Climber Becomes The First Person To Climb El Capitan Without Using Ropes Or Other Safety Gear

.@AlexHonnold just completed the first free-solo ascent of El Capitan—arguably the greatest feat in rock climbing https://t.co/xtzAhEwlnL

— National Geographic (@NatGeo) June 3, 2017

National Geographic: Exclusive: Climber Completes the Most Dangerous Rope-Free Ascent Ever

Alex Honnold has become the first climber to free solo Yosemite’s 3,000-foot El Capitan peak.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA—Renowned rock climber Alex Honnold on Saturday became the first person to scale the iconic nearly 3,000-foot granite wall known as El Capitan without using ropes or other safety gear, completing what may be the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport.

He ascended the peak in 3 hours, 56 minutes, taking the final moderate pitch at a near run. At 9:28 a.m. PDT, under a blue sky and few wisps of cloud, he pulled his body over the rocky lip of summit and stood on a sandy ledge the size of a child’s bedroom.

Honnold began his historic rope-less climb—a style known as “free soloing”—in the pink light of dawn at 5:32 a.m. He had spent the night in the customized van that serves as his mobile base camp, risen in the dark, dressed in his favorite red t-shirt and cutoff nylon pants, and eaten his standard breakfast of oats, flax, chia seeds, and blueberries, before driving to El Capitan Meadow.

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WNU Editor: I know that this is not a war/defense/military post .... but I cannot help but be impressed with what this young man accomplished. In my younger years I enjoyed climbing and hiking mountains .... but climbing El Capitan at Yosemite without any ropes or safety gear .... never in a million years. Congratulations to Alex Honnold .... in the world of mountain climbing this is truly an incredible accomplishment.

Trekkie fans will understand why this is a great accomplishment ....

A Look At When The Russian Military 'Screws-Up"

Business Insider: The most spectacular Russian military failures of all time

There are some projects that the Kremlin would love us to forget.

The Russian military has long been a bogeyman for the West, with Cold War memories lingering even after the fall of the Soviet Union.

However, over the years Russia's fierce competition has produced a number of duds alongside its successes, as the country has scrambled to stay one step ahead of its geopolitical rivals.

The following is a collection of some of the most ambitious military projects that resulted in spectacular failures.

WNU Editor: My altitude and philosophy behind mistakes and failures is simple .... do a mistake once .... you are a philosopher. Do the same mistake again .... you are an idiot.

Something To Think About

Assembling B-25 bombers at North American Aviation, Kansas City, Kansas. October 1942. Wikipedia

Interesting ........................

During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, America produced:

22 aircraft carriers

8 battleships

48 cruisers

349 destroyers

420 destroyer escorts

203 submarines

34 million tons of merchant ships

100,000 fighter aircraft

98,000 bombers

24,000 transport aircraft

58,000 training aircraft

93,000 tanks

257,000 artillery pieces

105,000 mortars

3,000,000 machine guns AND

2,500,000 military trucks

We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services, invaded Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy , won the battle for the Atlantic, planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe, developed the atomic bomb and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany .

It should be noted that during a similar amount of time the current Federal bureaucracy couldn't build a functioning web site.

WNU Editor: Hat Tip to Theo Spark

A Soldier's Wife And Her Story

Candace Desmond-Woods tries to comfort her husband, Tom, an Iraq war veteran who suffers from PTSD and alcoholism.

A Soldier's Wife -- Christopher Goffard and Photography and Video by Rick Loomis, L.A. Times

Her husband came home, and the war came with him.

One night her husband thought he was back in Iraq and tried to kick down the door of their home on Garden Gate Lane. He shouted something in Arabic she didn't understand. As a cavalry scout in Baghdad, he had crashed through countless doors on nighttime raids. The "hard knock," he called it.

She clutched their infant son, afraid of her husband for the first time. She wouldn't let him in. He stared at her through the glass panes. Didn't he recognize her? He shoved, elbowed, punched. The lock began to buckle. The glass shattered.

It was February 2012. The war, her own small piece of it, had come rolling down the block the month before, in the form of a 22-foot Penske moving truck. Her newlywed husband was at the wheel, having crossed the country from Ft. Riley, Kan.

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My Comment: An excellent and moving photo/video/story.

One Posthumous Gallantry Medal For Sale £500

Hero Soldier's Parents Forced To Buy Back His Posthumous Gallantry Medal After His Widow Lists It On Gumtree For Just £500 - Without Even Telling Them -- Daily Mail

* Fusilier Simon Annis, 22, killed by a bomb in Helmand in 2009
* Wife Caroline presented with posthumous Elizabeth Cross as next of kin
* Pete and Ann Annis have bought it back from new owner for £1,757
* Soldier's widow is in a new relationship and has a young daughter
* Caroline says soldier's parents have not spoken to her in four years

The parents of a war hero killed in Afghanistan have spoken of their disgust after his widow sold a medal honouring his sacrifice.

Fusilier Simon Annis’s young wife Caroline, 26, listed the Elizabeth Cross on the online noticeboard Gumtree for just £500.

The medal, which recognises the loss borne by Service families, was awarded to her after her 22-year-old husband died in an explosion in Afghanistan.

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My Comment: She should have offered it to the family.

