DOLLY PARTON’S IMAGINATION LIBRARY

Since the mid-1980s, Parton has supported many charitable efforts, particularly in the area of literacy, primarily through her Dollywood Foundation.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

Her literacy program, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, a part of the Dollywood Foundation, mails one book per month to each enrolled child from the time of their birth until they enter kindergarten. Currently over 1600 local communities provide the Imagination Library to almost 700,000 children each and every month across the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia.The program distributes more than 8.3 million free books to children annually.

In 2006, Parton published a cookbook, Dolly's Dixie Fixin's: Love, Laughter and Lots of Good Food.

The Dollywood Foundation, funded from Parton's net profits, which has been noted for bringing jobs and tax revenues to a previously depressed region. Parton has also worked to raise money on behalf of several other causes, including the American Red Cross and a number of HIV/AIDS-related charities.

In December 2006, Parton pledged $500,000 toward a proposed $90-million hospital and cancer center to be constructed in Sevierville in the name of Dr. Robert F. Thomas, the physician who delivered her. She announced a benefit concert to raise additional funds for the project. The concert played to about 8,000 people. That same year, she andEmmylou Harris allowed their music to be used in a PETA ad campaign that encouraged pet owners to keep their dogs indoors rather than chained outside. In May 2009, Parton gave the commencement address at the University of Tennessee. Her speech was about her life lessons, and she encouraged the graduates to never stop dreaming.

Source:

DOLLY PARTON’S IMAGINATION LIBRARY

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in Alaska

American Officer Writes a Letter to His Son on Hitler's Personal Stationery

Richard Helms was a US Navy officer during World War II and later the Director of the CIA. At the end of the war in 1945, he wrote a letter to his young son on Hitler's personal stationery:

“Dear Dennis,” reads the letter from Helms, then a spy stationed in Germany. “The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe – three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins. He had a thirst for power, a low opinion of man as an individual, and a fear of intellectual honesty. He was a force for evil in the world. His passing, his defeat – a boon for mankind. But thousands died that it might be so.  The price for ridding society of bad is always high.  Love, Daddy."

Dennis Helms found the letter among the family papers in 2002. He donated it to the CIA Museum, where it is now on display.

The letter was among a trove of memorabilia that Dennis sent to the museum 66 years later, in May 2011, to form part of an exhibit that pays tribute to the CIA’s roots in a wartime agency called the Office of Strategic Services, or the OSS.

The OSS wing of the CIA’s museum, which opened in 2011, traces the short history of an organization that was founded in 1942 to aid resistance fighters and run spies behind enemy lines before morphing into the CIA four years later. The exhibit includes counterfeit German postage stamps created by the OSS with a skull superimposed on Hitler's image, the desk of OSS director William "Wild Bill" Donovan, and all manner of secret weapons and messaging systems.

Among the exhibits is a tribute to Virginia Hall, an OSS agent who posed as a French farmhand as she counted German military units prior to D-Day. Hall, who had a wooden leg, organized sabotage and trained Resistance fighters. The Gestapo knew her as the “limping lady,” and called her the most dangerous of all Allied spies. She later became one of the CIA’s first female officers.

The Helms memorabilia in the museum also includes a piece of Hitler’s personal china, snatched from the Fuehrer’s Berlin chancellery, as well as other photos and correspondence. But the letter on Hitler's stationery, said curator Toni Hiley, is “truly a treasure in our collection."

Dennis Helms, now 71 and a lawyer in New Jersey, said he found the letter when he was a teenager in the late 1950s, while he was living with his parents in Virginia.

"My mother was an avid scrapbook keeper," said Helms. "And I was prowling through one of the scrapbooks and I found this. I asked about it. (I thought it) was really cool. But I had no idea there'd be so much interest in it later on."

Helms said the letter was very out of character for his dad, who, like many veterans of World War II, spoke little about his experiences during the war. The elder Helms, according to his son, was also guarded in general. He was CIA director from 1966 to 1973, during the Vietnam era, and was a controversial figure in American life. In 1977, he pleaded no contest to failing to testify fully to Congress about the CIA’s efforts to oust Chilean president Salvador Allende.

"He was very unguarded in this (letter),” said the younger Helms. “He actually gave his opinion of things. Later on, after years in the agency, everything was based on fact. He never varied from that ... That's what makes this so unusual to me."

There are a few questions about the circumstances under which the letter was written. Richard Helms, who died in 2002 at age 89, can’t answer them. The letter is dated “V-E day” – Victory in Europe day, which was May 8, 1945 – but the stationery says Obersalzberg, a town in the Bavarian Alps that was the site of Hitler’s mountaintop retreat, the Eagle’s Nest. Helms was among the first intelligence officers to visit the Eagle’s Nest, but according to his memoir he was in France on V-E day.

Reference:

How a letter on Hitler’s stationery, written to a boy in Jersey, reached the CIA
The price for ridding society of bad is always high

Japanese Bomb Explosion

In November 1944, fifty years before Predator drones swept on the scene, the Japanese military devised a low-tech method of dropping bombs on foreign soil that didn’t require pilots. All it took was balloons—specifically, 9,000 33-foot-diameter “balloon bombs,” or Fu-Gos, each carrying 35 pounds of explosives.

Released from Japanese shores, these balloons were designed to rise to 30,000 feet then ride the jet stream east, making their way toward the U.S. in about three days. At that point, an altimeter would trigger a reaction that would jettison the bombs, which would explode once they landed, whipping up fires and panic across the country.

