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What is the slickest way a person has gotten out of a traffic ticket?I’ll share them with you. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 42 years since 1979.in 2010–2011 I had just graduated from law school with my J.D.I’m not sure what it was? maybe absent-mindedness or carelessness or or being goofy or just still having a racing mind from law school but in a 12 month period from 2010–2011 I received not less than 11; yep 11 moving traffic violations. But it wasn’t reckless I just wasn’t paying attention to my driving mostly.However, I fought in Traffic Court and won every one of those Eleven moving traffic ticket violations. Some by skill; some by luck; but I got out of every one of them. Here are the ones I can remember.1. Speeding ticket (LA County Sheriff’s deputy on a motorcycle)I was in Rosemead eastbound on Valley Blvd just East of Rosemead Blvd. in a 35 mph zone; he said he (radar) clocked me doing 50 mph.El Monte Superior Courthouse at Traffic court trial; the judge just called out like 20 names and mine was one of them and said traffic ticket dismissed; I was curious why; so I asked the clerk; she said he (motorcycle Deputy) was hit by a car and laid up in the hospital so he couldn’t testify to convict so all his traffic ticket citations were dismissed by ‘default’2. Failure to make a complete traffic stop at a stop sign; by CA Highway Patrol; Alhambra courthouse.Here CA Highway Patrol has a website that you can complain about their patrol officers. I explained that I had stopped however briefly; the CHP even said, “you paused, you didn’t stop’; I replied, “my stop, is your pause”?Anyway, I filed a complaint against him; apparently, my complaint got back to him so he didn’t show for traffic court; which is an automatic dismissal by “default” for failure to appear to testify by the cop. The LT. from Sacramento that called me personally spoke on the phone with me. I said, “he was hiding in the dark at a stop sign just off of the freeway exit. I had stopped for a micro-second and proceeded. The law (DOES NOT, DOES NOT) require you to stop and count to 3; that’s a LIE, there is no such requirement. As long as you stopped and traffic was clear? you are clear to proceed however brief that stop was. Any cop that tells you different is a liar and that’s a bogus traffic ticket.Furthermore, an actual Lt. from CA HP in Sacramento called me on my cell phone; when I explained what happened; he said, “we (CHP) don’t hide at exits in the dark”; I said, “this guy did”.Apparently, CHP must constantly drive around while on patrol and catch traffic violators.While in the news a while back; they caught a CHP who would pick up his Girlfriend and change out of his uniform into civilian clothes and go shopping at the mall with her. How do we know this? Mall surveillance cameras caught him and the girlfriend and someone reported it when they recognized him. Then he has to hurry back and write a bunch of bogus traffic tickets to cover for their time.Otherwise, they get called out by their boss after their shift and patrol is over?; “you mean you worked an 8-hour shift and couldn’t write a single traffic ticket”? I wondered if it was this guy who gave me that traffic ticket who was at the mall with his girlfriend.3. Another one I got a ticket for tinted windows; by San Gabriel PD motorcycle cop and trial was at the Alhambra courthouse;Here not only did I get a ticket for the tinted window; but because I gave the cop “some lip-service and an attitude”; he dicked back with me.In CA this TINTED WINDOW Ticket is known as a fix-it-ticket; he checked off 3 things which bail should have been $25 each for a total of $75 total;Well, He didn’t check that box; so my bail ended up being $1150 dollars;When I went to the courthouse traffic-clerk-window, she saw that he did that on purpose and changed it so my bail to post to attend trial was only $75.Note TBWD: Now in California; I found out this was new, we have something called “TBWD” aka Trial-By-Written-Declaration” that means you can type up your arguments like a trial brief or a pleading and submit your arguments that way, and the cop has to do the same. (see sample formats below).Well, I submitted my argument that CA LAW was changed to allow “tinted windows” that are colorless and transparent for the purposes of reducing harmful and heat-generating UV rays. A tint is a shade of light and is not considered a color; there are only TWO COLORS that are EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED those colors are RED & BLUE because they resemble the colors of the lights of police car light bars.Okay, and I quoted the law. Well, the Traffic courts are often manned by corrupt “volunteer” attorneys moon-lighting to be a future or wanna-be judge someday. So to give that façade of being pro-law-enforcement most of the time they just rubberstamp the police/deputy/highway patrol arguments. They are called “commissioner-pro