Quote of the Day: “Learning to love yourself is essential and life-changing.” – Vironika Tugaleva
Image by: Getty Images for Unsplash+ (cropped)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
45 years ago today—just three weeks before he was killed—John Lennon released his seventh, and final, studio album: Double Fantasy. It hit No.1 and stayed atop the US charts for 8 weeks, along with its hit song Just Like Starting Over. The Grammy-winning album marked Lennon’s return to recording music full-time, following a five-year hiatus to raise his son with Yoko Ono. SEE the ‘Watchin’ the Wheels’ music video with scenes of John and his son… (1980)
A couple who started IVF last Christmas Day has given birth to a baby boy after 11 years of trying to conceive.
Helen Delgard was warned she may never be able to conceive naturally with her husband Stephane, but following a January surprise, they’re getting to celebrate Christmas with little Noah, who’s now 14 weeks old.
The couple started trying for a baby soon after they got together in 2014, but Delgard already had a complex medical history. She had undergone abdominal surgery to remove much of her bowel and been told she might never conceive naturally as a result
“I was very unwell when Stephane and I first met, so he was aware of my issues and we thought we’d just see where life took us,” Delgard told Britain’s Southwest News Service.
After a few years of trying, Delgard underwent a surgery to try and remove some of the scar tissue from previous surgeries which was believed to be potentially blocking her fallopian tubes. They were referred to Bristol fertility clinic for help after the surgery failed to make a difference.
After starting treatment on Christmas day, Delgard found out she was pregnant in January.
“However, despite all the care that had got us to that point, I became quite ill and experienced heavy bleeding at the end of the third week of pregnancy which led us and the medical team to anticipate that I might have lost the baby,” she told SWNS.
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“My six-week scan was therefore carried out with the greatest delicacy, mindful of our potential loss, and the radiologist very sensitively positioned the screen so the image was not in our line of vision.”
AGAINST THE ODDS:
“But then, with a huge smile, she turned it back and showed us Noah’s tiny heartbeat. We both broke down, and the team were crying too. After that it was a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy and our beautiful boy was born at 37 weeks, weighing 6lbs. 10oz.”
“The support from the clinic throughout our journey was incredible… We thank the whole team and wish them a very merry Christmas.”
CELEBRATE This Couple’s Hope And Joy On Christmas Day On Social Media…
A Spanish town devastated by wildfires in spring has seen its luck turn with a hundred-million-dollar windfall from a national lottery program.
Left with 120,000 acres of scorched woodland and 8,000 displaced residents, La Bañeza, in the region of Castilla y León, was engulfed in trauma and grief as much as smoke and fire.
The town prayed for rain, but the sunny Spanish sky declined.
Now, having bought 117 numbers in El Gordo Christmas lottery from the Spanish government, the town’s misfortune has turned to staggering quantities of luck, as each number paid out €400,000.
That means the village raked in half-a-billion USD as near as makes no difference. With roughly 10,000 residents, and considering that lotteries are normally heavily taxed, it would land each villager with somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 —a godsend for those whose lands or homes were damaged in the fire.
“Winning the lottery, as well as cause for joy and excitement [sic], is something that has fallen from the heavens to a place that needs so much,” La Bañeza Mayor Javier Carrera said, adding it caused “a cascade of emotions after such a terrible year.”
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A truly beautiful superstition surrounding El Gordo numbers is that lightning never strikes twice, and that good luck follows bad. This sometimes sees players buy tickets in areas that have suffered misfortune.
The story of La Bañeza will undoubtedly reinforce this tradition of gambling that luck will turn around.
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A group of Australian biologists have discovered that a giant snail species considered extinct hasn’t gone the way of the dodo.
They undertook one of the largest captive snail breeding and reintroduction efforts in Australian, and perhaps world history.
Campbell’s keeled glass snail was listed as Extinct by the IUCN in 1996 after several surveys couldn’t locate it, or traces of it, across its home on Norfolk Island, a territory controlled by Australia located between the continent and New Zealand.
In 2020, snail biologist Dr. Isabel Hyman received a photo from a Norfolk local named Mark—it was an unusually large snail, which Hyman immediately recognized.
“Large” in relative sense, the Campbell’s keeled glass snail measures just 2 centimeters. This is still more than 10 times the size of the smallest island snails.
