Thursday, April 30, 2009

Intersting Inventions !!

  • Robotic Fly

A realistic robotic fly has spread its wings at the University of Harvard. Despite weighing only 60 milligrams with a wingspan of 3 centimeters, the robotic fly mimics the actions of a real fly contributing to the realism of the mechanical insect. Small robots such as this will be used in the future for spying missions or to enter and explore areas which may contain an element of significant danger.
Robert Wood is leader of the robotic department at Harvard and he believes that flies possess the inconspicuous nature required for such missions, much like a fly-on-the-wall. The robot has been given funding and support by leading military organizations in a conscious effort to develop the fly with respect to implementing it within such circumstances.
The fly was difficult to manufacture due to the intricacy of the individual parts. Existing parts did not exist in a compact enough size so the team had to develop them by themselves. The process used was laser micro machining, which comprises of cutting extremely thin sheets of carbon fiber and polymer which remain accurate to the nearest micrometer. Arranging both the carbon fiber and polymer practical parts could be developed. Each part of the robotic fly can bend and rotate to an extent whilst remaining durable. For parts which react to electricity, electro active polymer is used which alters shape when exposed to a current.


  • Digital Tyre Gauge Takes Readings Into A New Gear

Any careful car owner understands the importance of even the simplest of tasks, such as extracting regular tyre pressure readings. Tyre pressure not only ensures a better drive it also adds a level of safety which should always be kept in top gear. Mileage and fuel emissions will both be aided with the use of this new digital invention which at only £9.95 provides accurate pressure readings as well as a tyre tread depth gauge which alerts the user when a tire is worn and a replacement required.
For such a negligible price, this tool will ensure both your road use and safety whilst making an otherwise mundane task, a whole lot easier. It's time to burn some rubber; let's speed on to the specifications.

  1. Practical and convenient

  2. Fast readouts

  3. Extend tyre life through precise inflation

  4. 2 in 1 Multifunction Digital Tyre Gauge with Tyre Tread Depth Gauge

  5. High accuracy

  6. Multi-unit display: PSI and BAR

  7. Easy-to-read digital display

  8. Auto off for energy saving

  9. Compact, portable

  10. Belt clip and key chain


  • Logitech Providing Hd Ready Webcams

If you're into web communication and utilise a webcam either for personal or business needs, you will be happy to hear that Logitech have announced two brand new HD-quality 2MPx webcams. Named, QuickCam 9000 and QuickCam Pro, both support 720p HD Video at a resolution of 960 x 720 px.
The cameras will also include a revolutionary new concept incorporated by Logitech termed RightSound. RightSound's purpose is to minimise echoing and outside noise interference. This can provie useful in an instant messaging environment such as Skype.
These webcams also come with the ability to create a 3D avatar representation of yourself which closely mimics your movements.
The webcam's are expected to retail at around $100, which for what is on offer, is reasonably priced, suiting both the business and personal webcam user.

  • Space Station 19 Million Toilet Courtesy Of Nasa

NASA have unveiled a new toilet designed specifically for the International Space Station. The toilet has an estimated cost of $19 million, but what could possibly push the price of a toilet up to this price range?
The toilet has been purchased from Russian aerospace firm RCS Energia. The reasons for the price include the facilitation of recycling urine as pure drinking water. The process is rather simple. The urine is passed via a U.S. made filtering system which separates small particles and molecules (water) from larger molecules (waste). The waste is stored in a separate container and disposed of back on Earth.

  • 15 Inch Gigantor Digital Photo Frame15 Inch Gigantor Digital Photo Frame


The Gigantor digital photo frame is unlike any other photo frame in terms of both size and looks. The frame can accommodate any picture of your choice in vivid color allowing you to re-live those epic moments.
The team at IR recommend this particular photo frame due to it's size, ease of use and most importantly the razor sharp picture quality generated by the 15" 1024 X 768 resolution screen.
The photo frame includes built in speakers to accompany the picture including support for eight different media formats, enabling photographs and audio to be added with ease from pen drives, hard drives and MP3 players.
The Gigantor frame is going to attract attention in any household and with the quality on display, for the reasonable price of $249.99, say goodbye to conventional frames and move into the next generation.

  • Mini Windmill Power Generators

Miniature windmills could help power devices where sunlight is not available, such as in tunnels or the shadows of mountains, valleys or forests, researchers now reveal. Such windmills could power devices as humdrum as home alarms and lamps as well as sensors for monitoring border security, climate changes or forest fires, the inventors said.

Its Time to trust the PILOT !!

1. Tioman Island , Off the coast of Malaysia



2. Wake Island, Pacific Ocean


3. Macao Intl Airport



4. Kuujjuaraapik , Quebec !


5. A rock, off the coast of Greenwood (Canadian Military Labrador Helicopter)

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Havaldar Major Lalak Jan (Shaheed)--- The Kargil Hero


Place of Birth: Yasin, Ghizer District, Northern Areas, Pakistan


Place of Death: Kargil


Allegiance: Pakistan Army


Rank: Havaldar Major


Unit: 12 Northern Light Infantry (NLI)


Battles/wars: Kargil War

Awards: Nishan-e-Haider



Bravely Fought During War


As a junior officer in the Northern Light Infantry, Jan fought against India in the Kargil War of 1999. He volunteered to be deployed on the front lines and drove back a number of attacks by the Indian army.Tiger Hill in the Kargil Sector had been occupied by ~130 men of 12 NLI (Northern Light Infantry) unit of the Pakistan Army. One of these men was Subedar Sikander, the person who was responsible, with ~130 other men, to hold back India's offensive long enough to force the Division at Siachen to retreat. His 2IC (Second in Command) was Havaldar Major Lalak Jan.The ~130 men of 12 NLI were told by Subedar Sikander to change their positions while firing back at the attacking Indian forces. As the men followed the orders, they managed to bluff the Indians into believing that the size of the force was much more than ~100.
On 1st of July, 1999, the 18 Grenadiers Battalion (India) launched a fierce attack on Tiger Hill by virtue of artillery shelling of the occupied bunkers. Subedar Sikandar placed his men in such positions that they managed to repulse the attack without any loss of life on their own part. It is not known how many men were lost by the 18 Grenadiers Battalion.


