Corazon Aquino

Political leader and president from (1986 to 1992) of the Philippines. In 1983 she succeeded her murdered husband, Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr.(A popular critic of the Marcos administration), as leader of the opposition to President Ferdinand Marcos. No one could have imagined that Cory Aquino would become a president of the Philippines.

"As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it." Corazon "Cory" Aquino, the first woman to become president of the Philippines, was born in Tarlac on January 25, 1933. Her parents are Don Jose Cojuangco and Doña Demetria Sumulong. Cory was the sixth among the eight children of the Sumulong. Corazon Aquino's children are Maria Elena Aquino, Aurora Corazon, Victoria Eliza, Noynoy and Kris Aquino, her youngest child is a TV and movie personality.

Corazon Cojuangco was born into a wealthy, politically prominent family based in Tarlac province, north of Manila. In 1946, her family left for the U.S. and she enrolled at Ravenhill Academy in Philadelphia. She finished her junior and senior years at Notre Dame College in New York. She entered Mount Saint Vincent College in New York City in 1949 where she finished a Bachelor of Arts, major in French. In 1953, she returned to the Philippines to take up law at the Far Eastern University, but then abandoned further studies in 1955 to marry Benigno Aquino, who was then a promising young politician. Cory remained in the background during her husband's subsequent career, rearing their five children at home and later in exile. Her husband was assassinated upon his return to the Philippines in August 1983.

When Ferdinand Marcos unexpectedly called for presidential election in February 1986, Corazon Aquino become the unified opposition's candidate for the presidency. Though she was officially reported to have lost the election to Marcos, Aquino and her supporters challenged the results, charging widespread voting fraud. High officials in the Philippines military soon publicly renounced Marcos continued rule and proclaimed Aquino the Philippines rightful president. On February 25, 1986, both Aquino and Marcos were inagurated as president by their respective suppoerters but that same day Marcos fled the country.

In March 1986 she proclaimed a provisional constitution and soon thereafter appointed a commission to write a new constitution. The resulting document was ratified by a landslide popular vote in February 1987. Inspite of her continous popular support, Aquino faced an ongoing outcry over economic injustice, a problem that was only exacerbated by continuing warfare between the communist insurgency and a military whose loyalties to Aquino were uncertain. In general, her economic policies were criticized for being mixed or faltering in the face of mass poverty.

Aquino children are Maria Elena Aquino, Aurora Corazon, Victoria Eliza, Noynoy and Kris Aquino. Her youngest child is a TV & movie personality.

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The Most Dangerous Female Sport: Cheerleading

Cheerleading safety efforts have led to modest reductions in the number of serious injuries in recent years, according to a new report about college and high school sports and cheerleading mishaps.

But cheerleading caused more serious and deadly injuries by far than other female sports during the study period.

Researchers have long known how dangerous cheerleading is, but records were poorly kept until recently. An update to the record-keeping system last year found that between 1982 and 2007, there were 103 fatal, disabling or serious injuries recorded among female high school athletes, with the vast majority (67) occurring in cheerleading. The next most dangerous sports: gymnastics (nine such injuries) and track (seven).

Today, the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released its 26th annual report on the topic. The latest figures are from the 2007-2008 academic year for college and high school sports, male and female. The report defines catastrophic injuries as any severe or fatal injury incurred during participation in the sport.

The new numbers are for the 26-year period from the fall of 1982 through the spring of 2008:

There were 1,116 direct catastrophic injuries in high school (905) and college sports (211).

High school sports were associated with 152 fatalities, 379 non-fatal injuries and 374 serious injuries. College sports accounted for 22 fatalities, 63 non-fatal injuries and 126 serious injuries.

Cheerleading accounted for 65.2 percent of high school and 70.5 percent of college catastrophic injuries among all female sports.

The number of cheerleading injuries fell slightly in the 2007-08 academic year.

"Progress has been slow, but there has been an increased emphasis on cheerleading safety," said the study's author Frederick O. Mueller. "Continued data collection on all types of cheerleading injuries will hopefully show that these safety measures are working to reduce injuries."

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The Strange Ingredients in Fireworks

Fireworks for the 4th of July are all about light, color and sound. But inside, there are some bizarre ingredients, from aluminum to Vaseline and even the stuff of rat poison.

An ancient mix of black powder, essentially gunpowder little changed from its invention in China a millennia ago, gets each rocket in the air by creating pressure in gas trapped in a tube, or mortar.

Two fuses are lit at once: one to ignite the black powder, and another that burns slower, creating a well-timed explosion high in the sky.

The shells of commercial fireworks contain a powdery concoction of chemicals that produce the bangs and the whistles, as well as the pretty effects. Tubes, hollow spheres, and paper wrappings work as barriers to compartmentalize the effects. More complicated shells are divided into even more sections to control the timing of secondary explosions.

Big booms and whistles come from flash powder. Once used for flashes in photography, it is a combination of fuel-like metal and a chemical that feeds oxygen to fire up the fuel. Different combinations of metals and oxides produce a whole array of sounds.

While ancient Greeks and Romans used bismuth in their beauty care products and coins, chemists add bismuth trioxide to the flash powder to get that crackling sound, dubbed "dragon eggs." Ear-splitting whistles take four ingredients, including a food preservative and Vaseline.

The variety of color in a fireworks show depends on the mix of metals.

* Copper produces blue sparks.
* A mix of strontium salts, lithium salts and other stuff makes red.
* Aluminum and titanium put the white stars in an aerial flag.
* Barium, also used in rat poison and glass making, makes green.
* Calcium burns orange and sodium, yellow.

In recent years, chemists have worked to develop more environmentally friendly fireworks, in part because one ingredient, perchlorate, was found in higher than normal concentrations in a lake where fireworks were shot off, and the chemical is known to cause thyroid problems in humans.

Meanwhile, to light up a red, white, and blue flag, chemists can lay out the emblem's design on wax paper. The pattern you see up in the air, whether it's a smiley face or a bow tie, mirrors the arrangement of the metals in the shell.

Because the flag, or any other pattern, shoots out from the shell as a two-dimensional image, people watching the show from different angles can't always tell what they're looking at. To make sure everyone has a good view, pyrotechnists tend to send duplicates into the sky at the same time.

You can see fireworks before you hear them because light travels faster than sound.

Source: LiveScience

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