temp” aka temporary commissioners. This frees up the real judges to hear and try real Civil and Criminal cases, not traffic tickets which are minor infractions.so in my TBWD, I was ruled “guilty”; well you’re given 10-days to file a Trial-de-novo AKA Latin for “new-trial”; so you get a second chance. So I filed my request for Trial-de-novo and was granted.At that trial, the same “commissioner pro temp” was there; So my first argument was for a Motion to Request a Real judge and not that commissioner.My argument is this commissioner already adjudicated my TBWD; the same court may NOT hear the same case again in a Trial-de-novo.I DEMANDED a real judge. This commissioner tried to deter me and said that might be a wait; I SAID, I’LL WAIT.So in the real courtroom with a real judge. And I didn’t have to wait, my case was the first one heard, right away.The judge opened by looking at me and saying, “so what evidence do you have that you are in compliance with tinted window laws”?I almost yelled but in a real loud and firm voice said, “OBJECTION, DEFENDANT HAS NO BURDEN TO PROVIDE ANY EVIDENCE CULPATORY OR EXCULPATORY FOR A CONVICTION OR TO CONVICT MYSELF OF THIS CITATION”.“THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON THE GOV’T FOR A CONVICTION, THAT’S THIS OFFICER (and I pointed at the San Gabriel PD COP);” “this citation has 4 subsections 1,2,3,4 ALL 4 ELEMENTS MUST BE MET AND THE PROOF MUST BE PROVIDED BY THE GOV’T; where there are no facts of evidence to prosecute? the court must dismiss for lack of evidence to convict; MOTION TO DISMISS IS HEREBY ENTERED”.I further said, “On the citation under my signature, it says in fine print; (signing this is not an admission of guilt but a promise to appear); I have not admitted any guilt and I have kept my promise to appear - I AM HERE; this officer THE GOV’T has the burden of proof; NOT ME”.The judge was taken a-back and recoiled in his chair; then he reached under his desk and pulled out the CAVC CALIFORNIA VEHICLE CODE book and looked up that citation #? then the judge turned to the cop and said, “what evidence do you have to submit to convict on this citation?”Cops reply: “I thought he had to prove that”. (pointing to me) (wrong, mistake, big mistake)Me: “MOTION TO DISMISS”Judge: Motion to dismiss grantedI didn’t say a word, I just turned around and stormed out of there.Now after the fact: I went to the San Gabriel PD and filed a complaint; I wrote it up beautifully in a Trial Brief format. Remember I have a J.D. law degree.Anyway, I used this format to file my complaint; and the Internal Affairs investigators asked if I could come in to interview me. I did, and I told them everything above. and how he dicked with me to drive up my bail. That complaint is now in his file.The first thing the cops doing the investigation into my complaint did was to “compliment me”; saying we usually don’t get complaints this nice (referring to my court trial brief format above and all typed up real nice). I told them I have a J.D. law degree.ANYWAY, I gave them my statement vs that motorcycle cop and left.4. and 5. 2 Traffic-red-light-camera tickets.One was where I was driving westbound around 6 pm in the evening and I had the sun visor down to shield from the sun and so my face was not visible. so that was dismissed.Another one was the front windshield of my car was dirty and so the picture and face was blurry and not clearly visible so that was dismissed.BTW THOSE tickets, ALL THOSE TICKETS, ALL THOSE TICKETS, ALL THOSE TICKETS for “ Traffic-red-light-camera” are voluntary; compliance; YEP. You DO-NOT-HAVE-TO-COMPLY with the ticket; but they don’t tell you that. So those tickets are “illegal”.YEP, that’s why LA CITY did away with them. But some cities still have them like Montebello, Westminster, Southgate, and a few other cities.Why? Because the “violate-your-14th-Amendment-rights” to be able to “confront-your-accuser” and question them; It’s called the “Right-of-Confrontation”.You CAN’T CONFRONT A CAMERA-MACHINE; It doesn’t talk; you can’t do “direct-examination of the machine.And on that ALL THOSE TICKETS for Traffic-red-light-camera? It even says on the ticket they mail to the registered owner? Somewhere near the bottom; “I did not witness this”. That means even the camera operator “did not witness” the infraction and was not there at the time of the infraction and so, therefore, cannot testify at the traffic court trial for that ticket.6. Another was for a speeding ticket wherein the LA County Deputy said I must have been doing 50–55 mph.In that one, I went on Google map and printed out the speed limit sign in that section which was 45 mph, and included those pictures as Exhibits A, B, C, D, and I showed from a Google map picture printout that from the distance where he claimed he saw me to where he was less than about 1 football field length or about 100 yards.And that he didn’t clock me (radar); or pace me; but just visually eye-balled me and guesstimate my speed. He had