While Australia and New Zealand were instituting some of the most draconian lockdown measures of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Hyman nevertheless secured permission to visit the island to search for these rare brown beauties.
In a sheltered valley, Dr. Hyman and her colleagues found their quarry: a small assortment of Campbell’s snails, which they transported back to the Taronga Zoo in Sydney with hopes of beginning a captive breeding program.
Through tragedy and triumph, death and birth, the zoo amassed a collection of some 800 snails and took them to Norfolk this year for a reintroduction attempt.
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“Invertebrates are a whole group of animals that are probably underrepresented when it comes to conservation,” said Melinda Wilson, natural resources program manager at Norfolk Island national park, whose rangers helped to reestablish the snail’s presence by conducting monitoring work and pest control, as the island still hosts invasive rats and chickens that would make a meal out of the snails.
In a different, yet equally sheltered valley, surrounded by palms and native hardwoods, the Campbell’s snails were released—each and every one of which were painstakingly tagged for tracking their movements. A primitive irrigation system was also set up in the valley to ensure that if the snails faced an unusually-long dry season, they’d have the necessary moisture to survive.
BEAUTIFUL SNAILS FROM CUBA: Photographer Unites With Cuban Scientists to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Snail
Over time, the Guardian reports, the snails gradually became harder and harder to find, which is somewhat in line with previous invertebrate conservation programs. The belief is that, rather than having gone extinct again, they have spread out beyond the confines of their valley, and then given a good rainfall, will become more visible as their numbers grow.
“To have these snails front and center as part of our conservation actions … has been really rewarding,” Wilson told the Guardian.
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In Atlanta, what began as an emergency helping hand to the community has been extended to a Christmas giveaway, where 100 families received free meals, gifts, and more.
The Santa’s Workshop event held on Monday surprised dozens of Midtown Atlanta families with new toys, bikes, and even electronics: to support outdoor play and school work.
Crystal Drakes, co-owner of Crescent City Kitchen, said she ‘adopted’ the kids and their families during the historically-long government shutdown, when the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits went unfunded.
At Crescent City, these 100 “handpicked” families were given food, cleaning and hygiene supplies, and other household necessities.
“I’m gonna make sure that I can touch a life every single chance that I get, and I’ve done my job and that’s all that matters to me,” said Drakes.
The owner of Crescent City is a single mother of 3, and said she empathizes with the stress that others feel when they’re unsure of how to provide for their families.
“I understand there’s always someone that has it harder than me,” said Drakes. “So to be able to give back and see smiles on faces, it warms my heart and makes me just as happy as well.”
WATCH the story below from Atlanta News First…
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Quote of the Day: “Home is a building you live in. It’s also a metaphor for the inner world you carry within you.” – Rob Brezsny
Image by: Nathan Dumlao
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
47 years ago today, the inaugural Dakar Rally Raid was staged, with the course stretching from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal. 182 vehicles took the start of the inaugural rally in Paris, with 74 surviving the 10,000-kilometer (6,200 mi) trip to Dakar while crossing terrains such as sand dunes, mud, camel grass, hamada rock desert, and more. The race is split into motorbikes, cars, trucks, and quads, and is much tougher than a regular rally championship track, which is usually run by modified road cars. READ more about the competition’s history… (1978)
From New Zealand comes the story of a public art project in disguise—as official-looking signs with bizarre declarations.
One warns that an abandoned building is “slightly haunted,” while another one cheekily announces a walking speed limit of 2.83 kmh. Another simply reads “Don’t.”
Despite borrowing the font and color palate of official Christchurch signage, the 6 installations are meant to “play with the way we take authority and signage so seriously.”
Those were the words of the Cameron Hunt, who designed and mounted the signs as part of the Little Street art festival early this month.
“The idea was to make signs that look official, but with completely absurd messages, therefore creating moments of confusion, followed by little bursts of joy,” Hunt told the Guardian.
Kiri Jarden, the city council’s principal adviser for community arts, agreed.
“We totally support artists using humor to gently interrupt and engage passersby.”
Another thought it some of the best “Guerilla art” he’d ever seen.
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New species are being discovered at a faster rate than ever, suggests a new study—more than 16,000 every year—and the trend shows no sign of slowing.
Scientists are predicting that the biodiversity among some groups, such as plants, fungi, arachnids, fish, and amphibians, is richer than previously believed.