On the morning of 2 July 1999, amidst the mist, the 18 Grenadiers launched another attack on Tiger Hills. Subedar Sikandar ordered his men to retreat to a secret bunker. Once the men were safe, he ordered Lalak Jan to descend Tiger Hill, and amidst the Indian Artillery shelling plant the landmines in the area in front of the Indians. The impossibility of the task was realized by all, but the Subedar insisted that the army has sent them down to fight, and that they would have to complete this task if they were to make a dent in the Indian offensive. Planting the landmines was the only way for them to damage the Indian armor and artillery, as none of the 130 men of 12 NLI had any heavy weaponry except(RPG-7) . The Subedar insisted that the mist would help Lalak Jan as well, and the Indians would not be expecting it either.


Accepting the daunting task, Lalak Jan descended Tiger Hills amidst the mist. The remaining men gave him as fierce a cover as possible to distract the Indians. Lalak Jan used his natural mountaineering ability to the fullest in the snow clad area and planted the landmines in such a manner that the Indians would encounter them in case they tried to move forward towards the hill.


Lalak Jan returned, having successfully planted the mines as ordered.


The trap was now set. All that the men required to do now was to lure the Indians into it. Subedar Sikandar told his men to gradually reduce the firing to a standstill.
About two hours after firing ceased from the Pakistan side, the Indians thought that they had managed to clear the area of the insurgents. Hence they began to move forward. The landmines wrought havoc with their initial forward movements. The Indians suffered heavy casualties, however, as they have not publicized this incident, the exact amount of damage is not known. The damage was in any case, severe enough that 18 Grenadiers did not attack Tiger Hills for at least 3 to 4 more days, until they were supported by another Indian Unit, eight Sikh.


On 6 July, both 18 Grenadiers and eight Sikh attacked Tiger Hills in the fiercest of Tiger Hill battles or the Kargil Operation. Some of the Indian soldiers launched an attack from the very high steeper side of the hill. The NLI was not expecting an attack from this side. The NLI fought this battle at a heavy cost. 80 of the ~130 men were killed, including Subedar Sikander. The Indians had managed to destroy a number of the Tiger Hill bunkers by either a hand to hand fight or by dropping a grenade into it.


Only Lalak Jan and three other men remained. The onslaught of the Indians was continuing and they were rapidly advancing towards capturing the hill. Lalak Jan, who was now the senior most person around, placed his men in strategic positions, at least two to three per person, and told them to fire without staying in one position. These four men, pitted against an enemy much superior in number and weaponry, managed to repulse the Indian onslaught by sheer courage and determination.


On 7 July 1999, 18 Grenadiers and eight Sikh launched yet another offensive. This was a successful attack. Two of Lalak Jan's men were killed. Lalak Jan and his only other remaining comrade in arms, Bakhmal Jan were both seriously injured. Not giving up, Lalak Jan got hold of an LMG and while Bakhmal Jan provided him with the ammunition, the two men kept trying to repulse the Indian attack. Lalak Jan's left arm had been rendered useless as he had received a bullet in it. Bakhmal Jan, unable to sustain his injuries, died while supplying the ammunition to Lalak Jan.


From there on, in one of the most stunning demonstrations of determination, Lalak Jan held up the two units of the Indian Army for four complete hours. The Indian offensive finally slowed down and they descended Tiger Hills. The reason for this is not known, perhaps they thought that they could shell the bunker in which Lalak Jan was positioned.


After the Indian offensive had subsided, reinforcements (50 to 60 men) were sent to Tiger Hill under Captain Amer. When he saw the condition of Lalak Jan he told him to go back to the base camp as his arm was in no condition to be used. Lalak Jan told the captain that he did not want to die on a hospital bed, but would rather die in the battlefield. He told his Captain that he should not worry about the arm.


While this was going on at the hill, the Indians started shelling from a secret bunker in an adjacent hill. By that time the command of the handful of troops at Tiger Hill had been taken up by Captain Amer. He realized that the fire was coming from a secret bunker and also directed fire towards it, but the effort was in vain. The exact reason for the failure of this fire by the Pakistanis is not known. It could have been because of one of three reasons 1) The secret bunker was very well designed and protected by the Indians 2) the fire was not directed properly or 3) the bunker was not in the range of the light weaponry possessed by the Pakistanis atop Tiger Hill.

There was only one way left to counter the secret Indian bunker; it had to be blown up from a closer range.
When the injured Lalak Jan volunteered for the mission, his plea was immediately rejected by the captain, who was of the opinion that he would do it himself. However, Lalak Jan persuaded him, giving him his previous landmine installation experience coupled with his mountaineering skills as the explanation.


The Captain agreed.
Lalak Jan put a bag of explosives on his back, and while shouldering an AK-47 descended Tiger Hills for the second time amidst heavy Indian shelling. Managing to avoid being seen by the Indian forces, and utilising his knowledge of the hills to take cover, he located the secret bunker and threw the explosives inside the bunker.


The bunker, which was also an ammunition dump, blew up in what was probably the biggest blast of the entire Kargil Operation. Lalak Jan managed to take cover, but the Indian Army lost 19 to 20 men inside and nearby the bunker. The other Indian soldiers saw Lalak Jan and opened fire on him. Surrounded from all sides by Indian fire, Lalak Jan tried to resist and returned fire.
He sustained serious injuries as a result of heavy mortar shelling, but managed to defend his position and frustrate the Indian attack before dying at his post.


On 15th of September 1999, the commanding officer of 12 NLI sent two commando forces to Tiger Hills to recover the body of Lalak Jan. The two forces were called 'Ababeel' and 'Uqaab'. Ababeel provided the fire cover while Uqaab went into the destroyed enemy bunker to retrieve the body of Lalak Jan. When his body was found, Lalak Jan had his AK-47 clinched to his chest.
Pakistan awarded him the Nishan-i-Haider, Pakistan’s highest military award, for extraordinary gallantry. Since Pakistan's creation, only ten soldiers in all have received this honour. Jan was the first person from the Northern Areas of Pakistan and the only Ismaili to receive the award.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Captain Karnal Sher Khan Shaheed -- The Kargil Hero


Place of birth Swabi, NWFP


Place of death Kargil


Allegiance Pakistan Army


Rank Captain


Unit 12 Northern Light Infantry (NLI)27 Sind Regiment


Battles/wars Kargil War


Awards Nishan-e-Haider


Captain Sher Khan was born in Nawan Killi a village in Swabi District of N.W.F-P. Pakistan. Karnal is localised form of Colonel. His elder brother, after his death, told in TV interviews that their parents wanted Sher Khan to become a Colonel in Pakistan Army that's why they gave him Karnal as first name[1]. The village of Karnel Sher Khan i.e. Nawan Kali (means: New Village) has now been named after him as "Karnal Sher Khan Kili" (Village of Karnal Sher Khan).