no technical reference he could produce as facts to be entered into evidence to the court.I further argued that my car, as at the time a 1992 Mercedes-Benz E300TD Turbodiesel that was totally bone stock; not modified, not lowered, not supped-up; and I said nobody races a diesel or does the display of speed in a 4-door-sedan family car. And I included a picture of my car; several pictures as Exhibits.The judge bought my argument; the citation was dismissed.7. This was much later, but in April 2018. I had just bought a 2018 Nissan LEAF EV which allows my EV to drive in the HOV (High-Occupancy-Vehicle aka Carpool) lane. But I also had my teenage son with me which also double qualified me to be in the HOV lane.so I cut over two-double-yellow-lines to enter.A CHP motorcycle cop behind me saw that and pulled me over and wrote me a ticket.Now you have to produce 3 things in all traffic stops: 1) driver's license; 2) registration; 3) proof of car insurance aka financial responsibility.When I handed him my registration; it was a copy and NOT the original. He demanded the original; I said a copy is sufficient; and he replied, “fine, I’ll just write you up for that also”. I had just bought this car in March the month prior brand spanking new from the dealer, but I had a copy of the registration.Well, my car has 3 Dashcams, 2 point front-ward, 1 pointing backward. but I was also watching him in my rearview mirror.We argued back and forth that he said I had to have the original registration; I said no I don’t.Well, he said he’ll write that and add that to my ticket.The problem was in my rearview mirror, he was there checking his vehicle codebook; for 15 minutes for the code violation and he couldn’t find it; because I knew you don’t have to have the original registration in the car.Another time during a traffic school class held by a moonlighting highway patrol officer; he even said, “don’t keep the original registration in the car”; because if your car gets towed; you need the “original registration” to get it out of the tow yard.Okay, he wrote the ticket and I’m on my way.I fought it and won. Dismissed.I told the court; this cop is corrupt and tried to write me a bogus additional traffic ticket on a non-requirement to have the ORIGINAL REGISTRATION in the car; which IS NOT REQUIRED because the point is my car has current registration; and he could check that on his motorcycle computer.I wrote a separate answer on that here:Stanley Hutchinson's answer to What is an old law that needs to be changed?I wrote another answer on speeding here:Stanley Hutchinson's answer to I got a ticket for going 45 mph in a 35 mph when the speed limit was just about to change to 45 mph. Should I just pay the fine or take it to court?I can’t remember the other tickets.But I got so good at doing TBWD for traffic tickets; THAT I started doing traffic tickets for friends and co-workers then started doing that as a side gig for money. I’m happy to say I’ve got like a 90% dismissal rate for all the ones I did.One of those I helped get off was a family friend of my wife’s. The woman was pregnant and was driving on a street that abutted the 210 Fwy in Pasadena eastbound near Lake Ave; My argument was three-fold.1) The officer clocked her on radar was pointing his radar with the freeway in the background within in few yards (25 to 50 yards) and clearly visible to the naked eye and he mistakenly clocked or pointed the radar gun at a freeway car and not her car;2) The officer clocked and wrote “several” tickets; “several” tickets at that location; constituting a “speed-trap” which is Illegal; to not be a “speed-trap”; that officer must write one ticket, then move to a new location.3) This was a woman who was pregnant and was driving carefully in consideration of her pregnancy and not speeding.The judge bought it and the traffic citation by TBWD was dismissed.I charged her $150 to get her off on that ticket.————————————————————————————Another was a co-worker lady friend, she got a traffic ticket for failure to stop for a yellow-school-bus; $630; yep; ouch $630Well the argument was the officer misspelled her name; on this one I actually went with her to traffic court; and argued on her behalf that this was not her on the citation “look at the misspelled name” “the court must err on the side of the defendant”!; the judge initially ruled against her; I yelled, “objection for purposes of the appeal” and the judge reversed himself and dismissed the citation.I didn’t charge her. She didn’t make a lot of money. I said just to buy my son a Lego toy from Walmart; she said just go to Walmart and buy the toy he wants and give me the receipt. I did and it was $60 bucks and she gave me $60 bucks.———————————————————————————-I got my own wife off on a ticket for tinted windows on our 2015 Mercedes-Benz SUV.———————————————————————————-I have noticed (date from March 2020 to October 2020) cops and CA Highway Patrol are not/ and have not been issuing many tickets or as many because of “fear of CV-19” aka COVID. Recently in limited contact, they are writing more tickets as I see cars being pulled over now.Lesson learned:One of those 11 tickets? I think the last one of those 11 tickets?; I think I did attend traffic school to get out of it and that was a good thing; because it made me re-evaluate my driving style and technique and just to be more attentive and careful and check my speed.If you like this don’t forget to upvote this below Thanks

