We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
— Isaac Newton who was born on Christmas Day in 1642
Beatles legend John Lennon is among ten famous people who are having craters on Mercury named after them by the International Astronomical Union.
The most successful people in life are the most resilient. We are all going to be knocked down, fired and screw up, but the ability to get up and keep going will be the difference to being successful. When you look at some high achievers, being "knocked down" almost seemed like a prerequisite to getting on in life.
Beatle John Lennon left school with a blemished report card; he certainly stood out for all the wrong reasons. His detention sheets from the mid-1950s, when he was 15, show he was a troublemaker. Teachers describe Lennon as a "class-clown" and a "nuisance".
Lennon, at 16, failed all of his "0" level exams and was more interested in art and music than doing well in school.
How much would the world have missed out on if Lennon had concentrated more on his geography than on his music?
Detention records describing Beatle John Lennon's schoolboy misdemeanours have fetched about $15,000 each in an online auction. School Detention files for Media Dragon
Thomas Mann warned that the “attraction to the abyss of immensity and darkness, to the unorganized and immeasurable,” conceals a “longing for nothingness.” Kafka toyed with the “idea of liberation through death.” According to Virginia Woolf, art is intimate with death: “It immobilizes the vitally changeable and thereby projects an already posthumous view.” Camus may have been in love with life, but he was forever aware of encroaching death and stressed “the importance of remaining supremely conscious at the point of death.” J. M. Coetzee is “equally elusive and paradoxical” about his own beliefs in the face of death. “I have beliefs,” as one of his characters says, “but I do not believe in them.” Brombert permits his writers to speak for themselves, and if they pull back from the edge of definitiveness, so does he. He excels at summary; he is capable of following the scent of a theme throughout an entire life’s work, flashing the writer’s phrases whenever possible. Each chapter ofMusings on Mortality is an education in itself. Musings on Mortality
Mikhail Kalashnikov developed the AK47 to match the firepower of German weapons Mikhail Kalashnikov's automatic rifle became one of the most familiar weapons on the planet. AK47 brings odd memories of Czech army days 1977-79 when Bin Ladin was on CIA side
