Beams of light > Candle lights > Remembrance
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Community of Lights joins in the candlelight vigil taking place in Oslo, Norway in support of the families and victims of the July 22, 2011 terrorist attacks.
At least 87 people were feared dead in Norway after a gunman mowed down students at a summer camp hours after a bomb had devastated the centre of Oslo.
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As a child, Betty Bloomer aspired to become a ballet dancer. After high school, she attended dance school, and earned an audition with the legendary Martha Graham. She briefly performed with Graham's dance troupe, then worked as a model and married a furniture salesman, William G. Warren. They divorced five years later, and she soon met Gerald Ford. A year later they married, and two weeks after that Gerald was elected to Congress.
She publicly supported the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortion, and in 1982 she raised the funding to open the Betty Ford Center to combat addiction.
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On the evening of July 5th, 2011, porch lights remained on around the world for a little girl who so many believe was recently denied justice in a Florida courtroom.
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Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 – February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, navigator and cartographer. The Americas are generally believed to have derived their name from the feminized Latin version of his first name. At the invitation of king Manuel I of Portugal, Vespucci participated as observer in several voyages that explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. Manuel's commander Pedro Álvares Cabral, on his way to the Cape of Good Hope and India in 1500, had discovered Brazil at latitude 16°52'S. Portugal claimed this land by the Treaty of Tordesillas, and the King wished to know whether it was merely an island or part of the continent that Spanish explorers had encountered further north.
Columbus never thought Vespucci had tried to steal his laurels, and in 1505 he wrote his son, Diego, saying of Vespucci, "It has always been his wish to please me; he is a man of good will; fortune has been unkind to him as to others; his labors have not brought him the rewards he in justice should have." In 1508, after only two voyages to the Americas, the position of chief of navigation of Spain (piloto mayor de Indias) was created for Vespucci, with the responsibility of planning navigation for voyages to the Indies.
