3 . Those with closed minds refused to consider any contradictory facts, and they proceed with their planned course of action, full speed ahead, with their “minds made up” and tightly shut. As an illustration, consider the situation in 1986, prior to the space shuttle Challenger’s disatrous launch that killed all seven astronauts aboard, there was a heated telephone debate between two engineers from the company that produced the shuttle booster rockets and the top officials of NASA (the federal government’s space agency). The engineers insisted that the flight was too risky because of freezing temperature at the Florida launch site. They explained that some of the seals on the fuel tanks were not designed to withstand such low temperatures and might leak under pressure, thus endangering the craft and crew.

Despite the pleas to stop the flight, officials at NASA overruled the engineers, who were best qualified to make judgments about the complex technical problems of space flight. What caused the officials to ignore the engineers? Several flights had already been postponed, and it would not look good to postpone another. It would be bad public relations to disappoint the crowds of people and news reporters waiting for the launch. Top government officials were ready to appear on the national television and take the credit for another safe flight. As a result, with their minds absolutely closed to the facts presented by the engineers, NASA officials ordered the Challenger to take off. Seventy-three seconds later, the spacecraft was enveloped in flame.

Incredibly, seventeen years later, the lesson of the Challenger disaster was repeated. In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart while re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, killing another crew of seven. During the shuttle’s liftoff, a piece of foam insulation(泡沫隔热材料) had broken off, hitting the shuttle's wing at five hundred miles per hour. Lower-level engineers at NASA begged for photographs of the Columbia in orbit, which might have shown the extent of the damage, but their closed-minded superiors ignored their requests. It was the damage caused by the 1.7 pound chunk of insulation that doomed the Columbia.

There is no virtue in ignoring contradictory facts and “sticking to your guns” when the course taken shows all the signs of being the wrong one. Closed minds are especially noticeable in political campaigns and debates. Many people line up to support one candidate or another and won’t listen to any facts presented by the opposing candidate.

All those with an open mind say is this: “I don’t know everything, so I’d better keep my mind, eyes, and ears open to any new facts that may come along.” The world would be a much better and safer place if everyone had this attitude.

5 . After lunch I was napping near the window when there came a big bang. I ______ sat up and looked out. Across the street, a car had just backed into a chain-link fence, which was bent in exactly the ______ of the car’s back end.

The driver got off. After ______ the damage, the man tried to put the fence back into place. His first attempt ______ and he tried a little harder. He grabbed the vertical support pole and pulled with his full ______. All of a sudden, the pole ______ and the man fell hard onto the ground, the entire fence ______ him. I laughed till I cried. ______, as you could imagine, he climbed out of the ______ fence and went away.

That, I thought, would be the   ______ of it. However, the man ______ minutes later with some tools. For the next hour, I ______ out of my window as he doggedly fixed the fence and even ______   it. Now the fence would be stronger than ever.

This man was actually a hero and I was embarrassed by my ______ judgments. Years later, I still look out of my window at that fence almost every day. It makes me ______ what else that man has improved, and how I can make myself more, like him.

6 . “Mayday! We got Mayday!” Frank Pisano screamed over the micro-phone to the air control tower at John Wayne Airport last June. One of the two engines on his 1975 Cessna had failed, and he was now on a collision course with one of the busiest highways in America—Interstate 405, just south of Los Angeles—and there was no stopping it.

Driving south on the 405, near the airport’s runway, was John Meffert. A fire department captain, Meffert, 47, was heading home from his shift. Then a low-flying plane caught his eye. After he took a second glance, a thought crossed his mind: “This plane’s going to hit me,” Meffert told Fox 8.

He was right. The plane knocked into the center highway, popped up a few feet, and then hit the front of Meffert’s SUV. It finally stopped after hitting the divider on the southbound side. Meffert pulled over. He was unhurt, so he turned his attention to the plane. He ran toward the smoke billowing from it—and then he saw Frank’s wife, Janan Pisano, pop her head up on the passenger side.

By the time Meffert reached the aircraft, part of the fuselage (机身) was on fire and Janan, who was covered in blood, was on the wing trying to pull her husband from the wreck. Meffert, afraid the plane would explode, guided her to safety behind it. At this point, traffic had come to a stop, and two nurses jumped out of their cars to help lead Janan farther away as Meffert ran back for the pilot.

“I’m going to get you out,” Meffert said as he positioned himself under the pilot’s arms and carefully lifted him from the seat. He dragged the pilot off the wing and carried him to the side of the freeway to safety, where they watched flames swallow the plane.

