MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY: WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND
An 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees at Stanford University. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea.
A friend and he decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education.
They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J. Paderewski. His manager demanded a guaranteed fee of $2000 for the piano recital. A deal was struck and the boys began to work to...
...make the concert a success.
The big day arrived. Paderewski performed at Stanford. Unfortunately, they had not managed to sell enough tickets. The total collection was only $1600. Disappointed, they went to Paderewski and explained their plight.
They gave him the entire $1600, plus a cheque for the balance $400. They promised to honour the cheque at the soonest.
“No,” said Paderewski. “This is not acceptable.” He tore up the cheque, returned the $1600, and told the two boys...
“Here’s the $1600. Please deduct whatever expenses you have incurred. Keep the money you need for your fees. And just give me whatever is left”. The boys were surprised and thanked him profusely.
It was a small act of kindness. But it clearly marked out Paderewski as a great human being.
Why should he help two people he did not even know? We all come across situations like these in our lives. And most of us only think “If I help them, what would happen to me?”
The truly great people think, “If I don’t help them, what will happen to them?” They don’t do it expecting something in return. They do it because they feel it’s the right thing to do.
Paderewski later went on to become the Prime Minister of Poland.
He was a great leader, but unfortunately, when the World War began, Poland was ravaged. There were more than 1.5 million people starving in his country, and no money to feed them. Paderewski did not know where to turn for help.
He reached out to the US Food and Relief Administration for help.
The head there was a man named Herbert Hoover, who later went on to become the 31st President of the United States. Hoover agreed to help and quickly shipped tons of food grains to feed the starving Polish people.
A calamity was averted. Paderewski was relieved. He decided to go across to meet Hoover and personally thank him. When Paderewski began to thank Hoover for his noble gesture, Hoover quickly interjected and said...
“You shouldn’t be thanking me, Mr. Prime Minister. You may not remember this, but several years ago, you helped two young students go through college in the U.S. I was one of them.”
The world is a wonderful place. What goes around comes around!
Gaa was a brave and powerful man who was respected and feared by the people of Oyo-Ile for his potent charms and supernatural strength. It was said that he had the power to transform into any animal he wished.
He was feared to the extent that he became more authoritative than the Alaafin who made him the Bashorun.
Gaa’s tyranny started in the days when Labisi was being prepared for the throne of Oyo. He killed the prince’s friends and silenced his supporters, thereby starting his...
Due to a lack of refrigerators in rural areas in Northern Nigeria, Mohammed Bah Abba designed the Pot-in-Pot cooling system in 1995 to help farmers reduce food spoilage and waste. The fridge Pot-in-Pot is known in Arabic as Zeer.
The fridge is composed of two pots of clay, of the same shape but of different sizes, placing one inside the other. The space between the two containers is filled with sand which is simply humidified with water.
Food is placed inside the pot that is in the interior, covered with a lid or a humid piece of cloth. The Zeer has to stay in a dry and ventilated place. The laws of thermodynamics take care of the rest.
In 1964, Aguiyi-Ironsi became the commander of the entire UN Force in Congo, the first African to do so. In 1965, he became a Major-General and Head of the Nigerian army. The first Nigerian to ever attain the rank and the post. #HistoryVille
Aguiyi-Ironsi attended school in Umuahia, Calabar, and Kano. In addition to English and Igbo, he could also speak Hausa and Yoruba. He enlisted into the then colonial army at the age of 18 and rose to the rank of a company sergeant-major by 1946.
On January 16, 1966, Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi became Nigeria’s First Military Head of State after a military coup d’état had toppled the First Republic a day before.
It also resulted in a walk-out by the northern parliamentarians who were of the view that Nigeria was not yet ready for independence.
The tensions and acrimony that came from all these resulted in the infamous Kano riots of 1953.
In 1957, Samuel Ladoke Akintola moved a second motion for independence in 1959 and it was passed by the Federal House but the British authorities refused to assent to it and, consequently, it failed.
The upper body and left leg of Baptista stuck out of his mobile brother Lazarus. He could not speak but kept his eyes closed and mouth opened all the time and was a parasitic twin.⠀
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However, if someone pushed the breast of Baptista, he moved his hands, ears, and lips.
To make a living, Lazarus toured around Europe and visited at least Basel, Switzerland, and Copenhagen, Denmark before he arrived in Scotland in 1642 and later visited the court of Charles I of England.⠀
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He also visited Gdańsk, Turkey, and toured Germany and Italy in 1646.
A young man from the city graduated from the university with a degree in mass communication and then got a job in the same city where he was sent to a town as a correspondent.