1) Caesar and Cleopatra:Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, ruling Egypt from 51 BC - 30 BC. She is celebrated for her beauty and her love affairs with the Roman warlords Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.Cleopatra was born in 69 BC - 68 BC. When her father Ptolemy XII died in 51 BC, Cleopatra became co-regent with her 10-year-old brother Ptolemy XIII. They were married, in keeping with Egyptian tradition. Whether she was as beautiful as was claimed, she was a highly intelligent woman and an astute politician, who brought prosperity and peace to a country that was bankrupt and split by civil war.In 48 BC, Egypt became embroiled in the conflict in Rome between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Pompey fled to the Egyptian capital Alexandria, where he was murdered on the orders of Ptolemy. Caesar followed and he and Cleopatra became lovers. Cleopatra, who had been exiled by her brother, was reinstalled as queen with Roman military support. Ptolemy was killed in the fighting and another brother was created Ptolemy XIII. In 47 BC, Cleopatra bore Caesar a child - Caesarion - though Caesar never publicly acknowledged him as his son. Cleopatra followed Caesar back to Rome, but after his assassination in 44 BC, she returned to Egypt. Ptolemy XIV died mysteriously at around this time, and Cleopatra made her son Caesarion co-regent.In 41 BC, Mark Antony, at that time in dispute with Caesar's adopted son Octavian over the succession to the Roman leadership, began both a political and romantic alliance with Cleopatra. They subsequently had three children - two sons and a daughter. In 31 BC, Mark Antony and Cleopatra combined armies to take on Octavian's forces in a great sea battle at Actium, on the west coast of Greece. Octavian was victorious and Cleopatra and Mark Antony fled to Egypt. Octavian pursued them and captured Alexandria in 30 BC. With his soldiers deserting him, Mark Antony took his own life and Cleopatra chose the same course, committing suicide on 12 August 30 BC. Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire.2) Clovis and Clotilda:Clotilda’s life wove together old worlds and new, for she was born when the last Roman emperor ruled in the West, was married as a young woman to the Frankish king Clovis, and was recognized as a Christian saint after her death.Clotilda’s mother, from the old Roman aristocracy of Gaul, was a Catholic Christian, but her father represented a rougher sort. He was son of the king of Burgundy, a Romanized barbarian, and like most Burgundians, he was an Arian Christian. Clotilda was raised in her mother’s faith. When she was in her teens, her uncle Gundobad murdered her parents, exiled her sister (who became a nun), and kept Clotilda in his home, perhaps because her intelligence and beauty promised a good marriage.If her uncle had hoped to marry her to an ally, he was to be outfoxed. Clotilda secretly began to arrange her own marriage. It was no love story. When Clovis, king of the Franks, heard about the unmarried niece of the powerful Gundobad, he sent an envoy to offer marriage. The envoy disguised himself as a pilgrim and secretly presented Clotilda with a ring and other gifts. Clotilda hid these and sent a message back to Clovis. She appreciated his proposal, but she asked him to keep it secret. And, although she expressed concern about Clovis’s paganism, she added, “Whatever my Lord God orders, I will do.”A year later, Clovis made his move. He asked Gundobad to send Clotilda to him so that their marriage could be finalized. Gundobad, still in the dark about the proposal, reacted with fury. But when he found Clovis’s gifts stashed away in a corner of his treasury, he considered these to be evidence of an irrevocable betrothal and angrily allowed the marriage to go forward. Clotilda probably first met Clovis just before they were married in Soissons in 493, when she was no more than 20 years old. All told, this was a hardheaded match. Made more through negotiation than courtship, it was a common arrangement for the aristocracy of the day.Brought up in a court of Arian Christians but faithful to Catholic Christianity, Clotilda now found herself married to a pagan. She is said to have started converting Clovis on their wedding night, with a well-timed lecture on Christianity. (With somewhat less charitable intent, she also harangued him about the importance of avenging her parents’ murders.) When their first son was baptized as a Catholic Christian and soon