Colorado woman donates blond Hair for Norden Bombsights WWII ..

Mary Brown was a Coloradan; the children of Slovenian immigrants. She left elementary school at the age of 12, to help support her family as a servant 

for $5/week. When she was 13, she lied about her age so that she could work at National Broom Factory for 75 cents a day, a job she held for 42 years. Her younger siblings pitched in by picking up chunks of coal that had fallen onto the railroad tracks. Brown's lone prized possession was her knee-length fine blonde hair.

In 1943, Brown saw an advertisement in a newspaper, searching for women with blonde hair of at least 22" length, that had never been treated with chemicals or hot irons. The military was offering to purchase such hair, to be used for meteorological instruments in the war effort.

The "meteorological instruments" were actually crosshairs for Norden bombsights. The Army Air Forces (the predecessor to today's US Air Force) had tried various materials for the Norden bombsight, including black widow spider

webbing, but nothing could withstand the temperature variations like fine blonde human hair that had never been treated with chemicals or heat.

Brown sent off a sample of her 34" blonde hair to the government for analysis. After analyzing her hair, they agreed to purchase it, offering to pay her in war savings stamps. But Brown wouldn't accept payment for her hair. She saw it as her patriotic duty to help the war effort. She later recalled that she cried for months after cutting her hair.

It was decades before Brown learned the true use of her hair, and the effect of her

sacrifice. In 1987, on her 80th birthday, she received a personal thank-you letter from President Ronald Reagan:

Brown's hometown of Pueblo, Colorado declared an official Mary Babnik Brown day, and she also received an award from the Colorado Aviation Historical Society.

      Said Brown: "Here I am, an old lady of 83, and I'm still flying high".

                           

Gini Rifkin Author books now available at Walmart

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The Eleventh Hour. The end of WWI

 On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 the guns of Europe fell silent. After four years of bitter fighting, The Great War was finally over. 

The Armistice was signed at 5am in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiegne, France on November 11, 1918. Six hours later, at 11am, the war ended. The First World War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.
                    

Trench warfare and hand to hand combat, World War I pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire against Great Britain, the United States, France, Russia, Italy and Japan. Mustard gas was used and the "gas mask" was invented. 

     “WE SHALL NOT SLEEP, 
                   THOUGH POPPIES GROW 

                           IN FLANDERS FIELDS" 

                            John McCrae

The poppies of Flanders Field have become a symbol of WWI and all Veterans. 

Per Karen Lowton
“A lovely military man selling poppies stopped me today and asked if he could reposition mine - while doing so he told me that women should wear their poppy on their right side: the red represents the blood of all those who gave their lives; the black represents the mourning of those who didn't have their loved ones return home; and the green leaf represents the grass and crops growing, and future prosperity after the war destroyed so much.

“The leaf should be positioned at 11 o'clock to represent the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the time that World War One formally ended.

Veterans Day is observed in the United States on 11 November, and is both a federal and state holiday. In the United States, and some other allied nations, 11 November was formerly known as Armistice Day; in the United States it was given its new name in 1954 at the end of the Korean War to honor all veterans.

           Sadly, the War To End All Wars, didn't accomplish that goal. To see how and why it started, visit here....Who started WWI    5 top causes of WWI

Country	Total mobilized forces	Killed or died	Wounded	Prisoners or missing	Total casualties
Allied Powers:
Russia	12,000,000	1,700,000	4,950,000	2,500,000	9,150,000
France	8,410,000	1,357,800	4,266,000	537,000	6,160,800
British Empire**	8, 904,467	908,371	2,090,212	191,652	3,190,235
Italy	5,615,000	650,000	947,000	600,000	2,197,000
United States	4,734,991	116,516	204,002	------	320,518
Japan	800,000	300	907	3	1210
Romania	750,000	335,706	120,000	80,000	535,706
Serbia	707,343	45,000	133,148	152,198	331,106
Belgium	267,000	13,716	44,686	34,659	93,061
Greece	230,000	5,000	21,000	1,000	27,000
Portugal	100,000	7,222	13,751	12,318	33,291
Montenegro	50,000	3,000	10,000	7,000	20,000
TOTALS	42,188,810	5,152,115	12,831,004	4,121,090	22,104,209
Central Powers:
Germany	11,000,000	1,773,700	4,216,058	1,152,800	7,142,558
Austria-Hungary	7,800,000	1,200,000	3,620,000	2,200,000	7,020,000
Turkey	2,850,000	325,000	400,000	250,000	975,000
Bulgaria	1,200,000	87,500	152,390	27,029	266,919
TOTALS	22,850,000	3,386,200	8,388,448	3,629,829	15,404,477
GRAND TOTALS	65,038,810	8,538,315	21,219,452	7,750,919	37,508,686

Donkey skin trade goes global.

What started in China and Africa, is now spreading across the world as Brazil joins in the dirty business of torturing and butchering donkeys to satisfy the Red Chinese ravenous, greedy desire to market ejiao.

    Ejiao is also known as donkey hide glue, DHG, a gelatinous substance, made from boiling the hides of donkeys. 

  An old remedy in China, ejiao is now a new gotta-have-it craved by their general public for a myriad of undocumented cures. In addition to the absence or small presence of the medicinal properties, poor quality DHG is more likely to contain harmful substances such as chromium, lead, mercury, and arsenic. 
 
                   Shan Dong E,  Ejiao E Jiao Colla Corii Asini     Every year in China, four million donkeys are slaughtered for making DHG. The word is out, the Chinese are scouring the world for the hides--legal or black market, and at irresistible prices. 
                             An ongoing investigation is being conducted by the National Donkey Taskforce, a partner to The Donkey Sanctuary UK. They found one compound (now shut down) was slaughtering 250 donkeys A DAY. At another, the driver was bringing in at least 50 donkeys a day. Many are wild donkeys, but in Kenya some are stolen from families who need their animal for farming, wood and water hauling....basic human needs. 

Donkeys awaiting slaughter at a holding compound in Itapetinga, Brazil in September 2018, which has since been closed down. (Picture credit: Frente Nacional de Defesa dos Jumentos)

    They are penned waiting for slaughter with no food or water after traveling miles in unspeakable van conditions. Australia’s role as the eighth largest importer of donkey-hide gelatin (ejiao) was revealed in a  new investigative report released today by Humane Society International Australia
                       WHY?  
All for our obsession for undying youth and miracle cures. And for the greed of the companies making the blood-money bottom-line profits. 

     Products and practices like these are chipping away another little piece of our humanity. Please spread the word. Help stop an underground black market horror story for one of the sweetest animals still running free. 

Newsweek Magazine 
DHG can poison people
Humane Society International
The New York Times
The Donkey Task Force 
The Donkey Sanctuary UK