Percy Alfred Williams was a Canadian athlete, winner of the 100 and 200 metres races at the 1928 Summer Olympics and a former world record holder for the 100 metres sprint. Williams was the only child of Frederick Williams, from England, Charlotte Rhodes, who hailed from St. John's, Newfoundland. At the age of 15, Williams suffered from rheumatic fever and was advised to avoid strenuous physical activities. However, as his high school required participation in athletic competitions, he started training in sprint in 1924 and by 1927 became a local champion. At the 1928 Olympic trials, Williams won the 100 and 200 metres races, equaling the Olympic 100 metres record of 10.6 seconds. To earn his travel ticket for the trials and his volunteer coach, Bob Granger, worked as waiters and dishwashers in a dining car, Vancouver track fans raised the money to pay Granger's transatlantic ship passage to the 1928 Olympics. In the second round of the 100 metres at Amsterdam, Williams again equaled the Olympic record with a time of 10.6 seconds and did the same in his semi-final, but placed second to Bob McAllister.

The final opened with two false starts, first by Wilfred Legg and one by Frank Wykoff. Williams took the lead off the start and never relinquished it, winning the gold over Jack London with Georg Lammers third. Williams won the 200 metres two days coming from behind to overtake Helmut Körnig, who had led out of the bend, it was Williams's eighth race in four days and he was the first non-American to complete the sprint double. Williams was part of the Canadian team, disqualified in the final of the 4×100 metre relay contest. Williams's victories were front-page news in Canada and he returned a national hero, feted by enormous crowds across the country. An estimated 25,000 people turned out to welcome him at the Canadian Pacific Railway station at the foot of Granville Street in Vancouver. Williams was met off the train by Premier Simon Fraser Tolmie, they paraded them through the confetti-filled city. The event was broadcast live by reporters with microphones stationed along the route. Williams showed that his success was not an accident, setting a World Record at the Canadian Track and Field Championships at Varsity Stadium in Toronto in 1930.

He won the 100 yard dash at the inaugural British Empire Games in Hamilton, but tore the tendons in his upper left leg around the 70 yard mark and never made a full comeback. At the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, he was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 100 metre event. With the Canadian team he finished fourth in the 4×100 metre relay competition. Subsequently, Williams became an insurance agent. In August 1940, Williams joined the Non-Permanent Active Militia, his occupation listed as "Salesman" and religion as "C of E", he served as a civilian pilot during World War II, ferrying aircraft around the country for Canadian Airways became a civilian flight instructor for the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1971, after his former mentor's death, Williams was asked how much credit was due to Granger for his Olympic success. "Offhand, I'd say 100 percent," Williams answered. In 1980, he donated his two gold medals from the 1928 Olympics to the BC Sports Hall of Fame, saying that he wanted them to be seen and remembered.

Within weeks they were stolen. It was said at the time that Williams shrugged off the loss and no replacements were issued. In years, Williams grew bitter about his sporting experiences, culminating in being the only living Canadian Olympic gold medalist who refused the federal government's invitation to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In 1979, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Williams, who never married, stayed with his mother until her death in 1980, at the age of 92. After that, he suffered from arthritic pain. A keen collector of guns, Williams shot himself in the head with a gun he had been awarded in 1928 as a prize for his Olympic feat, his suicide was a surprise to everyone and no note was left. He was interred at Masonic Cemetery of British Columbia, Canada. In 1950, Williams was proclaimed by a Canadian press poll as Canada's greatest track athlete of the first half of the century, they updated that in 1972 to declare him Canada's all-time greatest Olympic athlete. Percy Williams Junior Public School located in Scarborough, was named after Williams.

In 1996, Canada Post released a postage stamp of Percy Williams as part of its "Sporting Heroes" series. Outside the BC Sports Hall of Fame at BC Place is a life-sized statue of Williams, crouched in a sprinter's stance. Neil Duncanson, The Fastest Men on Earth: The Story of the Men's 100 Metre Champions, HarperCollinsWillow, 1988 Percy Williams at Find a Grave Percy Williams: an on-line collection of photos and memorabilia

Burr Oak State Park is a state park in the U. S. state of Ohio, located in Morgan County, with part extending into Athens County. Its postal address is in Glouster; the park is centered at Burr Oak Lake. The dam for the lake is federal property under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers, is named Tom Jenkins Dam, it was built in 1950 for flood control. The maximum depth of the lake is around thirty feet; the lake and park are named in honor of a variety of oak. The area of the park is 2,593 acres; the park was dedicated in 1952. The Buckeye Trail passes around the lake, the North Country Trail is coincident with the Buckeye in this location; the park features a total of 28 miles of trails. A guest lodge was available until it closed in 2012 for renovations and has reopened in 2013. Cabins, picnic grounds, camping, including a group campsite have reopened; the park features boat docks, tennis, mini-golf course and a swimming beach. Hunting is permitted in some areas of the park; the park borders the Sunday Creek State Wildlife Area.