thereafter died, Clovis blamed his wife’s faith, but Clotilda was soon pregnant with another heir. That son, too, was baptized, and he lived, a fortunate turn for the future of Catholic Christianity among the Franks. Clotilda continued to press her husband to convert, and after three years of marriage, Clovis finally gave in.He chose a strategic moment. Losing a disastrous battle against the Alemanni, he raised his eyes to heaven and invoked the god of his wife, shouting “Jesus Christ, you who Clotilda maintains is the son of the Living God . . . if you will give me victory over my enemies, then I will be baptized in your name.” In the next instant, the Alemanni turned and fled. Clovis accepted baptism, along with 3,000 of his men. He thereby achieved domestic peace (no more late-night lectures from his wife) and also ensured that the Franks—first among the barbarian tribes—accepted Catholic Christianity. At Clotilda’s further urging, Clovis became a firm ally of Catholic Christianity, destroying pagan shrines, building churches, and funding a variety of religious projects.This story of female persuasion and Catholic triumph comes from later Frankish histories that weave together fact and fiction. Historians today would tell the tale differently. Clovis’s battlefield conversion recalls Constantine at the Milvian Bridge too neatly to be credible, and it now seems that Clovis might have been an Arian Christian, not a pagan, before Clotilda persuaded him to accept Catholic Christianity. In any case, Clovis had good political reasons to accept his wife’s faith, for his Franks had to coexist with a Gallo–Roman population faithful to Catholic Christianity. And because his choice of Catholic Christianity distinguished the Franks from all other barbarian tribes, Clovis positioned his dynasty as champions against the Arian Christianity embraced by the Burgundians, the Visigoths, and others. Yet, although Frankish histories might have emphasized Clotilda’s pious work over Clovis’s political savvy, both seem to have worked together to the same end: the conversion of the Franks to what eventually became orthodox Christianity in the West.Like many aristocrats of her day, Clotilda lived between barbarian and Roman cultures and among many different faiths. Like many aristocratic women, Clotilda forged active links between these diverse traditions, and her work as a domestic proselytizer was not unusual. Both the Lombards and Visigoths eventually abandoned Arian Christianity thanks to pious Catholic queens married to Arian husbands.3) Ferdinand and Isabella:"The Catholic Monarchs"] is the joint title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; on marriage they were given a papal dispensation to deal with consanguinity by Sixtus IV. They married on October 19, 1469, in the city of Valladolid; Isabella was eighteen years old and Ferdinand a year younger. It is generally accepted by most scholars (John Elliott being an English-speaking example) that the unification of Spain can essentially be traced back to the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. Some newer historical opinions propose that under their rule, what later became Spain was still a union of two crowns rather than a unitary state, as to a large degree Castile and Aragon remained separate kingdoms, with most of their own separate institutions, for decades to come. The court of Ferdinand and Isabella was constantly on the move, in order to bolster local support for the crown from local feudal lords.The title of "Catholic King and Queen" was bestowed on Ferdinand and Isabella by Pope Alexander VI in 1494, in recognition of their defence of the Catholic faith within their realms.The Catholic Monarchs set out to restore royal authority in Spain. To accomplish their goal, they first created a group named the Holy Brotherhood. These men were used as a judicial police force for Castile, as well as to attempt to keep Castilian nobles in check. To establish a more uniform judicial system, the Catholic Monarchs created the Royal Council, and appointed magistrates (judges) to run the towns and cities. This establishment of royal authority is known as the Pacification of Castile, and can be seen as one of the crucial steps toward the creation of one of Europe's first strong nation-states. Isabella also sought various ways to diminish the influence of the Cortes Generales in Castile, though Ferdinand was too thoroughly Aragonese to do anything of the sort with the equivalent systems in the Crown of Aragon. Even after his death and the union of the crowns under one monarch, the Aragonese, Catalan, and Valencian Corts (parliaments) retained significant power in their respective regions. Further, the monarchs continued ruling through a form of medieval contractualism, which made their rule pre-modern in a few ways. One of those is that they traveled from town to town throughout the kingdom in order to promote loyalty, rather than possessing any single administrative