Now this is how the National Anthem is done!!!!!!!
Many singers have repeatedly said this is one of the hardest songs to sing. These five sisters (ranging from 6-9 years old) knocked it out of the park! This was earlier in the year at a Texas Tech basketball game.
The video is lousy, but listen not only to the pitch and perfect harmony, but the notes they hit throughout the song!
Get out of jail free card (for real)…
Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting-about for ways and means to facilitate their escape. Nowobviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where-stuff-was, but also showing the locations of ‘safe houses’, where a POW on-the- lam could go for food and shelter.
Paper maps had some real drawbacks: They make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America’s CIA) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It’s durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, andunfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise what- so-ever.At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort. By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, ‘games and pastimes’ was a category of item qualified for insertion into ‘CARE packages’, dispatched by the International Red Cross, to prisoners of war. Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington’s, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located (Red Crosspackages were delivered to prisoners in accordance with that same regional system). When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.
As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington’s also managed to add: A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass, and a two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency were hiddenwithin the piles of Monopoly money! British and American air-crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a ‘rigged’ Monopoly set —– by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverlyrigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square! Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets.
Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely,sincethe British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war. The story wasn’t declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington’s, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.
At any rate, it’s always nice when you can play that ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card…
And last but not least, an interesting sign…
I think I remember watching that video a while back…those little girls sing like angels. They don’t take all that idiotic runs with the song. I love creativity, but it is a song meant to be sung with reverence.
Loved that sign! HA!
Great job on that song.
Who would have thought the German would let the POWs play monopoly.
There are a lot o chickens out there
Excellent story, and now added to the vast warehouse of useless knowledge I possess, and happily so.
It’s a huge warehouse, packed full, but sorry to say I lost the keys AND the map to the bloody place!
RT- I missed it on the earlier go-round… And yeah, the sign is pretty good 🙂
ADM- ‘games’ were part of the Red Cross packages, but the Germans never understood American and Brit ‘games’ (thank goodness!)
Carteach0- Probably the same place mine are… I ‘thought’ it was on the table, or was it in the drawer, or was it… 🙂
Thanks for the performance, six to nine years old? Awesome talent.
Earl- You’re right! I can’t believe I didn’t see this the first time it went around!
So if someone puts something on a sign it’s true, right?
No. Check the facts.
The Obama Plan Would Cut Taxes For Middle Class Families By Three Times More Than Senator McCain’s Plan. Obama Has Never Voted To Increase Taxes on Moderate Income Families.
The McCain campaign has repeatedly suggested that Obama voted to increase taxes on families making $42,000 per year. Factcheck.org declared this claim “simply false,” and the Washington Post Editorial Board determined that this claim was “unacceptably misleading.” According to the Bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the budget resolution vote that the McCain campaign relies on for this charge “[did] not raise taxes.” In fact, in the context of that budget resolution, both Senators Obama and McCain voted to extend middle class tax benefits. Likewise, the McCain campaign’s claim that Obama has voted for higher taxes 94 times, a charge the New York Times called “false” and factcheck.org called “misleading.”
What the McCain Campaign doesn’t tell you is that, according to the Tax Policy Center, middle class families will get at least a three times larger tax cut under the Obama plan than under Senator McCain’s.