The park has maintained a number of open areas along roadways as wildflower meadow-type areas. Burr Oak State Park Ohio Department of Natural Resources Burr Oak State Park Map Ohio Department of Natural Resources Burr Oak Resort

Montpelier is an unincorporated community in eastern Muscatine County, United States. Located along Iowa Highway 22, it lies on the Mississippi River above the city of Muscatine, the county seat of Muscatine County, its elevation is 568 feet. The community is part of the Muscatine Micropolitan Statistical Area; the first settlers were of Muscatine County were natives of Vermont, they chose the name after the capital of that state, Montpelier. Montpelier's post office was first established under the name of Iowa on April 19, 1836, changed to Montpelier on April 1, 1839, discontinued on February 11, 1846. Although it was reestablished on February 28, 1882, it was discontinued on February 18, 1986, when it was attached to the Blue Grass post office. Although its post office is gone, Montpelier retains its own ZIP Code, 52759

Angela DeAngelis "General Gelina" Atwood was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, an American terrorist group which kidnapped Patricia Hearst and robbed banks. She died with five other SLA members in a nationally televised shootout with the Los Angeles Police Department. Angela DeAngelis grew up in the small New Jersey suburb of North Haledon near New Jersey; the daughter of a local Teamsters official, DeAngelis was active in many student leadership groups and was captain of the cheerleading squad. She starred in many school musicals and tutored and befriended classmates others ignored, she was voted Most School Spirit by her peers while attending Manchester Regional High School. At Indiana University Bloomington, she met leftwing activist, theatre student and future husband Gary Atwood. While at school she sang in the Kappa Pickers with Jane Pauley, was involved in theater, majored in education, she helped fellow theater student Kevin Kline run a guerrilla theatre group in town.

She married Gary Atwood while still an undergraduate, they befriended William Harris, another Indiana University actor, his wife Emily Harris. She began student teaching in Indianapolis; the Atwoods moved to San Francisco. The two women acted together in a local production of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Angela got Kathy a job waiting tables, they quit the job together when the manager told them to wear revealing outfits to build up the lunch crowd. Angela and Gary Atwood separated in June 1973. Atwood moved in with the Harrises in early December 1973, she joined the Symbionese Liberation Army along with the Harrises. She was described as well dressed, with a preference for hippie attire Indian silk shirts and batik. Atwood liked such feminine accessories as earrings and rings. A friend described her as "the prima donna of the whole thing", likened her to the woman depicted by Bob Dylan in "Just Like A Woman". Atwood was the voice of the SLA, in the form of tape-recorded press releases. In Patricia Hearst's account of her time with the SLA, she writes that Gelina would spend hours, sometimes days, perfecting communiques.

8vay SLA members held an anti-bourgeois ideology of popular rule based on the idea that the most oppressed members of society, who were blacks, must be the ones to lead a revolution against The Establishment. Patty Hearst testified that Atwood, William Harris, Nancy Ling Perry were given to bemoaning their white skin and wishing they were black. According to Hearst's testimony, SLA members envied persons like their black leader Field Marshal Cinque, who had served time in prison; this explained their allegiance to Cinque. Atwood, many times disagreed with his directives, as when she argued against his issuing a death warrant for two imprisoned SLA members. Atwood was assigned the task of surveillance in the potential kidnapping of John E. Countryman, former chairman of the board of Del Monte Corporation; the surveillance plan gave Countryman's age as 70. Atwood was unaware that Mr. Countryman had died in July 1972 at the age of 69. Atwood used the name Anne Lindberg when she visited inmate James Harold Holiday on January 10, 1974.

This encounter alerted Holiday to the capture of Remiro and Russ Little, who were both linked through strong circumstantial evidence to the murder of Marcus Foster, Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California. They were arrested following a shootout with policemen in California. After Atwood's approach of Holiday, she fled the Oakland, California home with the Harrises, they left behind clothes, a stereo, personal papers, three pistol boxes. In her trial for armed robbery Patricia Campbell Hearst testified that she was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California apartment by Atwood, Donald DeFreeze, William Harris, on the night of February 4, 1974. Hearst's insistence that she was forced by the SLA to make a series of self-incriminating statements was supported by Dr. Margaret Thaler-Singer, a UC Berkeley clinical psychologist; as an expert on speech patterns who studied the tapes released by the SLA, Thaler-Singer stated that the speech patterns did not fit the style of Hearst.

Rather they resembled the styles of Emily Harris. Atwood's voice is heard on a taped message of March 9, 1974, used in negotiations with Randolph Hearst for the return of Patty Hearst. Atwood assumed the voice of a black woman and said, "The dream - and indeed it is a dream - of is that the enemy corporate state will willingly give the stolen riches of the earth back to the people and that this will be accomplished through compromising talk and empty words... to this, our bullets scream loudly. The enemy's bloodthirsty greed will be destroyed by the growing spirit of the people and their thirst for freedom. We call upon the people to judge for themselves whether our tactics of waging struggle are correct or incorrect in fighting the enemy by any means necessary."Prosecution witness Dr. Joel Fort identified Atwood and Willie Wolfe as the SLA members Hearst developed the "most affectionate bonds" with. Atwood, along with five other founding members of the SLA, including Donald DeFreeze, was killed in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974, in a shootout with police, broadcast live on television.

Atwood died of burns and smoke inhalation when the SLA's safehouse caught fire during the gun battle and burned to the ground. It was Atwood's death that prompted Kathleen Soliah to hold a memorial

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created is a nonfiction book by Charles C. Mann first published in 2011, it covers the global effects of the Columbian Exchange, following Columbus' first landing in the Americas, that led to our current globalized world civilization. It follows on from Mann's previous book on the Americas prior to Columbus, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. In his book, Mann argues that Columbus paved the way to the homogenocene, a particular feature of the anthropocene, marked by a global homogenization of species and tools brought about by the migration and transport that set in with the discovery of the new world. Modern global food production relies on "invasive species" that existed only regionally before establishment of the new trade and transport paths. In the United Kingdom, the book is published by Granta Books and is titled 1493: How the Ecological Collision of Europe and the Americas Gave Rise to the Modern World; the book was adapted for younger readers by Rebecca Stefoff and published by Seven Stories Press in 2015 as 1493 for Young People: From Columbus's Voyage to Globalization.

Ian Morris, in his review in The New York Times, appreciates the interesting tales Mann tells, writing: "He makes the most unpromising-sounding subjects fascinating. I, for one, will never look at a piece of rubber in quite the same way now that I have been introduced to the debauched nouveaux riches of 19th-century Brazil, guzzling Champagne from bathtubs and gunning one another down in the streets of Manaus." Gregory McNamee in The Washington Post finds 1493 "fascinating and complex, exemplary in its union of meaningful fact with good storytelling." 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

Wittgenstein’s Nephew is an autobiographical work by Thomas Bernhard published in 1982. It is a recollection of the author's friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, the nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein and a member of the wealthy Viennese Wittgenstein family. Paul suffers from an unnamed mental illness for which he is hospitalized, paralleling Bernhard's own struggle with a chronic lung disease; the author narrates moments of his friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, "nephew" of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The title is a reference to Diderot's Rameau's Nephew who deals with the eccentric nephew of a preeminent cultural figure. A sensitive man, unsuitable for the world, obsessed by an exclusive and cruel passion for music as well as for race cars and sailing, Paul Wittgenstein dissipated his whole fortune and died poor; the friendship strengthened whilst recovering in a hospital, Bernhard from a lung ailment, Paul from a bout of madness. The latter in fact will die alone in a victim of an incurable conflict with the world.

Through the narration of symptomatic episodes, Bernhard unravels the emptiness of Austrian society, its parasitic and vain aspects, spending its time to self-congratulate on fake recognitions and futile prizes with the same rhythm used to blather and drink coffee in the best Viennese cafés. The author gives some interesting advice about the importance of literary prizes as the determining factor of artistic worth: "a prize is invariably only awarded by incompetent people who want to piss on your head and who do copiously piss on your head if you accept their prize." Bernhardiana, a Critical Anthology of Bernhard's works "An Introduction to Thomas Bernhard", by Thomas Cousineau The Novels of Thomas Bernhard by J. J. Long Bob Corbett's Comments on Wittgenstein's Nephew