center. Another is that each community and region was connected to them via loyalty to the crown, rather than bureaucratic ties.Ferdinand and Isabella were noted for being the monarchs of the newly united Spain at the dawn of the modern era. They had a goal of conquering the Muslim kingdom of Granada and completing the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The beginnings of a series of campaigns known as the Granada War began with the attack on Alhama de Granada. The attack was led by two Andalusian nobles, Rodrigo Ponce de León and Diego de Merlo. The city fell to Andalusian forces in 1482. The Granada War was aided by Pope Sixtus IV by granting a tithe and implementing a crusade tax to invest in the war. After 10 years of fighting the Granada War ended in 1492 when Emir Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra Palace in Granada to the Castilian soldiers.They also authorized and financed the expedition of Christopher Columbus, who was given the name of Admiral of the Ocean Sea by the monarchs, and who discovered the Americas and brought the knowledge of its existence to Europe. Columbus' first expedition to the supposed Indies actually landed in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. He landed on the island of Guanahani, and called it San Salvador. He continued onto Cuba, naming it Juana, and finished his journey on the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, calling it Hispaniola, or La Isla Española ("the Spanish [Island]" in Castilian). On his second trip, begun in 1493, he found more Caribbean islands including Puerto Rico. His main goal was to colonize the existing discoveries with the 1500 men that he had brought the second time around. Columbus finished his last expedition in 1498, and discovered Trinidad and the coast of present-day Venezuela. The colonies Columbus established, and conquests in the Americas in later decades, generated an influx of wealth into the new unified state of Spain, leading it to be the major power of Europe from the end of the sixteenth century until the mid-seventeenth century, and the largest empire until 1810.4) Marie and Pierre Curie :Pierre and Marie Curie are best known for their pioneering work in the study of radioactivity, which led to their discovery in 1898 of the elements radium and polonium. Marie Curie, born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, on Nov. 7, 1867, d. July 3, 1934, spent many impoverished years as a teacher and governess before she joined her sister Bronia in Paris in order to study mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne, earning degrees in both subjects in 1893 and 1894. In the spring of the latter year she met the physicist Pierre Curie. They married a year later, and Marie subsequently gave birth to two daughters, Irene (1897) and Eve (1904).Pierre Curie, b. May 15, 1859, d. Apr. 19, 1906, obtained his doctorate in the year of his marriage, but he had already distinguished himself (along with his brother Jacques) in the study of the properties of crystals. He discovered the phenomenon of piezoelectricity, whereby changes in the volume of certain crystals excite small electric potentials. Along with work on crystal symmetry, Pierre Curie studied the magnetic properties of materials and constructed a torsion balance with a tolerance of 0.01 mg. He discovered that the magnetic susceptibility of paramagnetic materials is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature (Weiss-Curie's law) and that there exists a critical temperature above which the magnetic properties disappear (curie temperature).Since 1882, Pierre had headed the laboratory at the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie Industrielle in Paris, and it was here that both Marie and Pierre continued to work after their marriage. For her doctoral thesis, Madame Curie decided to study the mysterious radiation that had been discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. With the aid of an electrometer built by Pierre and Jacques, Marie measured the strength of the radiation emitted from uranium compounds and found it proportional to the uranium content, constant over a long period of time, and uninfluenced by external conditions. She detected a similar immutable radiation in the compounds of thorium. While checking these results, she made the unexpected discovery that uranium pitchblende and the mineral chalcolite emitted about four times as much radiation as could be expected from their uranium content. In 1898 she therefore drew the revolutionary conclusion that pitchblende contains a small amount of an unknown radiating element.Pierre Curie immediately understood the importance of this supposition and joined his wife's work. In the course of their research over the next year, they discovered two new spontaneously radiating elements, which they named polonium (after Marie's native country) and radium. A third element, actinium, was discovered by their colleague Andre