The military career of John McCain included attack aircraft missions as a naval aviator in the Vietnam War followed by internment for more than five years as a prisoner of war. His father and grandfather were admirals in the United States Navy. Born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, McCain graduated in 1958 from the U.S. Naval Academy, where his rebellious attitude resulted in a low standing. Off the coast of Vietnam, he narrowly escaped death in the 1967 Forrestal fire. On a bombing mission in October 1967, he was shot down over Hanoi and badly injured in the crash before enduring periods of torture as a prisoner of war. In 1968, he refused a North Vietnamese offer of early release, because it would have meant leaving before other prisoners who had been held longer. He was released in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords. Upon his return, McCain studied at the National War College and commanded a large training squadron in Florida. In 1979 he was promoted to captain and became the director of the navy's Senate Liaison Office. McCain has been a U.S. Senator from Arizona since 1987, and was the Republican nominee in the 2008 presidential election. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_military_career_of_John_McCain> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1885: Sino-French War: France gained an important victory in the Battle of Đồng Đăng in the Tonkin region of what is now Vietnam. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_%C4%90%E1%BB%93ng_%C4%90%C4%83ng> 1927: German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli in which he described his uncertainty principle for the first time. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg> 1941: Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium> 1987: Light from the supernova SN 1987A (remnant pictured) in the Large Magellanic Cloud reached the Earth. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A> 2007: A Virgin Trains Pendolino express train from London Euston to Glasgow Central derailed near Grayrigg, Cumbria, UK, killing one person and injuring 22. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayrigg_derailment> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: apace: Quickly, rapidly, with speed. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apace> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,— all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.   --W. E. B. Du Bois <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois>