Daniel Stashower’s book “The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War” is about how Allan Pinkerton, America’s first private eye, saved Abraham Lincoln’s life in 1861 on his way to DC. His book details the plan cooked up by a barber named Capt. Cypriano Ferrandini, a Corsican immigrant, who was one of many secessionist sympathizers in Baltimore, who with a band of 20 planned to assassinate Lincoln changed trains in February 1861. The press reported Lincoln would change train stations in Baltimore on Feb. 23 on his way to DC. The book is about how Pinkerton discovered the assassination plot and got the President-elect
safely to DC.

Robbie Schaefer worked for a telecom company after college and was bored and miserable. His father asked “well what do you want to do?” His answer was he wanted to sing and follow his heart and go to Africa. He went to a school in Uganda where everybody was happy to see him but the grumpy security guard. He taught the children to sing “The Sound of Music” which they wanted to sing over and over; and Robbie noticed the security guard with a smile looking in the class room from outside the window. He created a non-profit “One Voice”. The kids sang to raise $’s to build a new school. The kids also painted pictures of hearts to raise $’s for 13 children to have heart surgery. Robbie later went to India on a similar project and taught the children to sing “Voi – Ya – Ya’ “We are following the path to your heart”.

Carla Dove is the program manager of the Feather Identification Lab in the Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History.  The Air Line Industry uses her services to analyze causes of plane crashes involving birds.  For instance, what kind of bird brought down the American Air Lines Boeing passenger jet that crash landed in the Hudson River minutes after taking off from JFK?  Was it a 3 lb bird or 6 lb?  It turned out to be a 6 lb bird migrating from Canada. The Boeing Jet could handle a 3 lb bird in both engines but not a larger bird.  Carla’s current research involves establishing techniques in a newly developing field within ornithology which applies forensic methodologies to determine species of birds from fragmentary evidence.  The most important application of  this work is to aviation safety, where bird identification data is used to design safer engines and windscreens, predict bird movements, and improve bird habitat management around airfields.