Speakapedia podcast

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For the Republicans, John McCain. John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona and presidential nominee of the Republican Party in the 2008 presidential election. McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Presidential Candidate: Barack Obama

16 years fa

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With the US election only a few days away, we thought it was worth having an update on the two candidates. First up is the Democrat party candidate, Barack Obama. Barack Hussein Obama II is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 United States presidential election. Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major American political party for president. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70 percent of the vote. Come back on Monday to hear about the other side of the fence.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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On This Day : Battle of Trafalgar

16 years fa

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On the 21st October 1805 the British defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet. It signaled the end of Napoleon's plan to invade Britain and cemented Britain's position as the dominant naval power for more than a century. The British admiral Nelson was killed during the battle and his statue dominates London's Trafalgar Square completed in 1845 The six British ships dispatched earlier to Gibraltar had not returned, so Nelson would have to fight without them. He was outnumbered and outgunned, nearly 30,000 men and 2,568 guns to his 17,000 men and 2,148 guns. The Franco-Spanish fleet also had six more ships of the line, and so could more readily combine their fire. There was no way for some of Nelson's ships to avoid being "doubled on" or even "trebled on".…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Wall Street Crash 1929

16 years fa

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How did the Wall Street Crash happen, what events unfolded and can we draw any parallels with today's events? Listen to this article to find out more After an amazing five-year run when the world saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) increase in value fivefold, prices peaked at 381.17 on September 3, 1929.[19] The market then fell sharply for a month, losing 17% of its value on the initial leg down. Prices then recovered more than half of the losses over the next week, only to turn back down immediately afterwards. The decline then accelerated into the so-called "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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On This Day: The Great Fire of Newcastle and Gateshead

16 years fa

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A trip back in history to this day in 1854 England, a simple fire sparks a series of events which creates a fascinating but tragic story. The Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead was a tragic and spectacular series of events starting on Friday 6 October 1854, in which a substantial amount of property in the two North East of England towns was destroyed in a series of fires and an explosion which killed 53 and injured hundreds.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Paul Newman

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Iconic actor Paul Newman died on September 26th 2008 aged 83 as a result of complications relating to lung cancer. Listen to wikipedia's entry on this great man who was so much more than a screen legend. Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards...…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Singapore Grand Prix

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This weekend sees the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix on a road circuit which looks similar to Monaco, complete with high walls which the drivers will be inches from and a section of the track that goes underneath the grandstand! The Singapore Grand Prix is a Formula One race set to stage its inaugural event on 28 September 2008. To be staged in the Marina Bay area of Singapore, the circuit has been given in-principle approval by the FIA, Formula One's governing body. The first Formula One Grand Prix in Singapore will also be Formula One's first night race. Prior to the race becoming part of the Formula One calendar, the Singapore Grand Prix was held as a Formula Libre event in the 1960s and 1970s at the Thomson Road circuit.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Paulson financial rescue plan

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With the economy of the U.S in jeopardy, Henry Paulson's financial rescue plan represents a bold move to get the financial markets back on track. But what are the details and do the experts think it will work? The Secretary of the Treasury Paulson and President Bush announced a proposal for the federal government to buy up to US$ 700 billion of illiquid mortgage backed securities with the intent to increase the liquidity of the secondary mortgage markets and reduce potential losses encountered by financial institutions owning the securities.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Ryder Cup

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So Team Europe was beaten by Team USA this weekend at Louisville, Kentucky. But what about the Ryder Cup, how and where did it start? I thought it might make an interesting listen, and it did. The Ryder Cup is a golf trophy, donated by Samuel Ryder, which is awarded biennially in an event called the "Ryder Cup Matches" between teams from Europe and the United States. The matches are jointly administered by the PGA of America and the PGA European Tour, and alternate between sites in the United States and Europe.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Large Hadron Collider

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Last week the largest particle accelerator in the world was unveiled and switched on. It didn't destroy the world like the media were trying claim it would but there is still a chance for that as the real experiments do not start until October! So now is the time to learn all about it so that you will know what caused the black hole that will inevitably swallow you up in October! The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons (one of several types of hadrons) with very high kinetic energy. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized that the collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs boson. This would supply a crucial missing link in the Standard Model and explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.…

Speakapedia Podcast

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Lehman Brothers

16 years fa