearing a cranberry colored jumpsuit with pink stripes and a black T-shirt underneath. Her backpack is black with pink and white skulls and crossbones.
Her mother said she has an “odd-shaped” birth mark on her left shin.
People are encouraged to call the tip line at (877) 227-6911 with any additional information on the child’s whereabouts.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click here to read more on this story from Myfoxorlando.com.
Source: Fox News
One out of Seven Girls Get Pregnant At Robeson High
By Kristyn Hartman
CHICAGO (CBS)
October 19, 2009
It is a Chicago public school full of energy and spirit. It has about 800 girls, and 115 of them have something in common – something you might find disturbing.
All those young ladies are moms or moms-to-be at Paul Robeson High School. It’s not a school for young mothers, it’s a neighborhood school. And all of the pregnancies have happened, despite prevention talk.
If you want to know why, the people closest to the situation say there’s no simple explanation.
Chicago Public Schools says it does not track the overall number of teen moms in the district. But Robeson Principal Gerald Morrow knows the count at his school in Englewood: 115 young ladies who are either expecting or already have had children.
To put it in perspective, their school pictures would fill roughly six pages of their high school year book.
Why is it happening at Robeson?
“It can be a lot of things that are happening in the home or not happening in the home, if you will,” Morrow said. Absentee fathers are another factor, he said.
LaDonna Denson and two other Robeson students say parents not talking to teens and, in some cases, the pursuit of public assistance also factor into the pregnancies. None of them thought they’d be moms at such a young age.
They said they have support at home. But not all girls do, they said. In fact, some girls get thrown out of the home.
Not on Morrow’s turf. “We’re not looking at them like ‘Ooh you made a mistake,'” he said. “We’re looking at how we can get them to the next phase, how can we still get them thinking about graduation?”
So there’s help in a teen parent program. And coming soon, right across from Robeson, developers are turning a one-time crack house into a day care for student use. “We have to provide some type of environment for them and some form of support for them,” Van Vincent, CEO of VLV Development, said.
It’s all made an impression.
“Just cause you have a baby, that doesn’t mean your life is over,” one student said.
One thing they might not know about their principal: His mom had him when she was 15. That’s why accepting the problem — and working through it — is so important to him.
Source: CHICAGO (CBS)
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. da@goldcoastchronicle.com
Hero of the Week – Kyle Forbes
By Dan Samaria
Publisher/YC
October 15,2009
Editor’s Note: Each Week we will be Honoring people or groups that are making a difference in helping others especially during this tough times in America.
When we as Americans are put through a test, we come out in flying colors on the other side.
We would like to know what you think? And if you know someone or group that we can Honor. You can contact us at dan@youngchronicle.com
This week we will be honoring: Kyle Forbes. Here is his story
By Kevin Quinn
October 15,2009
HOUSTON (KTRK) — A local 10-year-old boy is being hailed as a hero. He says he used what he learned in Cub Scouts to save his teacher’s life. The amazing young man explained to Eyewitness News how he reacted in an unusual situation with maturity well beyond his years.
Kyle Forbes, 10, is no ordinary kid. Most everyone will agree upon that. But now he’s being honored by his school and his Scout pack for springing into action Tuesday to save his teacher’s life.
For Hyde Elementary School teacher Sheri Lowe, every day teaching art class now is a gift.
“He saved my life,” said Lowe.
It was about 10am Tuesday when she and Kyle were alone in her classroom. Lowe was eating an apple and choked. They showed us how he reacted.
“And I was choking and he squeezed me like that twice. The first time it didn’t work, so he goes, ‘I got it, Mrs. Lowe.’ And he does it again, and he does it exactly the right way and the apple came out,” said Lowe.
Kyle says he learned the Heimlich maneuver last year in Cub Scouts and that his dad reinforced the teaching.
“I just knew what to do immediately and I just like hurried over there and did it exactly right,” said Kyle.
Lowe calls Kyle her hero, and it’s a title he’s happy to accept.
“Let’s get back to the interview about the hero thing,” said Kyle. “I mean, that was the first time I’ve ever saved someone’s life, in an accident. That’s the first time I’ve ever done it.”
Kyle is autistic. He has a passion for learning and like any child he wants to fit in.
“Before I was just like a normal kid, always being picked on. Then I was like a superhero. Everybody was cheering me when I came down to the office to get an award. Everyone clapped at me when I got back,” said Kyle.
Lowe wonders what would be today had Kyle not been with her.
“He’s in my prayers, and um, (to Kyle) tell me not to cry,” said Lowe. “He is my hero.”
Kyle’s father is quite proud of his son. He says this is proof that children with autism can do anything others can do and that they should never think otherwise.
Source ABC 13 News
Boy Floated Off in Balloon Found Safe
By P. Solomon Banda &
Ivan Moreno
Associated Press
October 15, 2009
Editor’s Note: Photo of Six-year-old Falcon Heene sits in the box of his family’s pickup truck outside their family’s home in Fort Collins, Colo., after he was found hiding in a box in a space above the garage on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009. Falcon Heene at first had been reported to be aboard a flying-saucer-shaped balloon fashioned by his father and then carried by high winds on to the plains of eastern Colorado. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – A 6-year-old boy was found hiding in a cardboard box in his family’s garage attic Thursday after being feared aboard a homemade helium balloon that hurtled 50 miles through the sky on live television.
