[leadpenny]

Don't know. But, to Tom Kuntz, thank you for a nice piece and thank you from the FreeRepublic community.

[netmilsmom]

DU got nothing on us!!!

[Registered]

Thank you and the others for representing us so well.

[weegee]

I appreciate the article as well. It is an example of some of what can be found on FR. There may be some other sky watcher blogs (weblogs) that captured the passing, FR is a large community and by the nature of which threads "bubble up" when someone posts, someone who is in the viewing area but was unaware may be compelled to go outside and watch.

Some other unusual threads from FR are a thread that contains the last contact by a FReeper before he mysteriously died in some kind of fireball/explosion in his home. His wife survived. The final post was minutes before his death. There is a continuing thread on the mystery.

There was also a FReeper who compiled some information that he found on an environmentalist website and compared it to an unsolved murder of a police officer and located the culprit (who confessed his deed on the environmental activist weblog).

Some threads go off the deep end in conspiracy theories and arm chair quarterbacking but there are concrete details that seem to originate on FR and no place else.

With regards to the thread on the final voyage, I forwarded it to my brother and a former NASA engineer who is still interested in space. I'm sure that I wasn't the only one to pass along that testiment to the crew. It is possible that it arrived in the author's mailbox in a series of forwarded email connections. Whatever the means, it is appreciated.