Debierne. They now began the tedious and monumental task of isolating these elements so that their chemical properties could be determined.In 1903, Marie Curie obtained her doctorate for a thesis on radioactive substances, and with her husband and Henri Becquerel she won the Nobel Prize for physics for the joint discovery of radioactivity. The financial aspect of this prize finally relieved the Curies of material hardship. The following year Pierre was appointed professor at the Sorbonne, and Marie became his assistant. She was deeply affected when Pierre died after being struck by a truck on a Paris street. She overcame this blow only by putting all her energy into the scientific work that they had begun together. The Sorbonne provided the opportunity by offering her the post that Pierre had held of lecturer and head of the laboratory. She thus became the first female lecturer at the Sorbonne, and in 1908 she was appointed professor. For the isolation of pure radium, Marie Curie received a second Nobel Prize in 1911, this time for chemistry.During World War I, Madame Curie dedicated herself entirely to the development of the use of X rays in medicine. In 1918 she took upon herself the direction of the scientific department of the Radium Institute, which she had planned with her husband, and where her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie worked with her husband Frederic Joliot. Marie's research for the rest of her life was dedicated to the chemistry of radioactive materials and their medical applications. She frequently lectured abroad, and she labored to establish international scholarships for scientists. Her death, on July 4, 1934, of leukemia was undoubtedly caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.The work of Marie and Pierre Curie, which by its nature dealt with changes in the atomic nucleus, led the way toward the modern understanding of the atom as an entity that can be split to release enormous energy.5) George Palmer Putnam and Amelia Earhart:Amelia Mary Earhart (Putnam) was known in her lifetime for setting records in aviation. She was an aviator -- a pioneer in the field, with many firsts for women. She was also a lecturer and writerAmelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off on their last airplane trip June 1, 1937, then vanished on July 2, 1937, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Here is a short biography and then a timeline of some key events leading up to that fateful day:BackgroundAmelia Earhart was born July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Her father was a lawyer for a railroad company, a job which required frequent moving, and so Amelia Earhart and her sister lived with grandparents until Amelia was 12. She then moved around with her parents for some years, until her father lost his job due to a drinking problem.At age 20, Amelia Earhart, on a trip to Toronto, Canada, volunteered as a nurse's aide at a military hospital, part of the World War I war effort. She made several tries at studying medicine and she worked at other jobs including social work, but after she discovered flying, that became her passion.FlyingAmelia Earhart's first flight was at an airshow with her father, which motivated her first to learn to fly -- her teacher was Neta Snook, the first woman instructor to graduate from the Curtiss School of Aviation.Amelia Earhart then bought her own plane and began to set records, but sold the plane to drive East with her newly-divorced mother.In 1926, magazine publisher George Putnam tapped Amelia Earhart to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic -- as a passenger. The pilot and navigator were both men. Amelia Earhart became an instant celebrity as a woman aviator, and began to give lectures and fly in shows, again setting records.In one notable incident, she flew First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt over Washington, D.C.Setting More RecordsIn 1931, George Putnam, now divorced, married Amelia Earhart. She flew solo across the Atlantic in 1932, and in 1935 became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland. In 1935 she also set speed records traveling from Los Angeles to Mexico City, and from Mexico City to New York.Purdue University hired Amelia Earhart as a faculty member to counsel female students on opportunities, and in 1937 Purdue gave Amelia Earhart a plane.Flying Around the WorldAmelia Earhart was determined to fly around the world. Replacing her first navigator with Fred Noonan, and after several false starts, Amelia Earhart began her round-the-world flight on June 1, 1937.Near the end of the trip, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan missed their expected landing on Howland Island in the Pacific, and their fate is still uncertain. Theories include crashing over the ocean, crashing on Howland Island or a nearby island without the ability to contact help, being shot down by the Japanese, or being captured or killed by the Japanese.