Category - Life Lesson

We get this one shot at the brass ring right? I mean I’m cool if I get to come back to this planet, or another, maybe reincarnated as a bird? How does the old joke go?

I’ve passed the revengeful phase of my life (waste of time) and moved on to the enjoying and fulfillment phase. You?

So you’ve got all these plans for your life? And, may I be so bold to ask what you are doing about them? No matter you current age, like someone probably already told you, there’s no time like the present to get moving.

Need some inspiration? Consider this list adapted from a Business Insider article that proves you are never too young, or too old, to accomplish great things.

• At age 1, Christian Friedrich Heinecken, the legendary child prodigy, had read the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible).
• At 2, speed skater Bonnie Blair began skating. She would go on to win five Olympic gold medals.
• At 3, Wolfgang Mozart taught himself to play the harpsichord.
• At 4, Brazilian Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna da Silva began driving.
• At 5, Yo-Yo Ma, world-famous cellist, began playing “Suites for Unaccompanied Cello” before bed each evening.
• At 6, Willie Hoppe, the greatest billiards player in history, began to play pool. He had to stand on a box to reach the table.
• At 7, English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill had mastered Greek.
• At 8, three-time Olympic gold medal runner Wilma Rudolph took her first step after suffering from polio as a child.
• At 9, Daisy Ashford wrote her bestselling novel, “The Young Visiters.” It sold over 200,000 copies.
• At 10, Vinay Bhat became the youngest chess master in the world.
• At 11, pilot Victoria Van Meter became the youngest girl to fly across the United States.
• At 12, Carl von Clausewitz, general and writer of “On War,” joined the Prussian army.
• At 13, actress, director and producer Jodie Foster wrote and directed a short movie called The Hands of Time.
• At 14, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci became the first athlete in Olympic history to achieve a perfect 10.
• At 15, Swedish tennis star Bjorn Borg dropped out of school to concentrate on tennis.
• At 16, American sharpshooter Annie Oakley challenged and defeated the well-known marksman Frank Butler by hitting a dime in midair from 90 feet.
• At 17, soccer legend Pele won the World Cup for Brazil and then passed out on the field.
• At 18, Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel proved that it was impossible to solve the general equation of fifth degree by algebraic means.
• At 19, Abner Doubleday devised the rules for baseball.
• At 20, Charles Lindbergh learned to fly.
• At 21, Thomas Edison created his first invention, an electric vote recorder.
• At 22, Olympic runner Herbert James Elliott, one of the greatest mile runners ever, retired undefeated.
• At 23, English poet Jane Taylor wrote “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
• At 24, Ted Turner took over his father’s billboard advertising business. He later launched cable news network CNN.
• At 25, Janis Joplin made her first recording, “Cheap Thrills,” which grossed over $1 million within a few months.
• At 26, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel in space.
• At 27, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. left his job at General Electric to become a full-time writer.
• At 28, Jamaican reggae composer/performer Bob Marley recorded “I Shot the Sheriff.”
• At 29, Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell transmitted the first complete sentence by telephone.
• At 30, physicist Armand Fizeau measured the speed of light.
• At 31, French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone.
• At 32, Alexander the Great had conquered almost the entire known world.
• At 33, Walter Nilsson rode across the United States on an 8-ft. unicycle.
• At 34, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry, wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
• At 35, Sir Frederick William Herschel, an English astronomer, invented the contact lens.
• At 36, Barthelemy Thimonnier developed the world’s first practical sewing machine.
• At 37, Jersey Joe Walcott became the oldest man ever to win the world heavyweight boxing title.
• At 38, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon.
• At 39, Sharon Sites Adams became the first woman to sail alone across the Pacific Ocean.
• At 40, Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run.
• At 41, Rudyard Kipling became the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate in literature.
• At 42, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became the oldest regular NBA player.
• At 43, baseball player Nolan Ryan pitched the sixth no-hitter of his career.
• At 44, George Washington crossed the Delaware River and captured Trenton, NJ.
• At 45, Andre Marie Ampere, a French physicist, discovered the rules relating magnetic fields and electric currents.
• At 46, Jack Nicklaus became the oldest man ever to win the Masters.
• At 47, Kent Couch attached 105 helium balloons to a lawn chair and flew 193 miles.
