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#744840 21st Nov 2012 11:19am
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granny Offline OP
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I thought it might be good to have a thread on 'True Stories',relating to anything, providing they are authentic with some related evidence .There must be many who see and hear unusual accounts which they might like to share.So long as they are not volumes, I think members would enjoy reading them. Personal stories would also be interesting. The following story is one which is rather unusual, so you may like to read about it.
* * *

In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth
to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs.
Unfortunately, Due to complications in the pregnancy,
the cubs were born prematurely
and due to their tiny size,
they died shortly after birth.
The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery,
suddenly started to decline in health, Although physically she was fine.
The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter
had caused the tigress to fall into a depression.
The doctors decided
that if the tigress could surrogate
another mother's cubs,
perhaps she would improve.
After checking with many other zoos across the country,
the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs
of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother..
The veterinarians decided to try something
that had never been tried in a zoo environment.
Sometimes a mother of one species
will take on the care of a different species.
The only orphans' that could be found quickly,
were a litter of weanling pigs.
The zoo keepers and vets
wrapped the piglets in tiger skin
and placed the babies around the mother tiger...
Would they become cubs or pork chops?
Take a look...you won't believe your eyes



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image001.jpg image002.jpg image003.jpg image004.jpg

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FABULOUS Granny . Loved this one and think its a great idea for a thread . *racks brains for material*

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what a lovely story about nature, love it!!

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Photoshop?

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granny Offline OP
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Originally Posted by ludwigvan
Photoshop?


Is it, how do you know?

Well, just had a look of Hoax-Slayer, the pictures are good, but the story is wrong!
So that's the first attempt in the bin! Ha! raftl


The photographs were actually taken at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand and not in California. The zoo is renowned for its rather bizarre cross-species displays. According to a 2004 article in the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) Quarterly:




Last edited by granny; 21st Nov 2012 4:03pm.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
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Why would it be photoshop.....it could happen.....either way a lovely story smile

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some ones is telling PORKIES !?... wink

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granny Offline OP
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The Truth:
The pictures are not from a zoo in California but the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand, a popular attraction that boasts of 200 tigers, 100,000 crocodiles, trained pigs, elephants, and other animals. The zoo features creative shows and displays of animals including these pictures of an adult tiger with piglets dressed like tiger cubs. One of the goals of the zoo is to demonstrate how animals of different species can live peacefully together. One of the experiments was introducing baby piglets to a mother tiger (who herself had been nursed by a pig) and it worked. At one time the mother tiger nursing piglets was in an enclosure next to an enclosure where a sow was nursing baby tigers. The zoo says those cubs grew faster from the pig's milk.



Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
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granny Offline OP
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This is true... smile A rather remarkable woman!

IRENA SENDLER

When Hitler and his Nazis built the Warsaw Ghetto and herded 500,000 Polish Jews behind its walls to await liquidation, many Polish gentiles turned their backs or applauded. Not Irena Sendler. An unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them.

Today the old woman, gentle and courageous, is living a modest existence in her Warsaw apartment - an unsung heroine.

Her achievement went largely unnoticed for many years. Then the story was uncovered by four young students at Uniontown High School, in Kansas, who were the winners of the 2000 Kansas state National History Day competition by writing a play Life in a Jar about the heroic actions of Irena Sendler. The girls - Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons and Janice Underwood - have since gained international recognition, along with their teacher, Norman Conard. The presentation, seen in many venues in the United States and popularized by National Public Radio, C-SPAN and CBS, has brought Irena Sendler's story to a wider public.

The students continue their prize-winning dramatic presentation Life in a Jar. They have established an e-mail address [email protected].

Irena Sendler was born in 1910 in Otwock, a town some 15 miles southeast of Warsaw. She was greatly influenced by her father who was one of the first Polish Socialists. As a doctor his patients were mostly poor Jews.

In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and the brutality of the Nazis accelerated with murder, violence and terror.

At the time, Irena was a Senior Administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, which operated the canteens in every district of the city. Previously, the canteens provided meals, financial aid, and other services for orphans, the elderly, the poor and the destitute. Now, through Irena, the canteens also provided clothing, medicine and money for the Jews. They were registered under fictitious Christian names, and to prevent inspections, the Jewish families were reported as being afflicted with such highly infectious diseases as typhus and tuberculosis.

But in 1942, the Nazis herded hundreds of thousands of Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was sealed and the Jewish families ended up behind its walls, only to await certain death.

Irena Sendler was so appalled by the conditions that she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement, as one of its first recruits and directed the efforts to rescue Jewish children.

To be able to enter the Ghetto legally, Irena managed to be issued a pass from Warsaws Epidemic Control Department and she visited the Ghetto daily, reestablished contacts and brought food, medicines and clothing. But 5,000 people were dying a month from starvation and disease in the Ghetto, and she decided to help the Jewish children to get out.

For Irena Sendler, a young mother herself, persuading parents to part with their children was in itself a horrendous task. Finding families willing to shelter the children, and thereby willing to risk their life if the Nazis ever found out, was also not easy.

Irena Sendler, who wore a star armband as a sign of her solidarity to Jews, began smuggling children out in an ambulance. She recruited at least one person from each of the ten centers of the Social Welfare Department.

With their help, she issued hundreds of false documents with forged signatures. Irena Sendler successfully smuggled almost 2,500 Jewish children to safety and gave them temporary new identities.

Some children were taken out in gunnysacks or body bags. Some were buried inside loads of goods. A mechanic took a baby out in his toolbox. Some kids were carried out in potato sacks, others were placed in coffins, some entered a church in the Ghetto which had two entrances. One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan side of Warsaw. They entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians. "Can you guarantee they will live?" Irena later recalled the distraught parents asking. But she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed. "In my dreams," she said, "I still hear the cries when they left their parents."