The Award and last tour of duty


Captain Karnal Sher was posthumously awarded the Nishan-e-Haider for his daring actions and services to his country during the Kargil Conflict with India in 1999. Indian army shelled across the line of control which summoned response from regular Pakistan army units thus pitching Karnal Sher in action. The government of Pakistan awarded Captain Karnal Sher Khan with Nishan-e-Haider, the country's highest gallantry award.



Kargil conflict


Pakistan Army's official statement is as follows;
"Captain Karnal Sher Khan emerged as the symbol of mettle and courage during the Kargil conflict on the Line of Control (LoC). He set personal examples of bravery and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. He defended the five strategic posts, which he established with his Jawan's at the height of some 17,000 feet at Gultary, and repulsed many Indian attacks.After many abortive attempts, the enemy on July 5 ringed the post of Capt. Sher Khan with the help of two battalion and unleashed heavy Mortar firing and managed to capture some part of the post. Despite facing all odds, he lead a counter-attack and re- captured the lost parts.But during the course he was hit by the machine-gun fire and embraced Shahadat or martyrdom at the same post. He is the first officer from the NWFP province to be awarded with Nishan-e-Haider." Captain Karnal Sher had a citation posted by the Indian Army too for his exceptionally courageous defense and counter attack on tiger hill.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

A Biography of Dr. A Q Khan --- The Atomic Hero of Pakistan

First of all i am very thankful to Dr A.Q Khan, for replying me in E-mail for his biography.

owner of Creative Think Tankers

Naeem Mustafa Mahar.


BRIEF LIFE SKETCH OF DR. A. Q. KHAN, NI & BAR, HI

By their deeds and actions such persons, though not prophets, demonstrate that they are an extension of the will of the transcendental. These are the people, who are destined to make history in the elevation of nations. Such is the personality of Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan, who was born in Bhopal on April 1, 1936, which corresponds to the Hijri era 1355, Thursday 15th Rajab. As the time has unfolded itself, the Godly qualities enshrined in the words “Quadeer” and “Ghafoor”, symbolized in the names of Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan and his father, Mr. Abdul Ghafoor Khan, have raised the Pakistani nation to new heights in high technology.

After receiving his early education in Bhopal, Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan obtained the degree of Bachelor of Science in 1960 from the University of Karachi. This was the beginning of the unfolding of his intellectual power. Subsequently, he studied in Berlin, West Germany and achieved high competence through attending several courses in metallurgical engineering. He obtained the degree of Master of Science (Technology) in 1967 from Delft Technological University, Holland, and Doctor of Engineering Degree in 1972 form the University of Leuven, Belgium. The restless soul of Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan took him to several laboratories in Europe including Uranium Enrichment Plant in Holland.

It was the essence of his being sharpened by high scholastic achievements in metallurgical and nuclear science that his will and essence at all times remained directed towards the welfare of Pakistan. In 1976, he joined the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL) in Pakistan and set up an uranium enrichment industrial plant. As a tribute to his services for the security of Pakistan on May 1, 1981, the then President of Pakistan, General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq renamed the Engineering Research Laboratories, Kahuta, as, Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan Research Laboratories (KRL). These laboratories were equipped from nothing to something focusing on enrichment of Uranium for peaceful application of nuclear technology. Over the years, the laboratories became a focal point for a large number of scientists, engineers and technologists which Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan gathered around himself and guided them to the tasks which have led to unparallel advances in science and technology. This was done under very challenging and difficult circumstances. It was only his courage, devotion, determination and persistence, which earned success for him, his colleagues and indeed for the nation.

The scientific contributions of Dr. Khan have been recognized in several ways. As an active scientist and technologist, he has published more than 188 scientific research papers in international journals of high repute. He has been editor of a large number of books on metallurgy, advanced materials and phase transformation. His academic and scholastic activities have attracted the attention of number of western countries where he has delivered more than 100 lectures. His work on Industrial Uranium Enrichment Plant for peaceful application of nuclear technology has resulted in a breakthrough in the field of metallurgy & materials science.
It is entirely due to his efforts that the process of enrichment of Uranium was successfully completed in Pakistan. This breakthrough ultimately resulted in the historic explosion of six nuclear bombs on May 28 and May 30, 1998. Not only this but a significant development was also made with the successful test firing of Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, Ghauri I, on April 6, 1998 and Ghauri II on April 14, 1999.

There are numerous contributions of Dr. Khan which have strengthened the defence capability of Pakistan. Those, among others, include: manufacturing of sophisticated equipment like Surface-to-Air shoulder-fired anti-aircraft ANZA (MK-I & MK-II) and Baktar Shikan anti tank guided missiles for the Armed Forces.

Dr. Khan has received honorary degrees of Doctor of Science from the University of Karachi in 1993, Doctor of Science from Baqai Medical University on December 11, 1998, Doctor of Science from Hamdard University, Karachi, in March 6, 1999, Doctor of Science from Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan, N.W.F.P. on April 16,1999, Doctor of Science from the University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore on December 9, 2000 and Doctor of Science from the Sir Syed University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi on March 25, 2001. Apart from his eminent contribution in the filed of Science and Technology, Dr. Khan is an avid supporter of Science and Technology education in Pakistan. As the Project Director of GIK Institute of Science and Technology, he has invested his energies in developing the Institute into an exemplary high technology institution. For his important and eminent contributions in the field of science and technology, the President, Islamic Republic of Pakistan conferred upon Dr. Khan the award of Nishan-i-Imtiaz on 14 August, 1996 and 14 August, 1998. He is also a recipient of Hilal-i-Imtiaz. Dr. Khan is the only Pakistani to have received the highest civil award of “Nishan-i-Imtiaz” twice.

