May 27, 1936 – Salinas, California: John Steinbeck reluctantly pinned the letter to his editor Elizabeth Otis. “My Irish Setter pup, Toby, left alone one night made confetti of my manuscript. I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting...
December 12, 1969 – M.D Anderson Cancer Institute in Houston, Texas: Doctors amputated Freddie Steinmark’s left leg at the hip. What he had hoped was a deep thigh bruise had been diagnosed as osteogenic sarcoma, a deadly form of bone cancer. Just six days before...
1984 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Night after night Max sat at his desk working on his book. While he wrote, his wife, Denalyn, sat on the sofa doing cross-stitch. Writing a book had been a dream for Max. As a young pastor in Miami for two years, he had gotten plenty of...
Early 2005, Pershing Park – Los Angeles, California: Steve Lopez, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times was rushing back to the office to meet a deadline when he came upon a strange site. On a busy street corner across from a statue of Beethoven, a middle-aged black...
November 7, 1939 – New Britain, Connecticut: Korczak Ziolkowski received a letter from Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota Indian Chief in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It began, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes,...
2002 – Mastala Village, Malawi, Africa: The people in his African village called him “misala,” the crazy one. The first time William Kamkwamba saw a picture of a windmill, he was in the small library in the neighboring village of Wimbe. The 15-year-old wasn’t entirely...