Remarkably, Meffert’s car was the only one hit by the plane. Had Meffert been a second or two faster, Frank told the Orange County Register, the left propeller (螺旋桨) would have torn the top off his SUV and killed him.

“I play all the what-ifs—going slower, going faster. It could have been in a very different situation,” Meffert told Fox 8. “We just had a lot of angels.”

7 . It was late, about 10:15 p.m., when Janice Esposito arrived at the Bellport train station; she jumped into her Honda Odyssey and began the 20-minute drive home to her husband and seven-year-old son. She’d just returned from visiting her mother and had traveled the route many times before. She practically _______ on autopilot: a left onto Station Road, then a left on Montauk Highway, and then—wham! Out of nowhere a car T-boned Esposito’s minivan, _______ her to move backward some 100 feet onto the railroad tracks. She _______ in the minivan, bruised (撞伤) but mostly just knocked out by the _________ and the airbags.

As it happened, Pete DiPinto was getting ready for _______. He’d just closed his book   and was getting under the covers when he heard the sound of metal on metal and breaking glass coming from not far outside his bedroom window. A volunteer_______and retired teacher, DiPinto, 64, never _______to think. He grabbed a flashlight and, still dressed in his pajamas   (睡衣), ran out the door. “Any firefighter would have done what I did,” he told Newsday. “We’re always on_______.”

The first car he came upon, 2,000 feet from his front yard, was the one that had _______Esposito. Once DiPinto concluded the driver was OK, he looked around and __________Esposito’s minivan positioned on the railroad tracks. And then he heard a terrible sound: the bells signaling an oncoming __________.

“The gates were starting to come down,” he told Newsday. “I see the headlight of the train.” DiPinto ran quickly to Esposito’s minivan and knocked on the driver’s side window. She __________ looked at him, her eyes unfocused. “I don’t know where I am,” she said. She     seemed unhurt. “Honey, you’re on the railroad __________,” DiPinto shouted. “We have to get   you off right now!” He pulled hard on the __________, but the door was crashed in and __________. The   heavy diesel train, traveling at 65 miles per hour, was moving fast toward them. DiPinto ran to the passenger side and threw open the __________. “Please, don’t let her be __________,” he thought.     He pushed aside the deflating (瘪了的) airbags, grabbed Esposito’s arms, and__________her toward him across the passenger seat until he could help her out and quickly get her to ____________ behind a signal box a few feet away. Within six seconds, he estimated, the train crashed into the minivan. “It was like a Hollywood movie,” DiPinto told reporters the next day.

But this one had a twist. “Last night,” South Country Ambulance chief Greg Miglino told CBS New York, “the__________ arrived in pajamas, not in a fire truck.”

9 . I know what courage looks like. I saw it on a flight I took six years ago, and only now can I speak of it without tears filling eyes at the memory.

Our flight left the Orlando Airport one Friday morning. But immediately upon take-off, it was clear that something was wrong. The aircraft was bumping(颠簸) up and down. All the experienced travellers, including me, looked around with knowing smiles. If you fly much, you see these things and learn to act calmly about them. However, we did not remain calm for long.

Minutes after we were in the air, our plane began falling quickly. The pilot soon made a serious announcement. “We are having some difficulties,” he said. “Our indicators show that the control system has failed. We will be returning to the Orlando Airport. The flight attendants will prepare you for a bumpy landing. Also, if you look out of the windows, you will see that we are dumping fuel from the airplane. We want to have as little on board as possible in the event of a rough touchdown.” In other words, we were about to crash. Many travellers looked visibly frightened now. No one faces death without fear, I thought.

Then a couple of rows to my left, I heard a still calm voice, a woman’s voice, speaking in an absolutely normal conversational tone. I had to find the source of this voice. All around, people cried. Many screamed. Finally, I saw her. In this chaos, a mother was talking to her child. The woman, in her mid-30s, was staring full into the face of her daughter, who looked to be four years old. The child listened closely, sensing the importance of her mother’s words. The mother’s gaze held the child so fixed that she seemed untouched by the sounds of grief and fear around her.

Finally, I leaned over and by some miracle could hear this soft sure voice with the tone of comfort. Over and over again, the mother said, “I love you so much. Remember, no matter what happens, I love you always.” Fortunately, our landing gear held at last and our touchdown was not a tragedy.

However, the voice I heard that day never faded. That mom showed me what a real hero looks like.