The list of his contribution and achievement is far too long to be mentioned in this short citation. He is a person imbued with the spirit of serving the cause of Pakistan and Muslim Ummah through his able researches, high acumen, intellectual robustness and unwavering devotion. So numerous are his activities that every segment of society has praised him in different forms. He has been awarded 42 gold medals by various national institutions and organizations. He was also presented with 3 gold crowns Dr. Khan is a Fellow of Kazakh National Academy of Sciences, the first Asian scientist with this honour, Elected Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Sciences and Honorary Member of the Korean Academy of Science & Technology. He has also been elected as the Chairman of the Islamic Development Bank’s Advisory Panel on Science and Technology in the Panel’s first ever meeting, held at the IDB’s headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on October 17, 2000. Being a Fellow of Pakistan Academy of Sciences, he was elected unopposed the President of the Academy’s in 1997- the position that he still occupies. Besides, he is a member of a large number of national and international professional organizations, which include Pakistan Institute of Metallurgical Engineers; Pakistan Institute of Engineers; and Institute of Central and West Asian Studies. He is a Member of the Institute of Materials, London; American Society of Metal (ASM); The Metallurgical Society of the American Institute of Metallurgical Mining and Petroleum Engineers (TMS); Canadian Institute of Metals (CIM) and Japan Institute of Metals (JIM).

As an ardent supporter of higher education, he sits on the Boards of Governors and Syndicates of numerous universities and institutes. He is a Member of the Executive Committee GIK Institute of Engineering and Technology, Topi; Member, Board of Governors, Hamdard University; Member, Board of Governors, Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology; Member Syndicate, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad; and Member, Board of Governors, International Islamic University, Islamabad, among others.

He has contributed immensely to the establishment of educational and research institutes in Pakistan. These include several colleges, schools, Institutes and academies. So wide are the applications of his activities that his contributions extend to the construction of 11 mosques, 1 tomb, a number of dispensaries and community health centers.

It is rare that a person in single life time accomplishes so much. This is done only by men who are endowed with special abilities by God and who prepare themselves through hard work and devotion to fulfill the mission of serving mankind.


MEDALS AND AWARDS EARNED BYDR. A. Q. KHAN, NI & BAR, HI

  • Conferred Hilal-i-Imtiaz by the Government of Pakistan on 14-8-1989 and decorated by the President of Pakistan Mr. Ghulam Ishaq Khan on 23-3-1990

  • Conferred Nishan-i-Imtiaz by the Government of Pakistan on 14-8-1996 and decorated by the President of Pakistan Mr. Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari on 25-3-1997

  • Conferred Nishan-i-Imtiaz by the Government of Pakistan on 14-8-1998 for the second time, thus making Dr. Khan the only Pakistani to have been decorated with the highest civil award twice. The Award was decorated by the President of Pakistan Mr. M. Rafiq Tarar on 23-3-1999

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman - A Short Biography



Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman was the founder and editor of the Jang newspaper which has currently grown to be the most popular Urdu newspaper in Pakistan.

When he was a college student in 1940, he started a newspaper for Muslims in pre-partition Hindustan fighting in World War II. He called it Jang, or War.
This was not an exaggerated name as some believed, but a statement against war and so Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman made it clear that he was doing this for the soldiers and not to encourage the Second World War.
After the creation of Pakistan, Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman took a loan of 5000 rupees and re-started the Daily Jang from Karachi. He continued to work at the newspaper till his death in 1992.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Che Guevara - A Complete Biography



Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician, author, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader. After death, his stylized image became a ubiquitous countercultural symbol worldwide.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was transformed by the endemic poverty he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly capitalism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara's radical ideology.
Later, in Mexico, he met Fidel Castro and joined his 26th of July Movement. In December 1956, he was among the revolutionaries who invaded Cuba under Castro's leadership with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to Comandante, and played a pivotal role in the successful two year guerrilla campaign that deposed Batista. Following the Cuban revolution, Guevara reviewed the appeals of those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, ratifying sentences which in some cases (the number of death sentences is disputed) involved execution by firing squads. Later he served as minister of industry and president of the national bank, before traversing the globe as a diplomat to meet an array of world leaders on behalf of Cuban socialism. He was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, along with an acclaimed memoir about his motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions first in an unsuccessful attempt in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured with the help of the CIA and executed.
Both notorious as a ruthless disciplinarian who unhesitatingly shot defectors and revered by supporters for his rigid dedication to professed doctrines, Guevara remains a controversial and significant historical figure. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by "moral" rather than "material" incentives, Guevara evolved into a quintessential icon of leftist-inspired movements. Paradoxically and in contradiction with his ideology, Che's visage was also reconstituted as a global marketing emblem and insignia within popular culture. He has been mostly venerated and occasionally reviled in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, books, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was declared "the most famous photograph in the world.



Early Life


Ernesto Guevara was born to Celia de la Serna and Ernesto Guevara Lynch on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in a family of Spanish, Basque and Irish descent. In reference to Che's "restless" nature, his father declared "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels. Growing up in a family with leftist leanings, Guevara was introduced to a wide spectrum of political perspectives even as a boy. His father, a staunch supporter of Republicans from the Spanish Civil War, often hosted many veterans from the conflict in the Guevara home.
Though suffering crippling bouts of acute
asthma that were to afflict him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete, enjoying swimming, soccer, and golf. He was an avid rugby union player and earned himself the nickname "Fuser"—a contraction of El Furibundo (raging) and his mother's surname, de la Serna—for his aggressive style of play. His schoolmates also nicknamed him "Chancho" ("pig"), because he rarely bathed, and proudly wore a "weekly shirt."
Guevara learned
chess from his father and began participating in local tournaments by age 12. During adolescence and throughout his life he was passionate about poetry, especially that of Pablo Neruda, John Keats, Antonio Machado, Federico García Lorca, Gabriela Mistral, César Vallejo, and Walt Whitman. He could also recite Rudyard Kipling's "If" and José Hernández's "Martín Fierro" from memory. The Guevara home contained more than 3,000 books, which allowed Guevara to be an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with interests including Karl Marx, William Faulkner, André Gide, Emilio Salgari and Jules Verne. Additionally, he enjoyed the works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Vladimir Lenin, and Jean-Paul Sartre; as well as Anatole France, Friedrich Engels, H.G. Wells, and Robert Frost.

