I was in the Philippines last week visiting friends and, aside from some fantastic food and really wonderful people, I discovered two amazing things.

Here's one of them ...

(The other I'll share with you in my next post.  This one has to do with an amazing past - the other with an amazing future.)

His name was Jose Rizal.

Ring any bells?

It didn't for me ...

It turns out he is the national hero of the Philippines and, without question, one of the most extraordinary men who ever lived.

He mastered 22 languages, was both an M.D. and a PhD, and before his political execution at the hands of the Philippines' Spanish oppressors he made significant contributions as an architect, artist, businessman, cartoonist, educator, economist, ethnologist, scientific farmer, historian, inventor, journalist, linguist, musician, mythologist, nationalist, naturalist, novelist, ophthalmic surgeon, poet, propagandist, psychologist, scientist, sculptor, sociologist, and theologian.

All this before his wrongful death at 35.

Why have you never heard of him?

Is it because the world is so big or that the voices singing the praises of lesser men in the western media are so loud?

Or maybe something else entirely ...

Here is a monument erected in the cell where Rizal spent his final hours. 

The footsteps you see here mark the long walk he took to his place of execution.  He was paraded through the streets and executed publicly so as to provide an example for anyone else who dared stand up for human rights.

The footsteps are still there and you can walk in them today.

I didn't. 

It was much easier to take a car.