The Real Origin of Live Free or Die

According to Wikipedia, New Hampshire's motto comes from...

...a toast written by General John Stark on July 31, 1809. Poor health forced Stark, New Hampshire's most famous soldier of the American Revolutionary War, to decline an invitation to an anniversary reunion of the Battle of Bennington and to send his toast by letter.

Stark, I argue, adopted the phrase from the Terror of the French Revolution. In Paris during this time, flags flew with the inscription: "UNITE ET INDIVISIBILITE DE LA REPUBLIQUE, LIBERTI, EGALITE, FREATERNITE, OU LA MORT." In English, it's: unity and indivisibility of the republic, liberty, equality, fraternity or death." Safe to say that's an intricate version of "live free or die."

Fun Facts!

Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, which led to Portugal's withdrawal from East Timor as its colonial ruler.

A year earlier, in December 1974, Henry Kissinger of the US government had been asked by an Indonesian government representative whether or not the US would approve the invasion.^[6] In March 1975, US Ambassador to Indonesia, David Newsom, recommended a "policy of silence" on the issue and was supported by Kissinger.^[7] On October 8, 1975, a member of the National Security Council, Philip Habib, told meeting participants that "It looks like the Indonesians have begun the attack on Timor." Kissinger's response to Habib was, "I'm assuming you're really going to keep your mouth shut on this subject."^[8]

On the day before the invasion, US President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger met with Indonesian president Haji Mohammad Suharto. According to declassified documents released by the National Security Archive (NSA), in December of 2001, they gave a green light for the invasion
The U.S. had supported Suharto's regime in Indonesia during the Cold War as it was seen as a bulwark against communism and it continued the practice during the invasion of East Timor. While the U.S. government claimed to have suspended military assistance from December 1975 to June 1976, military aid was actually above what the Department of State proposed and Congress continued to increase it

The U.S. also made four new offers of arms, including supplies and parts for 16 OV-10 Broncos which, according to Cornell University Professor Benedict Anderson, are "specially designed for counter-insurgency actions against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons and wholly useless for defending Indonesia against a foreign enemy", adding that the policy continued under the Carter administration.

The invasion was not given much coverage by the U.S. media. When the subject was covered, the deaths were attributed to the preceding civil war. This caused some to later accuse the media of blatant bias, because coverage of the genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was much more common, due to the fact that more people were killed in a shorter period of time.
Estimates of East Timorese killed include 60,000 and 100,000 (mostly civilians) - Source: Indonesian Invasion of East Timor (Wikipedia)

There are unfortunately some "citation needed" but I have seen some documentary footage and I have done some other research, and everything seems to be accurate. If you scroll down that wikipedia page you will see where they got all their sources.

The Cost of High School

Excerpted from Guaranteed A+ Plus Learning System:

"Let's about money once more. At first glance, high school seems to be "FREE" if you attend a public school. However, the old adage is true: "There is no such thing as free lunch." What you may perceive is a "free" education actually costs a big chunk of tax money from your parents. In fact, in most recent data available (year 2002-03), the United States spent $388 billion dollars on all students in public elementary, middle, and high schools. It may be hard to imagine such a big number as 388,000,000,000 dollars and see what it really means. There are 48.2 million students in the United States. So, if we do the math, the average cost of one year of your public education in high school is approximately $8049.79. In hourly terms, you end up paying $7-8 per hour of class...The average cost of one day of your high school experience is about $50.

The purpose of that passage is to convince students to get motivated and attend class or else they are throwing away money. Up until the ninth grade, I always thought that public school was truly free. In fact, a lot of high school age kids still probably think that school is free. If you are one of those kids and if you just read this post, you should now have a better understanding of how things work.

Academic Application: November 1, 2007

Flipping through the latest edition of The New York Times Upfront magazine, I discovered some fun facts that I thought I'd share with you readers. If you are in AP History, you have probably picked up a copy already and read about these "Snapshots." If you haven't, here is a brief glimpse at some of the statistics provided:

Country W/ Highest Percentage of Internet Users: Iceland (85.4%)
Religion W/ Highest Percentage of Members: Christianity (33.2%)
The World's Biggest Company: Wal-Mart Stores
Most Populous Country: China (1,318,000,000)
Language W/Highest Percentage of Speakers: Mandarin Chinese (1,075,000,000)
Country W/ Highest Life Expectancy: Japan (82 YO)