As he grew older, he developed an interest in the Latin American writers Horacio Quiroga, Ciro Alegría, Jorge Icaza, Rubén Darío, and Miguel Asturias. Many of these authors' ideas he would catalog in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing analytical sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society, and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud's ideas fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from dreams and libido to narcissism and the oedipus complex. His favorite subjects in school included philosophy, mathematics, engineering, political science, and sociology.
In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. But in 1951, he took a year off from studies to embark on a trip traversing South America by motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granado, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo Leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the Amazon River. Guevara used notes taken during this trip to write an account entitled The Motorcycle Diaries, which later became a New York Times best-seller, and was adapted into a 2004 award-winning film of the same name.
Witnessing the widespread poverty, oppression and disenfranchisement throughout Latin America, and influenced by his readings of Marxist literature, Guevara began to view armed revolution as the solution to social inequality. By trip's end, he came to view Latin America not as collection of separate nations, but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide liberation strategy. His conception of a borderless, united Hispanic America sharing a common 'Latino' heritage was a theme that prominently recurred during his later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he completed his studies and received his medical diploma in June 1953, making him officially "Dr. Ernesto Guevara".




Guatemala


On July 7, 1953, Guevara set out again, this time to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. On December 10, 1953, before leaving for Guatemala, Guevara sent an update to his Aunt Beatriz from San José, Costa Rica. In the letter Guevara speaks of traversing through the "dominions" of the United Fruit Company, which convinced him "how terrible" the "Capitalist octopuses" were. This affirmed indignation carried the "head hunting tone" that he adopted in order to frighten his more Conservative relatives, and ends with Guevara swearing on an image of the then recently deceased Josef Stalin, not to rest until these "octopuses have been vanquished." Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia system. Guevara decided to settle down in Guatemala so as to "perfect himself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary".

Che Guevara's movements between 1953 and 1956, including his trip north to Guatemala, his stay in Mexico and his journey east by boat to Cuba with Fidel Castro and other revolutionaries
Guevara later remarked that through his travels of Latin America, he came in "close contact with
poverty, hunger and disease" along with the "inability to treat a child because of lack of money" and "stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment" that leads a father to "accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident". It was these experiences which Guevara cites as convincing him that in order to "help these people", he needed to leave the realm of medicine, and consider the political arena of armed struggle.
In Guatemala City, Guevara sought out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a Peruvian economist who was well-connected politically as a member of the left-leaning Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA, American Popular Revolutionary Alliance). She introduced Guevara to a number of high-level officials in the Arbenz government. Guevara then established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro through the July 26, 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. During this period he acquired his famous nickname, due to his frequent use of the Argentine diminutive interjection che, a slang casual speech filler used similarly to "eh" or "pal."
Guevara's attempts to obtain a medical internship were unsuccessful and his economic situation was often precarious. On 15 May 1954 a shipment of Škoda infantry and light artillery weapons was sent from Communist Czechoslovakia for the Arbenz Government and arrived in Puerto Barrios, prompting a CIA-sponsored coup attempt. Guevara was eager to fight on behalf of Arbenz and joined an armed militia organized by the Communist Youth for that purpose, but frustrated with the group's inaction, he soon returned to medical duties. Following the coup, he again volunteered to fight, but soon after, Arbenz took refuge in the Mexican Embassy and told his foreign supporters to leave the country. After Hilda Gadea was arrested, Guevara sought protection inside the Argentine consulate, where he remained until he received a safe-conduct pass some weeks later and made his way to Mexico.
The overthrow of the Arbenz regime cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an
imperialist power that would oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. This strengthened his conviction that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions. Gadea wrote later, "It was Guatemala which finally convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism. By the time he left, he was sure of this."


Cuba


Guevara arrived in Mexico City in early September 1954, and renewed his friendship with Ñico López and the other Cuban exiles whom he had met in Guatemala. In June 1955, López introduced him to Raúl Castro who subsequently introduced him to his older brother, Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who had formed the 26th of July Movement and was now plotting to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. During a long conversation with Castro on the night of their first meeting, Guevara concluded that the Cuban's cause was the one for which he had been searching and before daybreak he had signed up as a member of the 26J Movement.[34] By this point in Guevara’s life, he deemed that U.S.-controlled conglomerates installed and supported repressive regimes around the world. In this vein, he considered Batista a "U.S. puppet whose strings needed cutting."
Although he planned to be the group's combat medic, Guevara participated in the military training with the members of the Movement, and, at the end of the course, was called "the best guerrilla of them all" by their instructor, Colonel Alberto Bayo. The first step in Castro's revolutionary plan was an assault on Cuba from Mexico via the Granma, an old, leaky cabin cruiser. They set out for Cuba on November 25, 1956. Attacked by Batista's military soon after landing, many of the 82 men were either killed in the attack or executed upon capture; only 22 found each other afterwards. Guevara wrote that it was during this bloody confrontation that he laid down his medical supplies and picked up a box of ammunition dropped by a fleeing comrade, finalizing his symbolic transition from physician to combatant.

In his trademark olive-green military fatigues, 2 June 1959
Only a small band of revolutionaries survived to re-group as a bedraggled fighting force deep in the
Sierra Maestra mountains, where they received support from the urban guerrilla network of Frank País, the 26th of July Movement, and local campesinos. With the group withdrawn to the Sierra, the world wondered whether Castro was alive or dead until early 1957 when the interview by Herbert Matthews appeared in The New York Times. The article presented a lasting, almost mythical image for Castro and the guerrillas. Guevara was not present for the interview, but in the coming months he began to realize the importance of the media in their struggle. Meanwhile, as supplies and morale grew low, and with an allergy to mosquito bites which resulted in agonizing walnut-sized cysts on his body, Guevara considered these "the most painful days of the war."
As the war continued, Guevara became an integral part of the rebel army and "convinced Castro with competence, diplomacy and patience." Guevara set up factories to make grenades, built ovens to bake bread, taught new recruits about tactics, and organized schools to teach illiterate
campesinos (peasants) to read and write. The man who three years later would be dubbed by Time Magazine: "Castro's brain", at this point was promoted by Fidel Castro to Comandante (commander) of a second army column.
As the only other ranked Comandante besides Fidel Castro, Guevara was an extremely harsh disciplinarian. Deserters were punished as traitors, and Guevara was known to send execution squads to hunt down those seeking to go
AWOL. As a result, Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness. During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also responsible for the execution of a number of men accused of being informers, deserters or spies. Although he maintained a demanding and harsh disposition, Guevara also viewed his role of commander as one of a teacher, entertaining his men during breaks between engagements with readings from the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Cervantes, and Spanish lyric poets.
His commanding officer
Fidel Castro has described Guevara as intelligent, daring, and an exemplary leader who "had great moral authority over his troops." Castro has further remarked that Guevara took too many risks, even having a "tendency toward foolhardiness".
Guevara was instrumental in creating the
clandestine radio station Radio Rebelde in February 1958, which broadcast news to the Cuban people with statements by the 26th of July movement, and provided radiotelephone communication between the growing number of rebel columns across the island. Guevara had apparently been inspired to create the station by observing the effectiveness of CIA supplied radio in Guatemala in ousting the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.