Irena Sendler accomplished her incredible deeds with the active assistance of the church. "I sent most of the children to religious establishments," she recalled. "I knew I could count on the Sisters." Irena also had a remarkable record of cooperation when placing the youngsters: "No one ever refused to take a child from me," she said.

The children were given false identities and placed in homes, orphanages and convents. Irena Sendler carefully noted, in coded form, the children's original names and their new identities. She kept the only record of their true identities in jars buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbor's back yard, across the street from German barracks, hoping she could someday dig up the jars, locate the children and inform them of their past.

In all, the jars contained the names of 2,500 children ...

But the Nazis became aware of Irena's activities, and on October 20, 1943 she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet and legs. She ended up in the Pawiak Prison, but no one could break her spirit. Though she was the only one who knew the names and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children, she withstood the torture, refusing to betray either her associates or any of the Jewish children in hiding.

Sentenced to death, Irena was saved at the last minute when Zegota members bribed one of the Germans to halt the execution. She escaped from prison but for the rest of the war she was pursued by the Gestapo.

After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families and to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe. But most lost their families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps.

The children had known her only by her code name Jolanta. But years later, after she was honored for her wartime work, her picture appeared in a newspaper. "A man, a painter, telephoned me," said Sendler, "`I remember your face,' he said. `It was you who took me out of the ghetto.' I had many calls like that!"

Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I could have done more," she said. "This regret will follow me to my death."

She has been honored by international Jewish organizations - in 1965 she accorded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem organization in Jerusalem and in 1991 she was made an honorary citizen of Israel.

Irena Sendler was awarded Poland's highest distinction, the Order of White Eagle in Warsaw Monday Nov. 10, 2003.

This lovely, courageous woman was one of the most dedicated and active workers in aiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her courage enabled not only the survival of 2,500 Jewish children but also of the generations of their descendants.

She passed away on May 12, 2008, at the age of 98.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/irenasendler.html

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Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
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Exceptionally brave woman.

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Those pigs would be eaten instantly lol. It's photoshop.

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Shame the story doesnt ring true, but the real story behind the tigers and piglets is still interesting, nice pics too.

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OINK OINK OINK!...looks like ones escaped? raftl

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Come on chaps, move on now, trot along.


Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
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Simon of the HMS Amethyst - Bravery Under Fire

Able Seacat Simon, as he was to become known, was smuggled aboard the HMS Amethyst by Ordinary Seaman George Hickinbottom in 1948. The HMS Amethyst had called into Hong Kong for supplies and was docked at Stonecutter's Island, and Hickinbottom took a liking to him.

Thankfully, the captain, Lt Cdr Ian Griffiths, did as well once he was discovered and he was able to remain onboard. It didn't take long before the captain and the cat gained a rapport, with Simon presenting himself at the captain's whistle, and sleeping in his hat whilst in the cabin. Simon remained onboard catching mice and endearing himself to the crew even after Griffiths was replaced with Lt Cdr Skinner.

It seems as though Simon had a good run on the Amethyst, and Skinner gave Simon exactly the same privileges as Griffiths had done, including sleeping in his hat, although Simon would not come to his whistle.

On 20th April 1949 the Amethyst was ordered to travel up the Yangtze River and replace the HMS Consort, which was guarding the British Embassy from Communist insurgents. They came under fire from the communists who did not recognise the British treaty with the Nationalists. The shots missed, but an hour up river they came under heavy fire once more, and these shots did not miss. Captain Skinner was killed in his cabin, and Simon, asleep there as well was severely injured. He was found a few days later, hiding under some debris.

While Simon was hiding the ship was refloated and managed to make its way beyond the guns, but was hopelessly stuck in the river mud. By then there was only a minimum of crew onboard, those who could be moved were, including the injured. The Amethyst had taken such a battering from the shore batteries that only one lifeboat survived in order to move the injured. The worst injured remained onboard -- there was nowhere else to go. The British managed to fly in a medical officer and a new commander for the Amethyst, which remained stuck in position as all attempts at rescue were pushed back. By the time Simon was found and taken to the sickbay all those who could be treated had been.

Simon had burns to his face, and four separate shrapnel wounds. He was not expected to survive, but survive he did. After a few days rest he was up and about again, albeit slowly moving. He divided his time between catching rats and visiting the wounded who could not be moved. In their position on the Yangtze rats were easily able to get onboard the ship, and with provisions running low as the siege dragged on, they could not afford to lose any to onboard rodents. His attention to the wounded also gave them hope in what was a desperate situation for all concerned.

On July 30, 1949 the Amethyst made a desperate dash for freedom under the cover of darkness. Even though she did come under fire she managed to get free, 101 days after the initial barrage. Simon, for his efforts was awarded the rank of Able Seacat, and given the Amethyst Campaign Ribbon. His fame spread, and he was nominated for the Dickin Award. This is the equivalent of a VC for animals. He is the only cat to receive the award.

Simon's fame spread far and wide, and as he waited in quarantine for entry into Britain he received toys, and fanmail. He had his own carer because of all the attention. Unfortunately, while in quarantine, he caught a virus. His heart was already weakened by his service injuries and gave out. He died on 28th November 1949.

He was posthumously awarded the Dickens Medal. The crew of the Amethyst were devastated by the news; and his obituary appeared in Time Magazine. He was buried with full Navy honours, as a true hero and friend.





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Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
~Chief Seattle
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