Famous Birthdays - The 'Unsinkable Molly Brown' July 18, 1867

The Unsinkable Molly Brown was born as Margaret Tobin on July 18, 1867.  Born to Irish immigrants she came from humble and hardworking beginnings. Margaret had a sibling Daniel who worked in the mines of Leadville Colorado while she worked in a store. She married James J. Brown in 1886 and moved to a neighboring town where they began a soup kitchen for mining families. Mining companies often paid their workers with a special ‘money’ which was only good at the stores owned by the mining companies themselves. The money was of no value anywhere else. Since people has no where else to go the general stores owned by the mining companies were exorbitantly expensive. That meant that mining family were often very poor and living conditions were quite hard. It was around that time that Molly became involved with the women’s suffrage movement.

The Browns were in Egypt in 1912 when they learned that their grandson had taken ill. Margaret booked her voyage on the ill-fated Titanic to return to America. The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 14, 1912. Molly was able to aid fellow passengers and the French Legion of Honour recognized her later for her efforts to save her fellow passengers. She wasn’t only working to save them from the freezing waters but also after they were rescued and safely onboard of the Carpathia. She spoke several languages and thus was able to assist in recording the names and identities of those saved, the ones lost at sea and offer comforting words to those in despair.

Molly Brown was head of the Titanic Survivors' Committee which supported immigrants who had lost everything in the disaster, and helped to get a memorial erected to the Titanic survivors in Washington, DC. She was not allowed to testify in Congressional hearings about the sinking of the Titanic, because she was a woman; in response to this slight she published her account in newspapers.

You can read a lot more in detail about this remarkable lady on the links provided below and other sites on the Internet. Please make sure to have your parents’ permission before you do so.

http://www.mollybrown.org/

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/westernamerica/p/molly_brown.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Brown

Free Kindle for PC App download at Amazon and FREE BOOKS too!

Here is something droolworthy for all of you avid readers out there. You can go to Amazon.com and download (for free) their Kindle for PC App. It's in it's Beta testing stage so there are some hiccups but it's still a good deal. Now here's the drool worthy part, there are tons of free classic books you can download. I mean the classics baby! We downloaded Jane Austen, Jules Verne, Dickens, Pyle, Kipling and tales such as Arabian Nights, Aesops Fables,  etc etc etc.  I am tickled because I had many of those books on my list for school this year.

Because of the heat my poor husband didn't sleep much and got up at 3:30 AM. He'll be traveling internationally for about 6 weeks and I convinced him to get the iPad and use a Kindle download to get books. We chose the iPad over Kindle because it has other Apps and functions. So as he was surfing Amazon he found this App and free books.

On another bright note. I am having the repair folks come out today and they (very begrudgingly) waved the trip charge when I made it clear I am shopping for the lowest cost.  Yeah! That's $30 bucks saved.  Of course we are likely to have to replace the whole furnace because I am not spending $400 - $500 on a blower for a furnace that needs to be replaced. Grammatically that last sentence is off but I am not going to work on it right now because I haven't had enough coffee yet.  I am sure ya'll understand.

Well, have a productive day!

TTFN

Arrrgh, No air conditioning!

So a few weeks my air conditioner started to leak into my furnace and spill out. We had that fixed on Friday. Now, last night I realized my house was cooking hot. Why? The AC was running. But the blower wasn't distributing the cold air. Oh the pain..... Well, I called two local companies and just to have them come out to our house and diagnose the problem after business hours runs around 190 bucks. Say whaaaaat?  I just paid about $170 on Friday, I am broke! Ramen noodles and boiled eggs for the next few weeks. Just kidding, not that bad, but still bad enough.  Repairing a furnace blower can be costly and we may just have to replace the furnace if the cost is too high because it has other issues. No point in spending $800 - $900 on a blower and then have to replace the whole thing again in a few months. But I don't have that kinda cash just lying around. Hello, consumer confidence is at an 11 month low, give me a boost here.....

Sorry, I know this is so not interesting but I had to vent. At least I can send the kids to a nice cool office if needed and we can even sleep there if the house gets too hot meanwhile. It's 84F right now and it's supposed to go to 89F for the high and 69F for the low. With the high dewpoints we are enjoying not the weather I can leave the windows open at.

Rats!!!