15 September: Greenpeace

Today is Greenpeace Day commemorating the date Greenpeace was founded in 1971. 10 things you might not know about Greenpeace.

1. First of all, what is it? Greenpeace is an international environmental group with offices in 55 countries worldwide and 2.8 million supporters.
2. The group started out as a group calling themselves the "Don't Make a Wave Committee" in Vancouver in 1969. The group formed, initially, to "bear witness" to U.S. underground nuclear testing at Amchitka, an island off Alaska. The group were motivated by a concern for the wildlife living on the island, and opposition to nuclear weapons.
3. The group set out in a boat called the Phyllis Cormack. They were intercepted before reaching the island but created some interest and the United States ended nuclear testing on the island later that year.
4. It was in 1971 that they changed their name to Greenpeace. There’s a story about how the name originated, which may or may not be true. The person who coined the name was Bill Darnell. Many of the people involved in the early days were hippies and after one meeting, one of them departed afterwards with a two finger salute and said, “Peace!” Bill realised that Green and Peace would combine to make a punchy new name which reflected both their concerns for wildlife and their anti-nukes stance. "Let's make it a Green Peace. And we all went Ommmmmmmm," Bill reports on the organisation’s website.
5. In 1972 they began protesting against French atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific, asking for yacht owners to help. One of those who came forwards was David McTaggart, a former entrepreneur from Canada who at the age of 40, and given it all up in order to sail round the world in his 38 foot yacht, the Vega, in order to find himself. At first, he was more annoyed about the French government closing off part of the Pacific to shipping than about nuclear testing. McTaggart managed to evade the navies chasing him down and got to within a few miles of the test site and dared the French to kill him. They didn’t – they rammed his yacht and towed it away with a minesweeper, claiming they were rescuing him. Undeterred, McTaggart protested again a year later and this time he was boarded and beaten up by French commandos, who tried to claim it had been an accident or that McTaggart had staged his own injuries, but photographs taken by a crew mate exposed the lie. Soon after, France abandoned atmospheric testing and moved its nuclear testing underground.
6. The original Rainbow Warrior flagship was launched in 1978. It was a 40-metre (130 ft), former fishing trawler named after a book called Warriors of the Rainbow, which was a Christian tract published in 1962, but misinterpreted by some as an ancient Native American prophecy, which states that a time of crisis will come to the Earth, and when it does, people of different races will come together to save the planet. The Rainbow represents the range of different skin colours – Red, White, Yellow and Black. In 1985 the ship was bombed by the French government while docked in Auckland, New Zealand.
7. A second Rainbow Warrior was commissioned in 1989. That one got in to trouble when it ran aground on a Coral reef and Greenpeace was fined for damaging the reef. They paid up but claimed they’d been given out of date charts. This ship retired in 2011 and was replaced by a third ship called Rainbow Warrior, which is still in use.
8. They had their own Boaty McBoatface moment. They once held a contest online to name a humpback Whale, asking people to suggest names and then vote for their favourite. Aiko, Mira, Aurora and Libertad were among the suggestions, but the runaway winner was “Mr. Splashy Pants” with over 78% of the vote.
9. At time of writing the directors of Greenpeace International are Bunny McDiarmid and Jennifer Morgan and the current Chair of the Board is Ana Toni.
10. Today, the aims of the group include fighting climate change, protecting biodiversity, promoting renewable energy and global disarmament.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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