That, at least, was the plan. The Japanese would soon learn that you should never place your hopes of winning a war in the hands of the wind. Only a few hundred of these balloons made it to the States, and even fewer exploded. Plus, apparently the Japanese hadn’t checked the weather: The balloons landed during a cold, damp winter, sparking only a few brush fires that didn’t do much damage. One balloon landing in Nevada was picked up by cowboys and turned into a hay tarp. In Montana, two lumberjacks stumbled across a balloon with Japanese markings and the undetonated bomb still attached. Seven fire balloons in total were turned in to the Army, and as sightings continued to pop up everywhere from Alaska to Texas to Iowa, Americans started wondering what was up.

In January 1945, Newsweek ran an article titled "Balloon Mystery." At that point, the U.S. Office of Censorship stepped in, asking that media outlets refrain from mentioning the balloons, lest this give the Japanese the impression their attack had been a success, which might encourage them to send more. So the media kept their mouths shut. The Japanese, figuring there was no way Americans could keep this big a secret, were forced to conclude that their balloons had failed, and discontinued their use. Nonetheless, Japanese propaganda broadcasts boasted that their balloons had caused huge fires, widespread mayhem, and death counts as high as 10,000.

Only one balloon bomb claimed any American lives, and it was more of a sad tragedy than a military triumph: Five kids and their pregnant Sunday school teacher, Elyse Mitchell, came across the balloon in Oregon during a picnic in the woods. As Mitchell’s husband explained, "[One of the kids] came over and told us that there was a white object near by. We went to investigate. It blew up and killed them all." Mrs. Mitchell, Joan Patzke (11), Dick Patzke (13), Eddie Engen (13), Jay Gifford (12), and Sherman Shoemaker (12) became the only World War II casualties in the continental U.S., although they were hardly the sort of PR coup that would buoy Japanese spirits.

After their death, the media blackout was lifted to make Americans aware of the threat. Parks were filled with posters depicting what the balloons looked like, and warnings to not mess with them.

At the end of the day, Japan’s balloon bombs boasted a kill rate of only .067 percent. It was a flop as far as secret weapons go, although the Japanese get points for creativity. And remnants of these balloon bombs still exist, with parts being found as recently as 1992. So if you spot a balloon in the woods, steer clear—and take a moment to appreciate the fact that you may be witnessing one of the best-kept secrets of World War II.

Sources:-

Japanese Balloon Bomb attack on the US

Source from wikipedia

Lotto Rules Probe Key To Payoff In Virginia

Representatives of an Australian syndicate came to Virginia lottery headquarters to claim their $27 million jackpot, but lottery officials told them they might not be paid.

The International Lotto Fund, which includes more than 2,500 investors from Australia, confirmed that it held the winning ticket from the Feb. 15 Lotto drawing, ending a two-week mystery that has attracted national attention.

The fund also confirmed that it used another Australian firm to work out the logistics of buying the millions of lottery tickets and hired a Richmond accounting firm as a courier to purchase them.

Lottery officials say it is the first time a foriegn corporation has tried to corner an American lottery, and the first time any corporation has claimed a prize in Virginia.

The Lotto Fund reportedly spent about $5 million on lottery tickets. Its winning ticket would entitle it to $1 million a year for the next 20 years.

The Australians also claim to have a substantial number of smaller winners from the same lottery drawing-tickets with three to five correct numbers. Lottery  Director Kenneth Thorson said the payoff for those could exceed $500,000.

But before it pays anything, the lottery and the  attorney general`s office will investigate whether the syndicate broke lottery regulations, Thorson said. They will decide in a few days whether the Australians will be paid.

The investigation will be separate from other probes into the bulk sales launched by Virginia State Police, the FBI and Australian authorities.

Thorson suggested that if the ticket was declared invalid, the lottery could refund the Australians as little as $1, the cost of a ticket. No winning ticket in Virginia has ever been declared invalid.

Two representatives of the Australian firms, Joseph Franck and Robert Hans Roos, and two Richmond attorneys showed up at lottery headquarters Thursday to meet with lottery officials and representatives of the attorney general.

Stefan Mandel, a reputed numbers wiz who once cornered a $1.1 million Australian lottery and who Thorson said was affiliated with the syndicate, could not be reached for comment. An aide from Mandel`s Melbourne office, who would not give her name, said, ``The meeting went very well. We`re looking forward to payment.``

At a press conference, Thorson described the meeting as ``quite cordial.`` He said the men provided information about how they had tried to buy enough tickets to cover all 7.1 million possible six-number Lotto combinations. But it was still unclear, he said, whether the purchase of the winning ticket violated any lottery rules.

``The regulations have always been applied to the letter`` of the law, Thorson said. ``And the question here is what . . . does that letter require. ``It is just as likely that we will honor the claim as that we won`t,``

he said. ``The lottery is not reneging on anything. If the person has a valid ticket they get the prize.``

The lottery requires that tickets be bought at a licensed location. But the Australian firm, using cashiers` checks, paid for $2.4 million worth of lottery tickets at the Farm Fresh supermarket chain`s central headquarters in Norfolk, which Thorson said was not licensed to sell tickets.

The winning ticket was picked up at one of the chain`s Chesapeake stores, which was licensed to sell the ticket.

Thorson acknowledged the lottery was uncertain where the winning ticket itself was paid for and might never determine the location. The lottery knows some tickets were paid for at the headquarters. In other instances, tickets were purchased at the stores, he said.

One gambling law expert said Friday that the Australians were likely to receive the prize money, even if rules were broken when the group bought the ticket.

``If they`ve got a winning ticket, I`m assuming they`re going to get the money,`` said I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier College School of Law in Los Angeles.

Rose said if the ticket holders purchased the ticket and followed what they thought were proper procedures, it would be difficult for the Virginia Lottery to invalidate the ticket.

Reference:

Virginia Lottery

Lotteries Virginia