Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2005 – Former Tuskegee Airmen -- pioneers who broke through racial prejudice to become the first black U.S. military pilots during World War II -- have solid words of advice and encouragement for today's military members. "Don't let anyone tell you what you can't do," said retired Air Force Master Sgt. Ezra Hill Sr., of Hampton, Va. "We proved that you can do it." Hill said the lessons he learned as one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, who battled segregation and prejudice on the ground and enemy forces in the air, apply equally to today's servicemembers fighting...

LONDON - Nestled in cellars tunneled deep into a Crimean mountainside, they survived revolution, war and decades of communism. Hundreds of bottles of wine selected for the pleasure of Czar Nicholas II and preserved on the orders of Josef Stalin were auctioned by Sotheby's in London on Friday — the latest in a slew of Russian collectibles being snapped up at ever-rising prices. Several dozen Russian and European collectors gathered at Sotheby's showrooms to bid on bottles, some more than 150 years old and valued at several thousand dollars, from the imperial Massandra winery near Yalta on Ukraine's Black Sea...