Around 300 years ago, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus set out to identify and name every living organism on Earth. Now celebrated as the father of modern taxonomy, he developed the binomial naming system and described more than 10,000 species of plants and animals.
Since then, scientists have continued to describe new species—and, now, researchers at the University of Arizona have shown that new species are being discovered at a quicker rate than ever.
In fact, 15% of all known species have been discovered within the last 20 years, according to the findings published in the journal Science Advances.
“Some scientists have suggested that the pace of new species descriptions has slowed down, indicating that we are running out of new species to discover—but our results show the opposite,” said study senior author Professor John Wiens.
The Arizona team analyzed the taxonomic histories of around two million species, spanning all groups of organisms. And, between 2015 and 2020, researchers documented an average of more than 16,000 new species each year, including more than 10,000 animals, dominated by arthropods and insects—plus 2,500 plants and 2,000 fungi.
“Our good news is that this rate of new species discovery far outpaces the rate of species extinctions, which we calculated to about 10 per year,” said Prof. Wiens.
“These thousands of newly found species each year are not just microscopic organisms, but include insects, plants, fungi and even hundreds of new vertebrates—more species per year than at any point in history.”
The team projected that there may be as many as 115,000 fish species and 41,000 amphibian species, even though there are only about 42,000 fish and 9,000 amphibian species described now—and the final number of plant species might be over 500,000.
“As the famous ecologist Robert May said, if visiting aliens asked us how many species live on our planet, we would have no definitive answer.
“Right now, we know of about 2.5 million species, but the true number may be in the tens or hundreds of millions or even the low billions.”
For now, the scientists predict that the discovery rate of new living things will continue to increase. For instance, scientists have currently identified around 1.1 million insect species, yet many scientists believe that the true number is somewhere around six million.
Prof Wiens suggested in a previous paper that it could even be around the 20 million mark.
“Right now, as molecular tools improve, we will uncover even more cryptic species. This is especially promising for revealing more unique bacteria and fungi.”
Importantly, the discovery of new species also contributes to finding new natural products for human benefit.
Some examples of natural products include popular weight-loss drugs such as Mounjaro, inspired by a hormone found in Gila monsters.
Spider and snake venoms, plus many plants and fungi, also contain natural products with potential medicinal applications, including treatments for pain and cancer.
Beyond medicine, Prof. Wiens says many species have adaptations that can inspire human inventions, such as materials mimicking the “super-clinging” feet that allow geckos to climb up vertical surfaces.
“We’re still just scratching the surface of what these species can do for humanity.”
“Even though Linnaeus’ quest to identify species began three centuries ago, 15% of all known species have been discovered in just the past 20 years,” said Wiens.
“So much remains unknown, and each new discovery brings us closer to understanding and protecting the incredible biodiversity of life on our planet.”
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Reprinted with permission and alterations from World at Large, an independent news outlet covering world news, conflicts, travel stories, conservation, and science news.
The smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove have different uses around the world, but when the scent of these South Asian spices wafts through an American kitchen, it almost invariably means one thing—it’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Mulled wine, gingerbread cookies, and pumpkin spice lattes are just some of the holiday season treats that include these super aromatic spices, but where tradition has relegated them to seasonal cooking in Europe and North America, their historic use in Asia has been medicine.
Cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves perfectly classify as “nutraceuticals,” a scientific shorthand for foods so rich in fitness-promoting compounds that they mirror the pharmacological potential of synthetic drugs and medicines. Multiple studies have looked at the effects of the cocktails of antioxidants and other nutrients present in these Christmas spices and found they demonstrate potent protection against pathogens through their antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal effects.
They are commonly cited as potent antioxidants, which bears some explaining. Antioxidants get their name from their function of donating a spare electron to molecules produced as the billions of mitochondria in our bodies generate energy. These molecules are known as free radicals, or reactive oxygen species, and are one of the key drivers of aging, and numerous other diseases—a pathology known as oxidative stress.
However not all antioxidants are created equally, and the potency of some, for example oranges, pale in comparison to the potency of others, for example garlic.
Scientists at the National Institute for Aging at the NIH have developed a scale to measure the antioxidant potential of foods, known as ORAC Values. Looking among the highest-ranked compounds, caloric food is noticeably absent from the top 50. Ground clove is the 8th highest in the world, and is probably one of two or three ingredients in the top 10 you’ll have even heard of. Cinnamon sits at number 16, and nutmeg at 34.
