When you've lived as long as I have, 66 years, you see a few changes in life. Whereas as a child I would rush out to see a car pass, as it only happened rarely, now I own a car and take it for granted. When I was at primary school in the U.K. the teacher one day started to talk about the year 2000 approaching and we all worked out how old we would be. I wasn't sure I could make it to 53. But here I am. How amazed I would have been if that teacher could have told me that at 66 I would be writing articles that could be read all over the world only minutes after I had written them. Truth is surely stranger than fiction.
I have written in previous posts about disasters. In the case of Concorde, decisions by people, plus other factors were directly to blame for the event. In the case of the Penlee disaster it may have been avoided if someone had made a better choice in the time beforehand and as a consequence brave men and the ship's crew and the captain and his family died. 9/11 was certainly the result of wicked men committing a terrorist act, but even in this there was heroism notably by another Cornish man, Rick Rescorla who helped many to safety and left it too late to help himself. In situations like this we see what the human spirit is capable of both good and evil. What of disasters that come on people because of the earth restless movement of tectonic plates. Often people live near volcanoes because the land is rich and fertile and they have the chance of a better life there when the volcano is resting. We cannot blame them for that but sometimes people become complacent...
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