heroes

Most courageous & greatest swimmer, to swim beyond extreme, bearing excruciating pain, not for gold medals but for fragile Nature. "I have chosen to swim. It’s my way of drawing attention to the oceans, & the fragile state of our nature," Lewis Gordon Pugh said, "we’ve lost more than half the Arctic summer sea ice cover decades ahead of predictions, showing climate change has been hugely underestimated. We must insist our leaders take urgent action..sea ice is melting fast.." "I have done very, very cold swims in the North Pole which was so cold that your life is on the line and it took me four months to feel my hands again." "I can’t think of a better way to show that climate change is a reality than by swimming in a place that should be totally frozen over." "This is not just about protecting a pristine environment, it's about saving ourselves."

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Lewis Gordon Pugh is the first swimmer in history to complete a long distance swim in all 5 oceans of the world, a feat which many had considered to be the "holy grail" of swimming. He also became the first person to complete a long distance swim in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.  read more »

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D-Day veterans: 'we wear medals in tribute to men who never lived to receive theirs'

World leaders and veterans gathered along the beach Saturday in Normandy, France, to commemorate D-Day. For the veterans of the Normandy Landings, almost all now in their mid eighties, this was not a moment to acknowledge their own ailments. Instead, they stood proudly in the blazing sunshine to honor the comrades who lost their lives amid the shelling and the terror and the bloodshed that were the D Day landings. To pay tribute to the men with whom they will forever have an unbreakable bond: the servicemen who gave their lives in the battle that marked the beginning of the end of the War.

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Somali pirates in a drifting lifeboat with hostage Capt. Richard Phillips want $2 million for his release. How decisively wise it would be to settle the piracy issue not at the risk of a life, a hero’s life who after all has saved other 19-crew’s lives and a valuable freighter, and 400 containers of food aid for hungry people.

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The US-flagged, Danish-owned freighter, Maersk Alabama, hijacked by pirates off Somalia safely reached a Kenyan port at the price of a volunteer hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips. When asked by a journalist how it felt to arrive in Kenya, a member of the 19 remaining crew who did not give his name said it was "terrifying and exciting at the same time." Asked about his captain, he said: "He's a hero."  read more »

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Lisa Donath was running late. Heading down the sidewalk toward her subway stop in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighbor- hood, she decided to skip her usual espresso. By the time she got to the platform, Donath felt faint-maybe it hadn't been a good idea to give blood the night before, she thought. She leaned heavily against a post close to the tracks. Several yards away, Ismael "Mel" Feneque, 43, and his girlfriend, Melina Gonzalez, found a spot close to where the front of the train would stop.

When he heard the scream, followed by someone yelling, "Oh, my God, she fell in!" Feneque didn't hesitate. Yanking off the bag he had slung across his six-three frame, he jumped down to the tracks and ran some 40 feet toward the body sprawled facedown on the rails. "No! Not you!" his girlfriend screamed after him. She was right to be alarmed. By the time Feneque reached Donath, he could "feel the vibration on the tracks and see the light coming into the tunnel," he remembers. "The train was maybe 20 seconds from the station." In that instant, Feneque gave himself a mission: I'm going to get her out, and then I'm going to get myself out, ASAP. I'm not going to let myself get killed here.  read more »