With an ORAC value of 290,000, ground clove is 10 times more potent than cranberries, nearly 19 times more potent than raspberries, and nearly 30 times more potent than an orange.
Oxidative stress was once believed to be the reason we aged at all, which highlights the tremendous importance of including high-quality antioxidants in the diet.
In a literature review published at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt, spices were shown to have high value as functional medicines. Some of the items highlighted in the review, such as garlic or turmeric, aren’t universally enjoyed, which is where the Christmas spices come in.
Cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are roundly enjoyed for their pleasant smells and the warm sensation they confer, making them an easier suggestion for someone who doesn’t cook with herbs and spices quite often.
CHECK OUT: 9 Unique Ways to Use Rosemary – Backed by Mom and Science
Cinnamon has been found to slow gastric emptying, reducing the rise in post-prandial blood glucose. The volatile oils in cinnamon, called cinnamic acid, show antifungal and antibacterial effects, and they can even help with type 2 diabetes patients after being shown to cause a .83% decrease in hemoglobin A1C levels. Cinnamon is a key ingredient in what is known in America as spicy chai tea, and makes for a perfect after-dinner drink for these reasons. Cinnamon is also a great to add to yogurt, sweet potatoes, squash, and baked bread.
Ground cloves are one of the most important spices in Ayurvedic medicine in India, and just a tiny amount of the oils contained within have been shown to kill B tuberculosis. The oils have been investigated for the potential similarities to the common drug paracetamol—to reduce inflammation via Cox-2.
Clove also acts as an iron chelator and is effective at clearing hydroxy radicals. It’s been theorized as a treatment for breast cancer and prevents the breakdown of the eye’s retina. As mentioned before, apart from sumac, a spice commonly eaten in Turkish cuisine, and a few other things you’ve probably never heard of, ground clove is the most powerful, edible, antioxidant we know of.
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Nutmeg has been investigated, like the other two, for a variety of therapeutic effects. Essential nutmeg oil was found to clear gram-positive pathogenic bacteria species Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermis, and gram-negative bacteria Shigella Dysenteriae, and Salmonella Typhi. Continuing on the theme of medicine, nutmeg has been recorded as a constituent ingredient in treatments for rheumatism, sciatica, malaria, dysentery, nausea, and even the early stages of leprosy.
In India and China, nutmeg is an important and proven antidiarrheal agent, and has also been identified as a potential antidepressant, while another literary review
found that nutmeg’s composition of phytonutrients contains compounds known to improve anabolic action in the metabolism of bone, allergenic reactions, and enhance the repressing of lipid peroxidation.
One study found that nutmeg alcohol extract remarkably decreased liver function indexes, blood glucose, lipid accumulation, cholesterol levels, and inflammation levels in mice.
Two studies also found that nutmeg can or might be able to aid in treating colon cancer, breast cancer, and skin papilloma, while a third found that in vitro non-small-cell lung cancer was suppressed with a multi-herb formula containing nutmeg.
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Quote of the Day: “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” – Charles Dickens
Image by: Klim Musalimov
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Millions today are celebrating Christmas around the world, the holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in Bethlehem, sometime around the year 1 BCE. Over a millennium later, St. Francis of Assisi enacted one of the first Nativity scenes, having been inspired by a visit to the Holy Land where he was shown Jesus’s traditional birthplace. (1223)
Described by park officials as a Christmas miracle, a breeding pair of endangered takahē birds in New Zealand were found to be rearing a chick, having previously been thought of as infertile.
With around 500 of these flightless birds left in the country, every chick counts.
The miracle happened in Zealandia, a fenced-in ecosanctuary 10 minutes’ drive from Wellington’s city center.
The sanctuary conservation team was searching for a nest in early November after a female bird named Waitaa hadn’t been seen at the feeders for some time.
They heard some high-pitched calls indicating the pair had—miraculously—produced a chick. Waitaa’s partner, Bendigo, was previously believed to be infertile.
Jo Ledington, General Manager of Conservation and Restoration, says the news was kept under wraps until the team was more confident the chick was doing well and the worst of the spring weather had passed.
“I’m thrilled that Zealandia can support national takahē recovery efforts not only by providing opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people to connect with this amazing species, but to also add more birds to the national population.”
The takahē is a relative of the rail, a ground-dwelling, amphibious family of birds with short wings, large feet and long legs. Breeding once a year, they were believed to be extinct on New Zealand’s South Island before being rediscovered in 1948. A fully-grown bird sports iridescent blue and green feathers and becomes quite fat—giving them the famous appearance, when viewed straight on, of the Earth.
At Zealandia, Bendigo and Waitaa arrived last year as a non-breeding paired couple, but after a failed nesting season, it was believed they were unable to conceive. Following Waitaa’s disappearance, Ledington and colleagues set up a trail camera in an area they thought she might be nesting in. Sure enough, the chick was discovered.
THE LAST STORY ON THESE BIRDS: Prehistoric Bird Once Thought to Be Extinct Returns to New Zealand Wild
“Any chick that we can add to that population is just incredibly valuable,” Ledington told the Guardian.
It will be some time before they know the chick’s gender. It will eventually be banded and health checked, and in time, gifted a name and moved to a new home. “For now, we are delighted that Zealandia is its safe playground,” the sanctuary officials wrote in a statement.
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An exoplanet located 2,000 light years from Earth is so unusual it’s given astronomers the idea that it could be a totally new type of object.
That’s because it’s shaped like a lemon, with a small tip just like the fruit has, and a free-floating carbon atmosphere where rain might turn to diamonds in the planet’s extreme temperature.
The authors of the astrophysical analysis on the object have already spoken to a variety of science media outlets and the general consensus is this: there’s no object known that has similar conditions or characteristics.
“I’m open to the possibility that this is an entirely new type of object,” Michael Zhang, one of the authors, told Scientific American, and said to the New Scientist, “we don’t know of any other planetary atmosphere that looks anything like this.”
The exoplanet, or whatever it is, is called PSR J2322-2650b, and it orbits a pulsar at a distance of about 1 million miles, which is 100-times closer than the Earth is to the Sun. As dense as the Sun but as small as a city, a pulsar, which is the rapidly-spinning heart of an already collapsed star, has a strong gravitational field, and it’s believed to be the answer to the question of why PSR is lemon-shaped.
The belief is the intense gravity has literally elongated the sphere into a lemon shape. If you imagine the tip of a lemon, there is a point on the object where material is being drawn away and into the pulsar due to the intense gravity.
Of the 6,000 known exoplanets, this lemon planet is the only one reminiscent of a gas giant (with mass, radius, and temperature similar to Jupiter) that’s also orbiting a pulsar. Only a handful of pulsars are known to have planets, but none so close to it as this one.
“I remember after we got the data down, our collective reaction was ‘what the heck is this?’ It’s extremely different from what we expected,” said study co-author Peter Gao of the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington.
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The anomalies don’t stop with the shape, however. This Jupiter-mass object appears to have an exotic helium-and-carbon-dominated atmosphere unlike any ever seen before. Soot clouds likely float through the air, and deep within the planet, these carbon clouds can condense and form diamonds.
MORE INTERSTELLAR BIZARRITIES: The Wild Quadruple Star System Contains Not One, but Two of the Most Elusive Objects in the Galaxy
“In order to have molecular carbon in the atmosphere, you have to get rid of pretty much everything else—all of the oxygen, all of the nitrogen—and we just don’t know how to do that,” Zhang told New Scientist.
For reference, Smithsonian Magazine reports, the planetary temperatures can reach as high as 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit, but even at one-third of that temperature, pure carbon binds to other molecules. Free-floating, pure carbon, is just not compatible according to current theories with the atmosphere of the lemon world.
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Was it bad luck to name a black cat Shadow?
The family cat, owned by Jeremy Barton, his wife, and their two sons, went missing while Barton was heading home from the far north of British Columbia, vanishing into the forest just like his namesake.
In a provincial park called Liard River Hot Springs, Shadow slipped out of the car and into the wild, forcing Barton into a frantic search effort in the remote northern Rocky Mountains to no avail.
The Oklahoma City native had to come home and tell his two sons that Shadow was gone, before spending an agonizing 5 months without any knowledge of his whereabouts.
