My Current Mile

I watched a documentary on Stephen Hawking the other night. Although I’ve known about him and his work for a long time, I’ve never really ‘noticed’ that he did most of this cosmology work while partially paralyzed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). His theoretical work on black holes and the big bang is renowned. He’s a published author on top of this!

I realize that he had quite a bit of help accomplishing all of this. Maybe the kind of help that most of us don’t have access too. But, it’s more this drive and ambition to accomplish and achieve that I admire and hope that I could find a smidgeon of it in my own life.

Hope so.

If anyone has an interest … April is the birth month of Mary Ward. And in case you don’t know who Mary Ward is, well, she is the first person to die in an motor vehicle accident. But she was more than that.

Of course, I found this bit of information when I googled the keyword phrase “first person to be killed in an auto accident”. This wikipedia article was the ranked near the top.

The article relates Mary Ward was a scientist, astronomer, author and an artist.

Born in April 1827, she was an inquisitive child. She became known for her studies of insects and contributed drawings and sketches to many scientific books and articles. She documented by illustration the building of the 58 ft Leviathan Telescope at Birr Castle. Later, she self published a book titled ” Sketches with the Microscope”.

Her tragic death occurred on August 29, 1869 when he was thrown off the experimental steam power automobile built by her cousins. She fell underneath one of the steel wheels. It broke her neck as it ran over her.

Further information can be found here.