Inspire 21 Inspiring Words for the 21st Century

---- TEACHER: Why are you late? STUDENT: Class started before I got here. ---- TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America. MARIA: Here it is. TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America? CLASS: Maria. ---- TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor? JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables. ---- TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?' GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L' TEACHER: No, that's wrong. GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it. (I Love this child) ---- TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water? DONALD: H I J K L M N O. TEACHER: What are you talking about? DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O. ----

As Reported In The SF Chronicle

On the front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, Dec 15, 2005, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

The fifty-foot whale was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her her tail, her torso and a line tugging in her mouth.

I was a surgeon in the United States Army during the Civil War. After the battle of Gettysburg, there were hundreds of wounded soldiers in my hospital. Many were wounded so severely that a leg or an arm, or sometimes both, needed to be amputated.

One of these was a boy who had been in the service for only 3 months. Since he was too young to be a soldier, he had enlisted as a drummer. When my assistants came to give him chloroform before the amputation, he turned his head and refused it. When they told him that it was the doctor's orders, he said, "Send the doctor to me."