The discovery marked a bizarre end to a saga that started when the giant silvery balloon floated away from the family’s yard Thursday morning, sparking a frantic rescue operation that involved military helicopters and briefly shut down Denver International Airport.
But Sheriff Jim Alderden turned to reporters during a news conference and gave a thumbs up and said 6-year-old Falcon Heene is “at the house.” “Apparently he’s been there the whole time,” he said.
The boy’s father, Richard Heene, said the family was tinkering with the balloon Thursday and that he scolded Falcon for getting inside a compartment on the craft. He said Falcon’s brother had seen him inside the compartment before it took off and that’s why they thought he was in there when it launched.
But the boy fled to the attic at some point after the scolding and was never in the balloon during its two-hour, 50-mile journey through two counties. “I yelled at him. I’m really sorry I yelled at him,” Heene said as he hugged his son during a news conference.
“I was in the attic and he scared me because he yelled at me,” Falcon said. “That’s why I went in the attic.”
Richard Heene adamantly denied the notion that the whole thing was a big publicity stunt. “That’s horrible after the crap we just went through. No.”
T
he flying saucer-like craft tipped precariously at times before gliding to the ground in a field. With the child nowhere in sight, investigators searched the balloon’s path. Several people reported seeing something fall from the craft while it was in the air, and yellow crime-scene tape was placed around the home.
But in the end, the boy apparently was in the garage the whole time, even as investigators scoured the house and neighborhood for any sign of him.
Neighbor Bob Licko, 65, said he was leaving home when he heard commotion in the backyard of the family. He said he saw two boys on the roof with a camera, commenting about their brother.
“One of the boys yelled to me that his brother was way up in the air,” Licko said.
Licko said the boy’s mother seemed distraught and that the boy’s father was running around the house. The Poudre School District in Fort Collins, where the boys attend, did not have classes for elementary schools Thursday because of a teacher work day.
The boys parents are storm chasers who appeared twice in the ABC reality show “Wife Swap,” most recently in March.
“When the Heene family aren’t chasing storms, they devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm,” according to the show.
In a 2007 interview with The Denver Post, Richard Heene described becoming a storm chaser after a tornado ripped off a roof where he was working as a contractor and said he once flew a plane around Hurricane Wilma’s perimeter in 2005.
Pursuing bad weather was a family activity with the children coming along as the father sought evidence to prove his theory that rotating storms create their own magnetic fields.
Although Richard said he has no specialized training, they had a computer tracking system in their car and a special motorcycle.
While the balloon was airborne, Colorado Army National Guard sent a UH-58 Kiowa helicopter and was preparing to send a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. They also were working with pilots of ultralight aircraft on the possibility of putting weights on the homemade craft to weigh it down.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much the search operation cost. Capt. Troy Brown said the Black Hawk helicopter was in the air for nearly three hours, and the Kiowa helicopter was airborne for about one hour. The Black Hawk costs about $4,600 an hour to fly, and the Kiowa is $700 an hour, Brown said.
Col. Chris Petty, one of the pilots aboard the Black Hawk, said he was thrilled the boy was OK.
Asked what he would say to the 6-year-old if he saw him, Petty said: “I’m really glad you’re alive, I’m very thankful, but I’d sure like to know the rest of the story.”
The episode led to a brief shutdown of northbound departures from one of the nation’s busiest airports, said a controller at the Federal Aviation Administration’s radar center in Longmont, Colo. FAA canceled all northbound takeoffs between 1 p.m. and 1:15 p.m. MDT, said Lyle Burrington, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association representative at the center. The balloon was about 15 miles northwest of the airport at that time.
Before the departure shutdown, controllers had been vectoring planes taking off in that direction away from the balloon, Burrington said.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency tracked the balloon through reports from pilots.
Neighbor Lisa Eklund described seeing the balloon pass.
“We were sitting eating, out looking where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning,” she said.
“By the time I saw it, it traveled pretty fast,” she said.
The balloon landed on its own in a dirt field. Sheriff’s deputies secured it to keep it in place, even tossing shovelfuls of dirt on one edge.
Jason Humbert saw the balloon land. He said he had gotten a call from his mother in Texas who told him about the balloon. He said he was in a field checking on an oil well when he found himself surrounded by police who had been chasing the balloon, which came to a rest 12 miles northeast of Denver International Airport.
“It looked like an alien spaceship you see in those old, old movies. You know, those black-and-white ones. It came down softly. I asked a police officer if the boy was OK and he said there was no one in it,” Humbert said.
___
Associated Press writers Judith Kohler, Dan Elliott, Sandy Shore and Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.
Source Yahoo News
Who Were Our Presidents? Part 11
By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
Oct. 14, 2009
Editor’s Note: How many of us along with our children? Know who our Presidents were and what they have done in Office.
