Soldiers of the 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division honor their fallen comrades.
Arghandab, Afghanistan New Year's Eve, 2009
On this small base surrounded by a mixture of enemy and friendly territory, a memorial has been erected just next to the Chapel. Inside the tepee are 21 photos of 21 soldiers killed during the first months of a year-long tour of duty. The fallen will belong forever to the honor rolls of the 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and they will join the sacred list of names of those who have given their lives in service of the United States of America.
What better way to start the new year than by reflecting on God's amazing grace? And that's just what one hymn writer did in 1773. We've been singing about it ever since.
What are the odds of you being involved in a terrorist incident on an airplane? Click on the image to see it larger (when the new window opens click on the image again to magnify).
While a blue moon consistently gives poets fodder and feeds the imagination of stargazers, its presence is a scientific marker for a rotating earth that by its own clock, ignores the Julian calendar. And only once in every 20 years, the blue moon appears on New Year’s Eve, as it will this year.
Surf dog Ricochet’s inspirational video highlighting her journey from service dog training, to turning disappointment into a joyful new direction, to surfing with quadriplegic surfer, Patrick Ivison, to fundraising for charitable causes.
Click the image above to go to Ricochet's website.
Five years ago, on Boxing Day, December 26th, 2004, a magnitude 9.3 earthquake hit the seafloor of the Indian Ocean, causing tremendous waves of seawater to rush ashore as devastating tsunamis that left 230,000 people dead across 13 different countries - the fifth deadliest natural disaster in recorded history. Over 45,000 of the dead were never found. Five years later now, reconstruction moves apace, as multiple aid groups have built more than 140,000 homes, 1,700 schools, 3,800 houses of worship and 3,700 km of roads. On this anniversary of the catastrophe, we have collected here photographs of survivors, some rebuilding, some remembering, and seven sets of "before and after" photos (numbers 4-10, be sure to click them to see the transition effect). I'd also like to direct your attention to a fantastic multimedia presentation on this subject from Thomson/Reuters called Surviving the Tsunami. (25 photos total)
Soldiers of the 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division honor their fallen comrades.