After the battle of Santa Clara, January 1, 1959
In late July 1958, Guevara would play a critical role in the
Battle of Las Mercedes by using his column to halt a force of 1,500 men called up by Batista's General Cantillo in a plan to encircle and destroy Castro's forces. Years later, Major Larry Bockman of the United States Marine Corps would analyze and describe Che's tactical appreciation of this battle as "brilliant." As the war extended, Guevara led a new column of fighters dispatched westward for the final push towards Havana. In the closing days of December 1958, Guevara directed his "suicide squad" in the attack on Santa Clara, that became the final decisive military victory of the revolution. In the six weeks leading up to the Battle of Santa Clara there were times when his men were completely surrounded, outgunned, and overrun. Che's eventual victory despite the formidable odds and being outnumbered 10:1, remains in the view of some observers a "remarkable tour de force in modern warfare." Radio Rebelde broadcast the first reports that Guevara's column had taken Santa Clara on New Year's Eve 1958. This contradicted reports by the heavily controlled national news media, which had at one stage reported Guevara's death during the fighting. Batista, upon learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with the rebel leader, fled to the Dominican Republic the next day on January 1, 1959.


After the revolution


On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana. In February, the revolutionary government proclaimed Guevara "a Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in the triumph. When Hilda Gadea arrived in Cuba in late January, Guevara told her that he was involved with another woman, and the two agreed on a divorce, which was finalized on May 22. On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March, a Cuban-born member of the 26th of July movement with whom he had been living since late 1958.
During the rebellion against Batista's dictatorship, the general command of the rebel army, led by Fidel Castro, introduced into the liberated territories the 19th century penal law commonly known as the Ley de la Sierra. This law included the death penalty for extremely serious crimes, whether perpetrated by the dictatorship or by supporters of the revolution. In 1959, the revolutionary government extended its application to the whole of the republic and to those it considered war criminals, captured and tried after the revolution. According to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, this latter extension was supported by the majority of the population, and followed the same procedure as those in the
Nuremberg Trials held by the Allies after World War II.
To implement this plan, Castro named Guevara commander of the
La Cabaña Fortress prison, for a five-month tenure (January 2 through June 12, 1959). Guevara was charged with purging the Batista army and consolidating victory by exacting "revolutionary justice" against those considered to be traitors, chivatos (informants) or war criminals. Serving in the post as commander of La Cabaña, Guevara reviewed the appeals of those convicted during the revolutionary tribunal process. On some occasions the penalty delivered by the tribunal was death by firing squad. Raúl Gómez Treto, senior legal advisor to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, has argued that removing restrictions on the death penalty were justified in order to prevent citizens themselves from taking justice into their own hands, as happened twenty years earlier in the anti-Machado rebellion. With 20,000 Cubans estimated to have been killed at the hands of Batista's accomplices, and a survey at the time showing 93% public approval for the tribunal process, the newly empowered Cuban government along with Guevara concurred. Although the exact numbers differ, it is estimated that several hundred people were executed during this time.

Meeting with French existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in March 1960. Guevara was fluent in French.
On June 12, 1959, as soon as Guevara returned to Havana, Castro sent him out on a three-month tour of 14 countries, most of them
Bandung Pact members in Africa and Asia. Sending Guevara from Havana allowed Castro to appear to be distancing himself from Che and his Marxist sympathies, that troubled both the United States and some of Castro's 26th of July Movement members. He spent 12 days in Japan (July 15–27), participating in negotiations aimed at expanding Cuba's trade relations with that nation. During this visit, Guevara secretly visited the city of Hiroshima, where the American military had detonated an atom-bomb 14 years earlier. Guevara was "really shocked" at what he witnessed and by his visit to a hospital where A-bomb survivors were being treated.
Upon returning to Cuba in September 1959, it was evident that Castro now had more political power. The government had begun land seizures included in the agrarian reform law, but was hedging on compensation offers to landowners, instead offering low interest "bonds", which put the U.S. on alert. At this point the affected wealthy cattlemen of
Camagüey mounted a campaign against the land redistributions, and enlisted the newly disaffected rebel leader Huber Matos, who along with the anti-Communist wing of the 26th of July Movement, joined them in denouncing the "Communist encroachment." During this time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was offering assistance to the "Anti-Communist Legion of the Caribbean" who was training in the Dominican Republic. This multi-national force comprised mostly of Spaniards and Cubans, but also of Croatians, Germans, Greeks, and right-wing mercenaries, were plotting to topple Castro.
These developments prompted Castro to further clean house of "counter-revolutionaries", and appoint Guevara as Director of the Industrialization Department of the
National Institute of Agrarian Reform on October 7, 1959 and as President of the National Bank of Cuba on November 26, 1959. This allowed him to retain his military rank.

