NYC: The 2026 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is a 76-foot-tall, 50-foot-wide spruce from West Edmeston, New York, weighing an estimated 11 tons and set to make its debut in NYC.

People who have never lived through a catastrophe love to ask why America spends billions of dollars building giant nuclear aircraft carriers. Tell them to ask the mothers of Banda Aceh, Indonesia what they saw on the ocean horizon in January 2005. When the Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than two hundred thousand people, the entire coast of Sumatra was erased. Every bridge, road, and water pipe was gone. Tens of thousands of children were dying of thirst in the mud, and no truck on earth could reach them. Two thousand miles away in Hong Kong, the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was on holiday port call. Within hours of the news, young American sailors walked out of restaurants and hotels, left their vacation behind, ran back up the gangway, and pushed the ship's two nuclear reactors to flank speed. When the Abraham Lincoln dropped anchor off the shattered coast of Aceh, it did not launch a single fighter jet. Instead, the American sailors turned their nuclear warship into the largest floating water factory on earth. Using the ship's four massive steam distillation plants, the crew purified nearly 100,000 gallons of fresh drinking water from the sea every single day. For weeks without sleep, young sailors stood on the hangar deck filling five-gallon plastic jugs by hand, while seventeen Seahawk helicopters flew nonstop from sunrise to sunset. They flew more than 1,500 missions into jungle clearings, delivering over 400,000 gallons of pure water and nearly six million pounds of food and medicine to people of a different faith who had been taught for years to fear the United States. America did not ask for one barrel of oil or one dollar in return. When the local hospitals were running again, the giant gray ship quietly raised its anchor and sailed away. A small mind looks at an American aircraft carrier and sees only a weapon. A survivor looks at that flat gray deck and sees five thousand young Americans bringing water from the sea.

On St. Crispin's Day, October 25, 1415, an outnumbered English army under King Henry V won at Agincourt. Shakespeare gave him the greatest speech on brotherhood: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." It still stirs the heart. (Kenneth Branagh, Henry V, 1989)

Bend, Oregon man who shot and killed a shooter at his daughters' school speaks out, praises female teacher for fighting the shooter, allowing him to have a clear shot. Kaylub Giamanco says he is haunted by the sound of children pleading for their lives. He also praised the teacher for grabbing the gunman's weapon, allowing him to take a shot at the shooter. "I want to recognize [the teacher]. She gave me the opportunity to make my shot without losing my life..." "I swung the door open, and I stepped in, and I fired, and they dropped to the ground... I looked down at the gunman, and he was scrambling for his weapon. And I looked at him, and I shot him 2 more times..."

🌙 Ce soir, l’Hôtel de Ville s’est dévoilé autrement à l’occasion d’une visite nocturne insolite et décalée imaginée par les jeunes élus du Conseil municipal des enfants, avec le service Ville d’art et d’histoire. Énigmes, indices et découverte du patrimoine étaient au programme, avant une finale en fanfare avec les Gueules Sèches 🎺 📅 Prochain rendez-vous : samedi 17 octobre de 19h à 20h30, cette fois pour une visite des Halles centrales. 📸 T. Laporte / Ville de Limoges

Who else would buy a St. Michael the Archangel inflatable like this for their front yard? I’m tired of seeing witches, and creepy decorations everywhere. If we’re going to reclaim All Hallows’ Eve, let’s do it with something bold, eye-catching, and anything but lame!

