The amazing story of Bauby is a very sad one at the same time. He was the editor-in-chief of the French magazine “Elle” and father of two young children. On December 8th, age 43, he suffered a massive stroke, awoke 20 days later and was from that moment on completely paralysed and speechless. His condition is called Locked-in Syndrome, a rare condition where most of the body is paralysed while the mind still works. In Bauby’s case he could only control his left eyelid.

With the help of Claude Mendibil, a specialised nurse, he started “dictating” his book. Mendibil showed the most frequent used letters of the French alphabet on a screen and pointed at them. Bauby blinked once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’. In that way his book “The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly” (Le scaphandre et le papillon) was written over the course of 10 months and first published in March 1997 by Éditions Robert Laffont, S.A. . Jean-Dominique Bauby died two days after the book was published.

In 2007 the film of the same name, directed by Julian Schnabel, was released at the Cannes Film Festival. Schnabel was awarded best director. Here the official trailer:

Whit a very simple way of protest Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott  in the mid-twentieth century.

On December 1st 1955 Rosa Parks, age 42, gets on the Cleveland Avenue bus at around 6 in the evening in Montgomery. She pays her bus fare as usual, and sits in an empty seat  in the “coloured” section of the bus. The “coloured” section is right behind the seats which are reserved for white people. Shortly after all white-only seats are filled up but more white passengers are boarding the bus. Over time Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the practice of moving coloured passengers from there seats, if all the white-only seats are fully taken. Bus driver James F. Blake gets up and wants to move 4 people to give their seats to white passengers. He “succeeds ” in moving 3 but Rosa Parks moves from the aisle seat to the window seat instead of getting up. Blake calls the police and she gets arrested shortly after.

4 days later, on December 5th,  35000 leaflets are distributed among the inhabitants asking the black community to stay off buses on the following Monday. And they do, 381 days all in all.

“One evening in early December 1955 I was sit in the front seat of the colored section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama… “, is the beginning of her autobiography “My Story” written with Jim Haskins, first published in 1992 by Dial Books for Young Readers, New York.

A mass killing of at least 500.000 people (the exact number could be anywhere up to a million) in approximately 100 days…we are talking about the Rwandan Genocide in 1994.

Hutu extremists slaughtered their Tutsi neighbours and any Hutu that were against the killing. It all started on April 6th with the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana, the president of Rwanda from 1973 until 1994.

Paul Rusesabagina had been the assistant manager of the Sabena Hôtel des Mille Collines, was promoted to general manager of the Diplomate Hotel and had to move back to the Mille Collines during the genocide. There he used his influence to save 1268 Tutsi and moderate Hutu from being killed by the Interahamwe militia.

In 1996 he went to Belgium as a refugee where he is currently living with his wife, his children and two adopted nieces. In 2005 he formed the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation with the mission of “giving voice to those silenced by genocide and empowering survivors to transcend its effects”.

His amazing story was the basis for Terry George to direct the movie “Hotel Rwanda” (2004). The movie was nominated for multiple awards, including Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Screenplay.

Paul Rusesabagina has also written his autobiography entitled “An ordinary Man” together with Tom Zoellner published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. in April 2006.

Combining the interesting history of China under the power of Mao Zedong and a very personal story, Jung Chang has written her biographic/autobiographic book “Wild Swans”, first published in 1991. She tells the story of her grandmother (Yu-fang), her mother (Bao Qin/De-hong) and her own story, covering more than 60 years of Chinese history in the 20th century.

Her grandmother becomes the concubine of a high-ranking warlord, which she doesn’t get to see for six years after her marriage.

Her mother starts working for Mao’s Red Army at the early age of fifteen, constantly rises in her position for the party just to be denounced during the Cultural Revolution and put into detention camps. Chang’s parents ( her father was a high-ranking officer who has devoted his life to the party) are labelled as capitalist roaders and are sent to the countryside for “education”.

Chang grows up in that chaos and starts having doubts about the Red Army and Mao. She is trying everything to get out of that system of inhumanity and succeeds by learning English and leaving China for England in 1978. She works as the director of Chinese studies at London university nowadays.

An interview with Jung Chang discussing her book can be found at the BBC World Book Club.

For further information about Mao Zedong you should also read her 2005 published biography “Mao: the unknown story”, which was written together with her husband Jon Halliday.

In 1982 Calvin Willis was convicted of raping one of three young girls in Shreveport, Louisiana, who were alone one night in 1981. He received a mandatory life sentence.
The identification was built on statements of the girls, who had not seen the rapist except for his cowboy boots. A pair of underwear with blood stains was left behind. Blood was also identified on the victim’s panties and seminal stains were found on the nightgown. The seminal stains revealed blood group 0…matching with Willis’ blood type.
Willis had a secure alibi. His wife testified that he had returned home shortly before midnight that evening and spent the whole night with her. He was wearing his boxer shorts when coming back home. His size is 29, the boxer shorts found at the crime scene are size 40.
The jury did not believe Willis’ wife and he was therefore sentenced to life in prison.
In 1998 his case was taken up by the Innocence Project , an American project which describes itself as “ a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice”. The DNA tests showed that Willis had to be excluded from being a contributor.
On September 18, 2003, he was released from prison after spending 188340 hours (21,5 years) there for a brutal rape he did not commit. His words to his eagerly awaited freedom: “”It feels wonderful; wonderful”.

