Independence Hall in Cheonan, South Korea

This year's children's day, our first one after coming back, has been a fun day trip to the Independence Hall in Cheonan. We've been thinking about that as one possible place to visit in the horizon. The perfect opportunity came around is the fun-filled activity day for kids on this year's Children's Day.

We were fortunate to have our Korean friends invite and enlist the kid up in the reservation to make sure that they will be included for the materials to be used. When I tried to inquire what activities are lined up from the site itself, I didn't get a lot of info as to the specifics. Our friend mentioned about flower puchim/jeon, mug painting but had wanted to know some more to figure out what we will possibly do for the day to no avail.

Nevertheless, we got there pretty much on time and were able to do lots of stuff. The kids were able to do the flower jeon, mugs, make the ddeok, play traditional games and other cool stuff. We went to see the exhibition hall 1 and 2 later in the afternoon. The kids weren't a big fan of the halls so the remaining 4 halls would have to pushed back to other future trips to the place. I've heard that it's a favorite field trip stop for students anyway.

Anne Frank, Holocaust, Schindler's List..etc.

I have recently started listening to an audio copy of the Diary of Anne Frank. Even though I have read it before somewhere, a second "reading" is not really a bad thing. I have more chance to twirl the story in my mind now, unlike before that I simple devoured reading it. This time, I have extended my reading.

This brought me to youtube, and found some comments and videos about questioning the authenticity of Anne Frank's Diaries, or worst, the existence of the Holocaust involving the Jews and the Nazi's. I mean, really. It's nice to know that there are other ideas about that one but come on, this seems like too real to be reel. There seem to be a movie or something about Anne Frank and I have yet to find it.

This reminded me of the movies of the same topic; the Schindler's List, and the Pianist. Although I think I've seen the first one and I do remember the synopsis and the book where the story was based from (aside from the real person, of course), can be a good read. But the movie, it wasn't something that I would want to watch again. It's just so terribly depressing. Regardless of that, I would still strongly recommend to anyone to watch it, even just once, for their own existence's sake. It's just up to them if they would like to question if the holocaust really existed at that time.

A bit about Schindler. His first name is Oskar, a German, who was not very lucky with business but somehow was able to use his business to save at least 1200 Jews during the holocaust.

My goodness, the web really has a lot of interesting things to bring into a classroom. Anyway, I may have this for my lil' one later when he's old enough to understand. He finds the Anne Diary audio book interesting (at his age now), though.

Repost: Top Richest Men of the World EVER

10 Richest People of All Time and How They Made Their Fortunes

Posted by Alex in Money & Finance, Neatorama Only, World Records on July 9, 2008 at 2:37 am

Quick: who is the richest man of all time? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Not even close, though there's no denying they're very, very rich. The richest man of all time, when wealth is measured as a percentage of the national economy, was John D. Rockefeller, whose fortunes made Gates' and Buffet's look downright puny.

Keeping score of who's wealthier is like a spectator sport with Forbes magazine as its official referee. Last year, Forbes counted 946 billionaires (there are too many millionaires to count, so they don't bother with that anymore) with combined net worth of $3.5 trillion. That's larger than the GDP of Germany, the third largest economy in the world.

But the richest people ever belong in their own special club. These people (all men) have built fortunes of legendary proportions when calculated at the peak of their wealth. Here is the list of the 10 Richest People of All Time and How They Made Their Fortunes.

1. John D. Rockefeller

Peak wealth: $318.3 billion (based on 2007 US dollar). Age at peak wealth: 74

As a young man, John Davison Rockefeller said that his two greatest ambitions were to make $100,000 and live to be 100. He died two months shy of his 98th birthday, but boy did he make good on the first goal.

Rockefeller wasn't born to a rich family. His father, William Avery "Big Bill" Rockefeller was a shiftless man who spent most of his times thinking up schemes to avoid actual work! Nevertheless, thanks to the guidance of his mom Eliza - a homemaker and devout Baptist - John D. grew up to be quite a hardworking man.

Rockefeller started out in business as a wholesale grocer and went on to found Standard Oil, which through shrewd business decisions and some say predatory and illegal practices, grew to be a gargantuan monopoly. At its peak, Standard Oil had about 90% of the market for refined oil (kerosene) in the United States (in the early days of Standard Oil, gasoline wasn't an important component of the oil industry - indeed, gasoline produced by the refineries were dumped in rivers because they were considered useless!)

In 1911, the US Supreme Court declared Standard Oil a monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered it to be broken up into 34 independent companies with different boards of directors. By that time, Rockefeller had long since retired from the company but still held a large percentage of shares. Ironically, the busting up of Standard Oil unlocked share values and his fortunes doubled overnight.

Rockefeller got his first job at 16 as a bookkeeper. In a move that portended his lifelong commitment to philanthropy, he tithed 10% of his income - from his first paycheck on - to charity. As his wealth grew, so did his charitable contributions. When he died in 1937, Rockefeller had given away half of his amassed fortune, and established philanthropic foundations to continue giving after his death.

2. Andrew Carnegie

Peak wealth: $298.3 billion. Age at peak wealth: 68

Andrew Carnegie immigrated as a young child to Pittsburgh from Scotland and began working at 13 years old as a bobbin boy in a textile mill. He changed spools of threads for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for a weekly wage of $2. At 16 years old, Carnegie became a telegraph messenger boy, and soon after was promoted to be a telegraph operator.

Carnegie became a personal assistant to Thomas Scott, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and learned the ins and outs of the railroad business. It was Carnegie who invented a brutally efficient way to clear the tracks after a railway accident: by burning the railroad car!

When he was 20, Carnegie mortgaged his mother's house and made his first gutsy investment of $500 for 10 shares of the Adams Express company - sort of the Fed Ex delivery company of the 1800s - and was handsomely rewarded. He then invested in a company making sleeping cars for the railway. By the time he was 30, Carnegie had expanded his investments to iron works, steamers, railroads, and oil well.

But the real money came from steel. In the late 1880s, Carnegie built his steel empire to become the world's largest manufacturer of steel rails, pig iron, and coke.

In 1901, at the age of 66, Carnegie retired by selling his shares to John Pierpont Morgan for more than $225 million (a large sum today and an astounding amount of money back then) in form of gold-bonds. When the bonds were delivered, a special vault had to be built to physically house them!

Carnegie was big proponent of philanthropy - in a famous 1889 essay "The Gospel of Wealth," he wrote that wealth should be distributed to promote welfare of other people and enrich society. True to his words, Carnegie gave away more than $350 million or almost 90% of his fortune.

Note: At the end of the Spanish American War, the United States bought the Philippines from Spain for $20 million. Carnegie was appalled at what he perceived to be an imperialist move and personally offered $20 million to the Philippines so it could buy its independence from the US (they didn't take him up on his offer).

*The list continues here but this last bit of info is what made me repost it. When I read it in Philippine history books, the word "ceded" is used. Yet, the bottom line of this is the word "BUY." All part of history. Sad but true.

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