May 5, 1945. Hitler has been dead for five days. The war in Europe is almost over. In a castle in the Austrian Alps, American soldiers, German soldiers, and a group of elderly French prisoners grab rifles and get ready to fight the SS. Together. The castle was called Schloss Itter. The Nazis had turned it into a prison for very important people. Not ordinary prisoners. Trophies. Inside were two former prime ministers of France, Paul Reynaud and Édouard Daladier. Two of France's top generals, Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin. A famous tennis champion, Jean Borotra. And the older sister of Charles de Gaulle. As the Reich collapsed in early May, the SS guards panicked and ran. The prisoners suddenly found themselves in charge of a castle, with weapons left behind, and a serious problem. Waffen-SS units were still roaming the area. Fanatics who would gladly kill them all. They needed help. Fast. One of the castle's prisoners, a Yugoslav handyman, slipped out on a bicycle to find the Americans. Separately, a German army officer named Major Josef Gangl also went looking for them. Gangl was a Wehrmacht officer who had turned against the Nazis and was secretly working with the Austrian resistance. He wanted to protect the prisoners too. He found an American tank commander named Captain Jack Lee. Lee was 27, tough, cigar chewing, and willing to do something insane. With a single Sherman tank and a handful of American soldiers, he drove up into the mountains alongside Gangl and a few of his German troops. They reached the castle on May 4. The French prisoners were not exactly thrilled to see a tiny rescue force. They had expected an army. Instead they got a few Americans, a few Germans, and one tank. The next morning, the SS attacked. Somewhere between 100 and 150 Waffen-SS troops hit the castle with machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank weapons. The defenders fought back from the walls and windows. Americans and Germans side by side. The French prisoners refused to hide. Some of them, including Reynaud, picked up weapons and joined in. The Sherman tank was knocked out. The defenders were running out of ammunition. It looked like the castle would fall. Then Jean Borotra, the tennis star, volunteered to make a run for it. He jumped the wall, slipped past the SS, and sprinted through the countryside to find American reinforcements. He found them. And he insisted on coming back with them to finish the fight. During the battle, Major Gangl saw Paul Reynaud exposed to gunfire and moved to pull him to safety. A sniper shot Gangl dead. He had survived the whole war as a German soldier, only to die defending French prisoners from the SS in its final days. That afternoon, the American relief force arrived and broke the attack. The SS were scattered and captured. The prisoners were saved. Jack Lee received the Distinguished Service Cross. In Austria, Josef Gangl is remembered as a hero, and a street is named after him. It is believed to be the only battle of the war where American and German soldiers fought together on the same side.

Pope Leo XIV’s surgery to remove a “small, localized nodule” from his lung was successful and he has returned to his room in the Gemelli Hospital, according to the Holy See Press Office.

There’s not a leader in the past immune to criticism except Jesus. But I tell you this – the virtue of Christopher Columbus is towering. Happy Columbus Day, everybody! @thegnewsroom

One of the most grandiose tombs in the world That of Christopher Columbus in Seville, Spain 🇪🇸 Happy Columbus Day!

Mike Ditka's Enshrinement Speech The first tight end inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame July 30, 1988

current view in newport beach - the balboa peninsula is flooded

The NOAA National Hurricane Center has just issued a Tropical Storm Watch part coastal Southern California, including city/county of San Diego. This is only second time such a product has ever been issued for any part of California (TS Hilary in 2023 was other instance). #CAwx

On a Tuesday night in late February 1953, Bishop Fulton Sheen stood in front of a live television audience with nothing but a blackboard and a cape, and “predicted” the death of Joseph Stalin on the air. His show, Life Is Worth Living, had been shoved into the “obituary slot” opposite Milton Berle, then called Mr. Television. Network people assumed a priest talking philosophy would die there. Instead Sheen was drawing something like 10 to 30 million viewers a week, Catholics and non-Catholics, and Berle started joking that if Sheen was going to borrow his writers, Berle would start borrowing Sheen’s. When Sheen later won an Emmy for outstanding personality, he thanked his four writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That February episode was titled around the death of Stalin. Sheen opened Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to the burial scene and read Marc Antony’s speech with the names swapped. Caesar became Stalin. The conspirators became Malenkov, Beria, and the rest of the Soviet inner circle. He closed the book and said, in that measured Peoria cadence, “Stalin must one day meet his judgment.” A few days later, on March 1, Stalin had a stroke. He was dead by March 5. Newspapers from around the country called Sheen asking what inside information he had. He told them he only knew Stalin was mortal, and that the last penalty of sin is death. In his autobiography he called the timing pure luck. Snopes later rated the basic claim true: the broadcast happened, the line was delivered, and Stalin died within the week. Whether it was providence or coincidence, Sheen refused to take the credit. The man who did it had grown up in El Paso, Illinois, gone through Spalding Institute in Peoria, and kept a daily holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament for more than sixty years. On television he never used a teleprompter. When the blackboard filled, he would walk away and come back to a clean board, and tell the audience his angel had erased it. The stagehand who actually wiped it became known, half in joke, as the angel of the blackboard.