今年2026年4月18日にアメリカ・カリフォルニア州サンタモニカのバーカー・ハンガー（Barker Hangar）で開催された科学界のオスカー賞とも呼ばれる国際賞、第12回 ブレイクスルー賞（Breakthrough Prize）授賞式のステージで、ライオネル・リッチーが子供たちの合唱団（世界7カ国を結んだリモート合唱を含む）と共に「We Are The World」の特別パフォーマンスを披露しました。
その素晴らしいパフォーマンスが終わった後に登場した男性の司会者、イギリス出身の人気コメディアン・俳優のジェームズ・コーデン（James Corden）が言った言葉はまさにこのWhat about that ! 「何て素晴らしいのでしよう！」でした。
“The 1993 Canadian federal election resulted in a landslide victory for Jean Chrétien’s Liberal Party and the near-total collapse of the governing Progressive Conservative Party, which was reduced from a majority government to just two seats in the House of Commons.”
トーマス・エジソンが行っていた学校の先生からのメモにあった言葉”Your son is addled 貴方の息子は知的に問題があります”を “Your son is a genius. 貴方の息子は天才です”とエジソンの母ナンシーは言い換えて息子に伝えました。この言い換えがなかったら、きっと発明王エジソンはこの世に出ていなかったでしょう。
以下はこの話の全文です。英語と日本語訳両方をご紹介します。
One day Thomas Edison came home and gave a paper to his mother. He told her, “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to only give it to my mother.”
His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her child: “Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.”
Many years later, after Edison’s mother had died, he was looking through old family things. Now one of the greatest inventors of the century, he suddenly saw a folded piece of paper in the corner of a desk drawer.
He took it and opened it up. On the paper was written: “Your son is addled [mentally ill]. We won’t let him come to school anymore.”
Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary: “Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.”