A Story behind One Soldier's Last Trip Home

Don Collins Jr. digging a grave at Scottburg Cemetery this winter. Juliana Sohn

The Things That Carried Him -- Esquire

Revisit the award-winning, breathtaking true story behind one soldier's last trip home

Don Collins stood in the sun and mapped out in his mind a rectangle on the grass, eight feet by three feet. He is forty-nine, wears a handful of pomade in his hair, and no longer needs a tape to take the measure of things.

Indiana state law dictates that the lid of the burial vault be two feet below the surface. That meant Collins had to dig down five feet, ultimately lifting out about a hundred cubic feet of earth. He wouldn't need a tape to measure that, either. Since 1969, his father, Don Sr., has owned the Collins Funeral Home, just up Elm Street, just past the little yellow house with the two yellow ribbons tied to the tree out front. As a boy, Don Jr. had lived upstairs with the spirits and the rest of his family, over the chapel. He and his younger brother, Kevin, would later work with their dad in the back room, embalming the bodies of their neighbors at three o'clock in the morning, and he still assists his father in his capacity as coroner. But Don Jr. has had enough of bodies in back rooms. He likes it better outside, in the sticky air, working with the earth.

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Hat Tip: Good Shit

My Comment: Our prayers are with his friends and family.

Ex-NBA Player Finds True Calling in Army

From Military.com:

MIAMI - Tim James apologized for being late. A rough day at work, said the Miami Heat's 1999 first-round draft pick. Vehicles broke down, problems flared up, and he simply fell behind.

"It happens," James said. "Even here."

Even on the front line of the Iraq war.

A former NBA player who often wondered about his true calling, Tim James is now a U.S. Army Soldier, a transformation that even many of the people closest to him never saw coming.

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My Comment: I guess if there is ever a pick-up game at the base, he will be the first one chosen to be on a team.

New Doubts Raised Over Famous War Photo

Robert Capa’s "Falling Soldier," from the Spanish Civil War has drawn both acclaim and questions over its veracity. Robert Capa/Magnum Photos

From The New York Times:
After nearly three-quarters of a century Robert Capa’s “Falling Soldier” picture from the Spanish Civil War remains one of the most famous images of combat ever. It is also one of the most debated, with a long string of critics claiming that the photo, of a soldier seemingly at the moment of death, was faked. Now, a new book by a Spanish researcher asserts that the picture could not have been made where, when or how Capa’s admirers and heirs have claimed.

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My Comment: I remembered the first time I saw the photo (I was a young teenager at the time) .... and I felt that it was staged.

Fake or not .... it is what it symbolizes that makes it important. The moment that a life is loss because of war.

Korean War-era Soldier Finally Buried In Arlington Cemetery

From McClatchy News:

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY — Under blue skies and with military honors, Cpl. Robert Schoening was buried at Arlington National Cemetery nearly 60 years after his front-line unit was overrun by Chinese troops in Korea and he was declared missing in action and presumed dead.

The second youngest of eight children, Schoening grew up on a Blaine, Wash., farm during the depression and joined the Army at age 17 after being rejected by the Navy. His family remembers him as a fearless teenager with a ready smile, a bit of a tease who often tinkered with his 1926 Model T.

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My Comment: It is never too late for a soldier to finally come back home.

Son of Hamas Leader Gives Glimpse Into Terror Organization

Mosab Hassan Yousef.
Photo from FOX News

From FOX News:

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other world leaders try to broker a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, one former member of the militant Islamic organization said there will never be lasting peace between the two groups.

"There is no chance. Is there any chance for fire to co-exist with the water?" said Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the group's founding members.

Yousef added: "It's not about Israel, it's not about Hamas: it's about both ideologies."

Yousef, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the most influential leaders of the militant group, said the organization betrays the Palestinian cause and tortures its own members.

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My Comment: This is an incredible story of faith. Read it.

Why Osama Doesn't Have a Facebook Account

(Click To Enlarge)

From The Danger Room:

Al Qaeda may have been a pioneer in exploiting new media to spread propaganda and recruit members. But now, many experts feel the terror group is falling behind. Despite all the hand-wringing in U.S. intelligence circles, Osama & Co. don't seem to be comfortable with Web 2.0-style applications. Marc Lynch explains why, in a must-read post. Here's a snip:

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Marine Amputee Rejoins Battalion; Returns To Combat After Near Death Experience

Corporal Garrett S. Jones, an amputee who was injured in 2007 by an insurgent’s bomb during his unit’s deployment to Iraq, shows his prosthetic leg. Jones is a 23-year-old Newberg, Ore., native.
(Photo from DodLive)

From DoD Live:

Article and photos by Sgt. Ray Lewis
Task Force 2d Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force

CAMP BARBER, Helmand Province, Afghanistan – There was blood in the water. It was a grim addition to the Iraqi sewage canal usually littered with dead sheep and festering fish.
That’s where the Marines of Company E, 2d Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division found their comrade after the attack.

Just seconds before, Cpl. Garrett S. Jones was patrolling the streets of Iraq with his team when he was suddenly hurled 15 feet into the air by an enemy booby trap.

“It was just a big dust cloud,” said Cpl. Robert C. Pofahl, who stood 10 feet in front of Jones when the bomb detonated. “I ran toward him, and I fell in the canal. The mud was almost up to my knees. It was probably the worst smell you could smell. That’s when I saw the blood in the water.”

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My Comment: A remarkable story of determination and grit .... a must read.