1987 Saddam Hussein decided to get a “fidai” for his son Uday Hussein for security reasons. They forcibly recruited Latif Yahia, born 1964. Latif had been to school with Uday since he was 12 years old. In his 1997 written book “I was Saddam’s Son” he describes the role of a fidai as follows: “Fidai. The word reverberated in my skull. A fidai is more than just a double. A fidai is everything. In the Arab world, a fidai is a true follower, a warrior and a partisan, a bondman always ready to give his life for his lord.”
Latif underwent surgery to modify his appearance and was trained to move, speak, and behave exactly like Uday. He took part in state affairs and made public appearances as Uday’s stand-in. During the Gulf War he even visited the troops on the front line as Uday. He saw firsthand the absurdities and horrors of Saddam’s regime which was based on corruption and intrigue. On top of that he witnessed repeated instances of terror, torture, rape and murder.
During Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, his son started stealing cars which he resold in Iraq. He had to face charges for his crime but simply accused Latif and forced him to confess in public. He was sentenced to death instead of Uday. Eventually he managed to escape through Kurdistan into the West.

This video gives you a first insight into Latif’s unbelievable story. And if you’re looking for a deeper insight just read one of his books:

• I was Saddam’s Son released on May 1 1997 by Arcade Publishing ; Hardcover: 250 pages; Co-author: Karl Wendl.
• The Devil’s Double released on June 5 2003 by Arrow Books Ltd. ; Paperback: 334 pages.
• The Black Hole released on November 20 2006 by Arcanum Publishing ; Paperback: 224 pages.

According to the Forbes magazine Angela Merkel has been the most powerful woman in the world from 2006 to 2008.
But how did she become that?
Being born in Hamburg in 1954 she moves to Templin which back then was in the so-called socialist German Democratic Republic at the age of  3.
She studied physics from 1973 to 1978 at the university in Leipzig. After being awarded a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry she worked as a researcher.
In August 1990 she joins the Christian Democratic Union and gets elected to be the Chancellor of Germany…the first female Chancellor and at the age of 51 the youngest one as well.

She loves spending her spare time in the countryside. Going for a walk, gardening or even just cooking a meal for her husband are her ways of relaxation. And her biggest dream is travelling along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok.

The next elections are on September 27th this year and she might get a second chance of ruling Germany for another 35040 hours.

How can someone spend hours sleeping on ice cubes, you might wonder…
It all started when Kit Armstrong was still a toddler and suffering from fever. His mum put ice cubes in a hot water bottle to get the temperature down. From that night on he always asked for melted ice cubes to fall asleep. According to his mum that way he is cooling down his brain which works like a nuclear power station.
Kit, a 17-year old American of Taiwan origin, discovered the pleasure of reading an encyclopaedia when other kids his age discovered the pleasure of playing in sandpits and on slides. He came across articles about music and started composing his first pieces for piano.
61320 hours into his life ( 7 years), while being in primary school, he got registered for the Chapman University of California and was therefore the youngest student that ever got accepted there. He was working towards a degree in music and mathematics.
This performance shows Kit playing playing Bach at the Miami Piano Festival in 2000…after only 70080 hours of his life.

Many people like to spend most of their lives with another person. And some even get married for various reasons like tradition, love or tax advantages

I found two interesting stories about marriage which made it into the Guinness Book of World Records:

Shown in this picture is the world’s oldest married couple. Thomas and Elizabeth Morgan remained married for 81 years and 260 days (a total of 715800 hours!!!). They got married in 1809 in Caerleon, UK. At the time of Elizabeth’s death on January 19, 1891 she was 105 years and 2 days old and her husband 104 years and 260 days. Thomas died 2 years later.

Some people seem to become “addicted to the romance” of getting married. That is exactly what Linda Wolfe says about herself and has therefore become the world’s most married woman with 23 more or less successful marriages.

She first got married in 1957 at the age of 16 to 31-year-old George Scott. According to her, this was her happiest and longest marriage, 7 years. Her shortest just lasted 36 hours, because “the love wasn’t there”. Among her husbands two turned out to be homosexual and she got married three times to her best lover Jack Gourley. Her last marriage in 1996 lasting one year was for publicity reasons only. She got married to Glynn Wolfe who therefore became the world’s most married man with 29 marriages.

The result of all her marriages are seven children by her different husbands and she had been a stepmother to many more.

You better start soon if you want to take over one of those records!!!

And how do we spend the rest of hours when our eyes aren’t closed?

Well, there is walking. The average human being walks 160000 kilometers in a lifetime with an average speed of 5 km/hr. That makes 32000 hours we just spend walking around.

Everyone also needs to eat to fully function. Over a lifetime we spend 59760 hours with the consumption of food.

Not much time left, isn’t it???

With my future posts I will mostly focus on the remaining hours of life by taking a closer look on some “special lives”.