Each week we will pick a President and tell you about them and their Accomplishes.
We hope that you will enjoy this series. And let us know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com
11. JAMES K. POLK 1845-1849
Often referred to as the first “dark horse” President, James K. Polk was the last of the Jacksonians to sit in the White House, and the last strong President until the Civil War.
He was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1795. Studious and industrious, Polk was graduated with honors in 1818 from the University of North Carolina. As a young lawyer he entered politics, served in the Tennessee legislature, and became a friend of Andrew Jackson.
In the House of Representatives, Polk was a chief lieutenant of Jackson in his Bank war. He served as Speaker between 1835 and 1839, leaving to become Governor of Tennessee.
Until circumstances raised Polk’s ambitions, he was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for Vice President in 1844. Both Martin Van Buren, who had been expected to win the Democratic nomination for President, and Henry Clay, who was to be the Whig nominee, tried to take the expansionist issue out of the campaign by declaring themselves opposed to the annexation of Texas. Polk, however, publicly asserted that Texas should be “re-annexed” and all of Oregon “re-occupied.”
The aged Jackson, correctly sensing that the people favored expansion, urged the choice of a candidate committed to the Nation’s “Manifest Destiny.” This view prevailed at the Democratic Convention, where Polk was nominated on the ninth ballot.
“Who is James K. Polk?” Whigs jeered. Democrats replied Polk was the candidate who stood for expansion. He linked the Texas issue, popular in the South, with the Oregon question, attractive to the North. Polk also favored acquiring California.
Even before he could take office, Congress passed a joint resolution offering annexation to Texas. In so doing they bequeathed Polk the possibility of war with Mexico, which soon severed diplomatic relations.
In his stand on Oregon, the President seemed to be risking war with Great Britain also. The 1844 Democratic platform claimed the entire Oregon area, from the California boundary northward to a latitude of 54’40’, the southern boundary of Russian Alaska. Extremists proclaimed “Fifty-four forty or fight,” but Polk, aware of diplomatic realities, knew that no course short of war was likely to get all of Oregon. Happily, neither he nor the British wanted a war.
He offered to settle by extending the Canadian boundary, along the 49th parallel, from the Rockies to the Pacific. When the British minister declined, Polk reasserted the American claim to the entire area. Finally, the British settled for the 49th parallel, except for the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The treaty was signed in 1846.
Acquisition of California proved far more difficult. Polk sent an envoy to offer Mexico up to $20,000,000, plus settlement of damage claims owed to Americans, in return for California and the New Mexico country. Since no Mexican leader could cede half his country and still stay in power, Polk’s envoy was not received. To bring pressure, Polk sent Gen. Zachary Taylor to the disputed area on the Rio Grande.
To Mexican troops this was aggression, and they attacked Taylor’s forces.
Congress declared war and, despite much Northern opposition, supported the military operations. American forces won repeated victories and occupied Mexico City. Finally, in 1848, Mexico ceded New Mexico and California in return for $15,000,000 and American assumption of the damage claims.
President Polk added a vast area to the United States, but its acquisition precipitated a bitter quarrel between the North and the South over expansion of slavery.
Polk, leaving office with his health undermined from hard work, died in June 1849.
Editor’s Note: Here are some of James K. Polk accomplishes:
President James Polk had some major accomplishments which still affect us today. Mainly he was responsible for the annexation of Texas as a state and getting the US into a war with Mexico.
The results of this were that the US was doubled in territory by annexing half of Mexico, as well as gaining enormous amounts of wealth by mining gold and silver that was in those new territories.
If there is some other accomplishments that you think he as done as President, dan@youngchronicle.com it could win you a prize.
Source: White House AllExperts
Medal of Honor Recipient – U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith
By Dan Samaria
Publisher/YC
Oct. 14, 2009
Each week we at the Chronicle will be honoring one of these true heroes.
We will call it Medal of Honor Recipient of the Week.
We hope you will join with us to honor these true heroes. Who have given us the greatest sacrifice that one could give their life, to save their fellow soldiers?
We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
This Week’s Hero: U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:
Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy near Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad, Iraq on 4 April 2003. On that day, Sergeant First Class Smith was engaged in the construction of a prisoner of war holding area when his Task Force was violently attacked by a company-sized enemy force.
Realizing the vulnerability of over 100 fellow soldiers, Sergeant First Class Smith quickly organized a hasty defense consisting of two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley Fighting Vehicle and three armored personnel carriers. As the fight developed, Sergeant First Class Smith braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons, and organized the evacuation of three wounded soldiers from an armored personnel carrier struck by a rocket propelled grenade and a 60mm mortar round.
Fearing the enemy would overrun their defenses, Sergeant First Class Smith moved under withering enemy fire to man a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a damaged armored personnel carrier. In total disregard for his own life, he maintained his exposed position in order to engage the attacking enemy force.
During this action, he was mortally wounded. His courageous actions helped defeat the enemy attack, and resulted in as many as 50 enemy soldiers killed, while allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. Sergeant First Class Smith’s extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the Third Infantry Division “Rock of the Marne,” and the United States Army.
Source: Us Military