• At 48, Umberto Eco, a professor of semiotics, wrote his first novel, “The Name of the Rose.”
• At 49, Julia Child published her book, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”
• At 50, P.L. Guinand, a Swiss inventor, patented a new method for making optical glass.
• At 51, The Marquis de Sade, imprisoned for much of his life, wrote the novel “Justine.”
• At 52, Sir Francis Chichester sailed around the world alone in a 53-foot boat normally manned by a crew of six.
• At 53, Walter Hunt, an inventor, patented the safety pin.
• At 54, Annie Jump Cannon became the first astronomer to classify the stars according to spectral type.
• At 55, Pablo Picasso completed his masterpiece, “Guernica.”
• At 56, Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China.
• At 57, Frank Dobesh competed in his first 100-mile bicycle ride — exactly 10 years after he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.
• At 58, Sony chairman Akio Morita introduced the Sony Walkman, an idea no one seemed to like at the time.
• At 59, “Satchel” Paige became the oldest Major League baseball player.
• At 60, playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw finished writing “Heartbreak House,” regarded by many as his masterpiece.
• At 61, Charles Cagniard de la Tour, a French doctor, demonstrated that fermentation depends upon yeast cells.
• At 62, J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume of his fantasy series, “Lord of the Rings.”
• At 63, John Dryden undertook the enormous task of translating the entire works of Virgil into English verse.
• At 64, Thomas Bowdler “bowdlerized” Shakespeare’s works, making them “family friendly.”
• At 65, jazz musician Miles Davis defiantly performed his final live album, just weeks before he died.
• At 66, Noah Webster completed his monumental “American Dictionary of the English Language.”
• At 67, Simeon Poisson discovered the laws of probability after studying the likelihood of death from mule kicks in the French army.
• At 68, the English experimentalist Sir William Crookes began investigating radioactivity and invented a device for detecting alpha particles.
• At 69, Canadian Ed Whitlock of Milton, Ontario, Canada, became the oldest person to run a standard marathon in under three hours (2:52:47).
• At 70, Cornelius Vanderbilt began buying railroads.
• At 71, Katsusuke Yanagisawa, a retired Japanese schoolteacher, became the oldest person to climb Mt. Everest.
• At 72, Margaret Ringenberg flew around the world.
• At 73, Larry King celebrated his 50th year in broadcasting.
• At 74, Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps began an attempt to construct the Suez Canal.
• At 75, cancer survivor Barbara Hillary became one of the oldest people, and the first black woman, to reach the North Pole.
• At 76, Arthur Miller unveiled a bold new play, “The Ride Down Mt. Morgan,” free of the world-weary tone of his previous works.
• At 77, John Glenn became the oldest person to go into space.
• At 78, Chevalier de Lamarck proposed a new theory of the evolutionary process, claiming that acquired characteristics can be transmitted to offspring.
• At 79, Asa Long became the oldest U.S. checkers champion.
• At 80, Christine Brown of Laguna Hills, CA, flew to China and climbed the Great Wall.
• At 81, Bill Painter became the oldest person to reach the 14,411-foot summit of Mt. Rainier.
• At 82, William Ivy Baldwin became the oldest tightrope walker, crossing the South Boulder Canyon in Colorado on a 320-foot wire.
• At 83, famed baby doctor Benjamin Spock championed for world peace.
• At 84, W. Somerset Maugham wrote “Points of View.”
• At 85, Theodor Mommsen became the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature.
• At 86, Katherine Pelton swam the 200-meter butterfly in 3 minutes, 1.14 seconds, beating the men’s world record for that age group by over 20 seconds.
• At 87, Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Monitor.
• At 88, Michelangelo created the architectural plans for the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
• At 89, Arthur Rubinstein performed one of his greatest recitals in Carnegie Hall.
• At 90, Marc Chagall became the first living artist to be exhibited at the Louvre museum.
• At 91, Allan Stewart of New South Wales completed a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of New England.
• At 92, Paul Spangler finished his 14th marathon.
• At 93, P.G. Wodehouse worked on his 97th novel, was knighted and died.
• At 94, comedian George Burns performed in Schenectady, NY, 63 years after his first performance there.
• At 95, Nola Ochs became the oldest person to receive a college diploma.
• At 96, Harry Bernstein published his first book, “The Invisible Wall,” three years after he started writing to cope with loneliness after his wife of 70 years, Ruby, passed away.
• At 97, Martin Miller was still working fulltime as a lobbyist on behalf of benefits for seniors.
• At 98, Beatrice Wood, a ceramist, exhibited her latest work.
• At 99, Teiichi Igarashi climbed Mt. Fuji.
• At 100, Frank Schearer seems to be the oldest active water skier in the world.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio