Grade Eight 2014

James Cameron’s Titanic is one of the most successful movies of all time, and I have no problem saying that it’s also one of the most beloved movies ever made.

What’s special about Titanic is that the backlash happened so quickly, and became so widespread, and grew nearly as mythological as the movie itself. The film was released in December 1997, and a few weeks later, when it started to play around the country to surging, off-the-charts crowds, the voices of dissent had already begun to coalesce. For everyone who adored Titanic, and even (like me) thought that it was a heart-swelling masterpiece of old-fashioned Hollywood audacity, it seemed as if there was someone else who thought it was overrated and overblown.

On this day in 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power.

it was about 1 p.m. that the president suddenly complained of a terrific pain in the back of my head and collapsed unconscious. One of the women summoned a doctor, who immediately recognized the symptoms of a massive cerebral hemorrhage and gave the president a shot of adrenaline into the heart in a vain attempt to revive him.

Eleanor delivered her speech that afternoon and was listening to a piano performance when she was summoned back to the White House. In her memoirs, she recalled that ride to the White House as one of dread, as she knew in her heart that her husband had died.

On this day, 23 years ago, Nelson Mandela was released from the South African prison where he'd been held for nearly 27 years.

In August of 1962 Mandela was arrested, jailed and convicted of leaving the country illegally and inciting workers to strike. He was sentenced to five years in prison, where he remained through June 1964 when he was sentenced to life for his anti-apartheid engagement through the African National Congress (ANC) and the Umkhonto we Sizwe or "MK," the ANC's armed wing. He would spend the next 18 years at the Robben Island penitentiary until 1982, when he was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison on the South African mainland.

In 1985, the country's then president, P. W. Botha, offered to free Mandela in exchange for his renunciation of violence as a means of solving the countries racial problems. Mandela refused the offer.

By 1962, Pol Pot had become leader of the Cambodian Communist Party and was forced to flee into the jungle to escape the wrath of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia. In the jungle, Pol Pot formed an armed resistance movement that became known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) and waged a guerrilla war against Sihanouk's government

June 17, 1994: Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson is arrested for a double murder. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered outside Nicole's apartment on June 12, 1994. Both victims were repeatedly stabbed and both had defensive wounds, attesting to their struggle in the attack.

Police permitted him to turn himself in, thinking he was not a flight risk. O.J. was to be at the police station at 11 AM on this date. He didn't show.

At 2 PM, the police issued an all-points bulletin for O.J. His lawyer and friend read a disjointed and confusing letter from the ex-football star that sounded like a suicide note. The police tracked cellular phone calls to find Simpson. They found his friend, Al Cowlings, driving a white Ford Bronco heading south on Interstate 405. When police approached the SUV, Cowlings told them O.J. was in the back seat, holding a gun to his own head. Police backed away.

Born on Feb. 13, 1923, and raised in the hills of West Virginia near the town of Myra, Charles “Chuck” Yeager entered military service as soon as he could, joining 17 classmates who enlisted after high school graduation to fight in World War II.

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Assigned to a host of test flights, Yeager was soon selected as pilot during the Air Force’s attempt to break the sound barrier; he would fly a super-sonic plane called the X-1, nicknamed Glamorous Glennis in honor of his wife. Rocket-like and so tight and compact that it had to be dropped from a cargo plane to conserve fuel, the X-1 was the United States’s chance to top Mach 1.

Einstein's 1939 letter helped initiate the U.S. effort to build an atomic bomb, but work proceeded slowly at first. Two other findings in 1940 and 1941 demonstrated conclusively that the bomb was feasible and made building the bomb a top priority for the United States: the determination of the "critical mass" of uranium needed and the confirmation that plutonium could undergo fission and be used in a bomb. In December 1941, the government launched the Manhattan Project, the scientific and military undertaking to develop the bomb.

Einstein wrote to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to warn him that the Nazis were working on a new and powerful weapon: an atomic bomb. Fellow physicist Leo Szilard urged Einstein to send the letter and helped him draft it.

July 1940, the U.S. Army Intelligence office denied Einstein the security clearance needed to work on the Manhattan Project. The hundreds of scientists on the project were forbidden from consulting with Einstein, because the left-leaning political activist was deemed a potential security risk.