Guevara being received in China by Chairman Mao Zedong, at an official ceremony in the Government palace, November 1960
On March 4, 1960, the French freighter
La Coubre, carrying munitions from the port of Antwerp, exploded twice while being unloaded in Havana Harbor, killing well over 100 people. Guevara provided first aid to victims. It was at the memorial service for the victims of this explosion the following day that Alberto Korda took the famous photograph now known as Guerrillero Heroico.
Guevara desired to see a diversification in Cuba's economy, as well as an elimination of material incentives in favor of moral ones. He viewed
capitalism as a "contest among wolves" where "one can only win at the cost of others," and thus desired to see the creation of a "new man and woman". An integral part of fostering a sense of "unity between the individual and the mass", Guevara believed, was volunteer work and will. To display this, Guevara "led by example", working "endlessly at his ministry job, in construction, and even cutting sugar cane" on his day off. He was known for working 36 hours at a stretch, calling meetings after midnight, and eating on the run. Alongside his work schedule he wrote several publications advocating a replication of the Cuban revolutionary model, promoting small rural guerrilla groups (foco theory) as an alternative to massive armed insurrection. During this time his wife Aleida encouraged him to explore classical music, which he came to love, with Beethoven as his favorite.[74] Other luxuries which he afforded himself were maté, his favorite beverage, and Montecristo No. 4's, his cigar of choice.
Guevara did not participate in the fighting of the 1961
Bay of Pigs Invasion, having been ordered by Castro to a secretly prearranged command post in Cuba's western Pinar del Río province, where he fended off a decoy force. During this deployment, he suffered a bullet grazing to the cheek when his pistol fell out of its holster and accidentally discharged.
In August 1961, during an economic conference of the
Organization of American States in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che Guevara sent a note of "gratitude" to U.S. President John F. Kennedy through Richard N. Goodwin, a young secretary of the White House. It read "Thanks for Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs). Before the invasion, the revolution was shaky. Now it's stronger than ever." In response to U.S. Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon presenting the Alliance for Progress for ratification by the meeting, Guevara antagonistically attacked the United States claim of being a "democracy", stating that such a system was not compatible with "financial oligarchy, discrimination against blacks, and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan." Guevara continued, speaking out against the "persecution" that in his view "drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, and sent the Rosenbergs to their deaths against the protests of a shocked world."
Guevara, who was practically the architect of the
Soviet-Cuban relationship, played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. During an interview with the British Communist newspaper The Daily Worker a few weeks after the crisis, Guevara still fuming, stated that if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off. Sam Russell, the British correspondent who spoke to Guevara at the time came away with "mixed feelings", calling him "a warm character" and "clearly a man of great intelligence", but "crackers from the way he went on about the missiles."


Capture and execution


Félix Rodríguez, a Cuban exile turned CIA Special Activities Division operative, headed the hunt for Guevara in Bolivia. On October 7, an informant apprised the Bolivian Special Forces of the location of Guevara's guerrilla encampment in the Yuro ravine. They encircled the area, and Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a detachment with Simeón Cuba Sarabia. Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson reports Bolivian Sergeant Bernardino Huanca's account: that a twice wounded Guevara, his gun rendered useless, shouted "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead."
Guevara was tied up and taken to a dilapidated mud schoolhouse in the nearby village of
La Higuera on the night of October 7. For the next day and a half Guevara refused to be interrogated by Bolivian officers and would only speak quietly to Bolivian soldiers. One of those Bolivian soldiers, helicopter pilot Jaime Nino de Guzman, describes Che as looking "dreadful". According to De Guzman, Guevara was shot through the right calf, his hair was matted with dirt, his clothes were shredded, and his feet were covered in rough leather sheaths. Despite his haggard appearance, he recounts that "Che held his head high, looked everyone straight in the eyes and asked only for something to smoke." De Guzman states that he "took pity" and gave him a small bag of tobacco for his pipe, with Guevara then smiling and thanking him. Later on the night of October 8, Guevara, despite having his hands tied, kicked Bolivian Officer Espinosa into the wall, after the officer entered the schoolhouse in order to snatch Guevara's pipe from his mouth as a souvenir. In another instance of defiance, Guevara spat in the face of Bolivian Rear Admiral Urgateche shortly before his execution.
The following morning on October 9, Guevara asked to see the "maestra" (school teacher) of the village, 22-year-old Julia Cortez. Cortez would later state that she found Guevara to be an "agreeable looking man with a soft and ironic glance" and that during their conversation she found herself "unable to look him in the eye", because his "gaze was unbearable, piercing, and so tranquil." During their short conversation, Guevara complained to Cortez about the poor condition of the schoolhouse, stating that it was "anti-
pedagogical" to expect campesino students to be educated there, while "government officials drive Mercedes cars" ... declaring "that's what we are fighting against."
Later that morning on October 9, Bolivian President
René Barrientos ordered that Guevara be killed. The executioner was Mario Terán, a sergeant in the Bolivian army who had drawn a short straw after arguments over who would get to shoot Guevara broke out among the soldiers. To make the bullet wounds appear consistent with the story the government planned to release to the public, Félix Rodríguez ordered Terán to aim carefully to make it appear that Guevara had been killed in action during a clash with the Bolivian army.
Moments before Guevara was executed he was asked if he was thinking about his own immortality. "No", he replied, "I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution." Che Guevara then told his executioner, "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man." Terán hesitated, then opened fire with his semiautomatic rifle, hitting Guevara in the arms and legs. Guevara writhed on the ground, apparently biting one of his wrists to avoid crying out. Terán then fired several times again, wounding him fatally in the chest at 1:10 pm, according to Rodríguez. In all Guevara was shot nine times. This included five times in the legs, once in the right shoulder and arm, once in the chest, and finally in the throat.

Post-execution


Guevara's body was then lashed to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown to nearby Vallegrande where photographs were taken, showing a figure described by some as "Christ-like" lying on a concrete slab in the laundry room of the Nuestra Señora de Malta hospital.
A declassified memorandum dated October 11, 1967 to
United States President Lyndon B. Johnson from his National Security Advisor, Walt Whitman Rostow, called the decision to kill Guevara "stupid" but "understandable from a Bolivian standpoint." After the execution, Rodríguez took several of Guevara's personal items, including a watch which he continued to wear many years later, often showing them to reporters during the ensuing years. Today, some of these belongings, including his flashlight, are on display at the CIA. After a military doctor amputated his hands, Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara's body to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his remains had been buried or cremated. The hands were preserved in formaldehyde to be sent to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification. (His fingerprints were on file with the Argentine police.) They were later sent to Cuba. On October 15, Castro acknowledged that Guevara was dead and proclaimed three days of public mourning throughout the island. On October 18, Castro addressed a crowd of almost one million people in Havana and spoke about Guevara's character as a revolutionary.
French intellectual Régis Debray, ‎who was captured in April 1967 while with Guevara in Bolivia, gave a jailhouse interview in August 1968, where he extrapolated on the reasons for Guevara's demise. Debray, who had lived with Guevara's band of guerrillas for a short time, espoused that in his view they were "victims of the forest" and thus "eaten by the jungle." Debray described a destitute situation where Guevara's men suffered malnutrition, lack of water, absence of shoes, and only possessed six blankets for 22 men. Debray recounts that Guevara and the others had been suffering an "illness" which caused their hands and feet to swell into "mounds of flesh" to the point where you could not discern the fingers on their hands. Despite the futile situation, Debray described Guevara as "optimistic about the future of Latin America" and remarked that Guevara was "resigned to die in the knowledge that his death would be a sort of renaissance", noting that Guevara perceived death "as a promise of rebirth" and "ritual of renewal."

Che Guevara's Monument and Mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba
In late 1995, retired Bolivian General Mario Vargas revealed to
Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, that Guevara's body was located near a Vallegrande airstrip. The result was a multi-national search for the remains, which would last more than a year. In July 1997, a team of Cuban geologists and Argentine forensic anthropologists discovered the remnants of seven bodies in two mass graves, including one man with amputated hands (like Guevara). Bolivian government officials with the Ministry of Interior later identified the body as Guevara when the excavated teeth "perfectly matched" a plaster mold of Che's teeth, made in Cuba prior to his Congolese expedition. The "clincher" then arrived when Argentine forensic anthropologist Alejandro Inchaurregui inspected the inside hidden pocket of a blue jacket dug up next to the handless cadaver and found a small bag of pipe tobacco. Nino de Guzman, the Bolivian helicopter pilot who had given Che a small bag of tobacco, later remarked that he "had serious doubts" at first and "thought the Cubans would just find any old bones and call it Che"; however he stated "after hearing about the tobacco pouch, I have no doubts." On October 17, 1997, Guevara's remains, with those of six of his fellow combatants, were laid to rest with military honors in a specially built mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara, where he had commanded over the decisive military victory of the Cuban Revolution.
Removed when Guevara was captured was his 30,000-word, hand-written diary, a collection of his personal poetry, and a short story he authored about a young Communist guerrilla who learns to overcome his fears. His diary documented events of the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia with the first entry on November 7, 1966 shortly after his arrival at the farm in Ñancahuazú, and the last dated October 7, 1967, the day before his capture. The diary tells how the guerrillas were forced to begin operations prematurely due to discovery by the Bolivian Army, explains Guevara's decision to divide the column into two units that were subsequently unable to re-establish contact, and describes their overall unsuccessful venture. It also records the rift between Guevara and the Communist Party of Bolivia that resulted in Guevara having significantly fewer soldiers than originally expected and shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty recruiting from the local populace, due in part to the fact that the guerrilla group had learned
Quechua, unaware that the local language was actually Tupí-Guaraní. As the campaign drew to an unexpected close, Guevara became increasingly ill. He suffered from ever-worsening bouts of asthma, and most of his last offensives were carried out in an attempt to obtain medicine.
The Bolivian Diary was quickly and crudely translated by
Ramparts magazine and circulated around the world. There are at least four additional diaries in existence—those of Israel Reyes Zayas (Alias "Braulio"), Harry Villegas Tamayo ("Pombo"), Eliseo Reyes Rodriguez ("Rolando") and Dariel Alarcón Ramírez ("Benigno")—each of which reveals additional aspects of the events. In July 2008, the Bolivian government of Evo Morales unveiled Guevara's formerly sealed diaries composed in two frayed notebooks, along with a logbook and several black-and-white photographs. At this event, Bolivia's vice minister of culture, Pablo Groux, expressed that there were plans to publish photographs of every handwritten page later in the year.


Legacy

Over forty years after his execution, Che's life and legacy still remain a contentious issue. The contradictions of his ethos at various points in his life have created a complex character of unending duality, polarized in the collective imagination.
Some view Che Guevara as a hero; for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom" while Jean-Paul Sartre described him as "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age." Guevara remains a beloved national hero to many in Cuba, where his image adorns the $3 Cuban Peso and school children begin each morning by pledging "We will be like Che." In his native homeland of Argentina, where high schools bear his name, numerous Che museums dot the country, which in 2008 unveiled a 12 foot bronze statue of him in his birth city of Rosario. Additionally, Guevara has been sanctified by some Bolivian campesinos as "Saint Ernesto", to whom they pray for assistance.
Conversely, others view him as a spokesman for a failed ideology and as a ruthless executioner. Detractors have theorized that in much of Latin America, Che-inspired revolutions had the practical result of reinforcing brutal militarism and internecine conflict for many years. Guevara remains a hated figure amongst many in the Cuban exile community, who view him with animosity as "the butcher of La Cabaña."
A high-contrast monochrome graphic of his face has become one of the world's most universally merchandized and objectified images, found on an endless array of items, including t-shirts, hats, posters, tattoos, and bikinis, ironically contributing to the consumer culture he despised. Yet, Guevara still remains a transcendent figure both in specifically political contexts and as a wide-ranging popular icon of youthful rebellion.

A True Story of Katie Kirkpatrick


The girl in the picture is Katie Kirkpatrick, she is 21 . Next to her, her fiancé, Nick, 23. The picture was taken shortly before their wedding ceremony, held on January 11, 2005 in the US .Katie has terminal cancer and spends hours a day receiving medication.In the picture, Nick is waiting for her on one of the many sessions of chemo to end.

In spite of all the pain, organ failures, and morphine shots, Katie is going along with her wedding and took careof every detail. The dress had to be adjusted a few times due to her constant weight loss.

An unusual accessory at the party was the oxygen tube that Katie used throughout the ceremony and reception as well.The other couple in the picture are Nick's parents. Excited to see her son marrying his high school sweetheart.


Katie, in her wheelchair with the oxygen tube , listening to a song from her husband and friends


At the reception, Katie had to take a few rests. The pain restricts her to stand up for long periods.


Katie died five days after her wedding day. Watching a women so ill and weak getting married and with a smile on her face makes us think..... Happiness is reachable, no matter how long it lasts. We should stop making our lives complicated.