| Histories behind Hauntings |
"Sometimes, when leading families or merchants organized a government for their city, they not only provided for some power sharing through voting but took pains to reduce the probability that the government's chief executive could assume autocratic power. For a time in Genoa, for example, the chief administrator of the government had to be an outsider -- and thus someone with no membership in any of the powerful families in the city. Moreover, he was constrained to a fixed term of office, forced to leave the city after the end of his term, and forbidden from marrying into any of the local families. In Venice, after a doge who attempted to make himself autocrat was beheaded for his offense, subsequent doges were followed in official processions by a sword-bearing symbolic executioner as a reminder of the punishment intended for any leader who attempted to assume dictatorial power." --Mancur Olson
3 years, 11 months, 13 days, 11 hours, 45 minutes, 13 seconds until the Mayan end of Age.
December 21 2012 (11:11am GMT). The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, notably used by the Maya civilization among others of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, completes its thirteenth b'ak'tun cycle since the calendar's mythical starting point (equivalent to 3114 BC August 11 in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, according to the "GMT-correlation" JDN = 584283). The Long Count b'ak'tun date of this starting point (13.0.0.0.0) is repeated, for the first time in a span of approximately 5,125 solar years. The significance of this period-ending to the pre-Columbian Maya themselves is unclear, and there is an incomplete inscription (Tortuguero Stela 6) that records this date. It is also to be found carved on the walls of the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, where it functions as a base date from which other dates are computed. However, it is conjectured that this may represent in the Maya belief system a transition from the current Creation world into the next. The 2012 Winter Solstice will also occur on this day at 11:11 UTC. --wikipedia . See also
"When you get old, the only things you remember are the things you dared to do and the things you didn't dare to do. All the daily stuff, the things you had to do, the things someone paid you to do, blur into the nothingness of 'unimportant to your soul', and when you look back on your life you only see the dreams you made happen and the dreams you were afraid to pursue." --P.J. Gaenir's grandfather
Dare! Chance favors the bold.