“Everybody who’s a pet owner, like most people, their worst dream come true is not just losing their animal, but not knowing,” said Christine Sutherland, a Fort St. John resident in BC who would eventually help reunite Shadow with his humans. “The not knowing is horrible.”
Sutherland, and another native of the area named Bruce Kosugi, managed against the odds to find Shadow in Liard River Hot Springs after 5 months of the animal living off the land. Despite Kosugi being highly allergic to cats, the self-described “Rotarists” offered to drive the cat 8 hours back south to Fort St. John to their home.
CBC News spoke with Sutherland and Barton for two separate reports, but didn’t mention how they were connected. How ever it happened, Sutherland then offered to fly Shadow to Winnipeg, where Barton arrived last week after a 16-hour drive from Oklahoma.
LOST CATS COMING HOME:
“That woman is the closest thing to a saint that I’ve ever witnessed,” Barton said of Sutherland, while speaking to CBC Radio. Sutherland, for her part, said she was thinking of Barton’s two young boys, who had cried for days at the news their cat was lost.
“This cat meant a lot to those two boys. And it’s so neat that they’re going to see him before Christmas.”
For the hard-nosed Shadow, who’s crossed an extreme length of the North American continent, it ought to be a lesson about staying in the light where his family can see him.
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Quote of the Day: “There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.” – Eric Sevareid
Image by: Getty Images for Unsplash+ (below) / Snowy scene by Roberto Nickson
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
57 years ago today, the crew of Apollo 8 entered orbit around the Moon, the first humans to do so. While onboard, three astronauts—Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders, saw the vaunted “far side” of the Moon, and took the Earthrise picture. The crew orbited the Moon 10 times over the course of 20 hours, during which they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast where they read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis, which was slightly ironic because the voyage turned Anders into an atheist. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. READ more about the picture… (1968)
A woman given something like a terminal prognosis has responded with a simple request for what might be her last Christmas: a Christmas card.
Clare Jones from Swansea, Wales, was told her bowel cancer was no longer responding to chemotherapy. The mother of 3, who was diagnosed in 2022, described herself as a “simple person” who likes simple things, and asked through a post on Facebook for anyone filling out their Christmas cards to “pop one” in the mail for her too.
The response was more than she could have imagined. Her mail slot has been assaulted by hundreds of Christmas cards, containing show and movie tickets, vouchers for a camping holiday, chocolates and more.
“There has just been so much to read,” Jones told the BBC, adding, “the love has been amazing… genuine love.”
The original post was something she admitted she was hesitant to do—the 47-year-old was not sure if it would come off as “cheeky.” It was shared on Facebook over 10,000 times, and Jones plans to read each one of the hundreds of cards all while collecting the postage stamps and mailing them to a cancer charity in the UK that fundraises by reselling them.
“I don’t feel ill, I feel okay. But I’m not going to feel this way for much longer,” Jones said, per the BBC. “I have many people around me who care for me. If love could cure cancer, I would be cured.”
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While the first few dozen comments on the Facebook post were from friends and family, scrolling down far enough witnesses a change of tone, with many beginning with “Even though I don’t know you…”
It’s a testament to the human spirit around the holidays. The Cambrian Flying Club offered a 30 minute flight, free of charge, while others said they’d be sending various gifts, and one offered a free Reiki session.
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On Friday, a Georgia fire department undertook an unusual Christmas tradition.
In place of decking the halls, the men and women of the Sandy Springs Fire Department (SSFD) link up with Santa, and rappel down the walls of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to surprise infirm kids who can’t leave their rooms.
The event is now in its third year, and this time they brought along Superman and Spiderman to ensure it was a moment the children would never forget.
In 2018, the department thought about doing something that would inspire the pediatric patients, since Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta serves the whole city, but was located so close to their fire station. Rappelling from the rooftop needed a bit of planning, but fortunately Department Section Chief Kyle Sweeney got in touch with the right people, and in 2022, it finally got off the ground, or rather, off the roof.
“It’s a simple interaction, but it has a huge impact,” Sweeney told GNN in an emailed statement.
“For many of us, it’s one of the most rewarding things we get to do all year. Firefighters are used to showing up on people’s worst days, so having the opportunity to bring joy instead is incredibly powerful. It reminds us why we chose this career in the first place.”
One of the team, Cody Minter, took part for the first time this year. His son was diagnosed with cancer in 2024, and though his treatment at the hospital mercifully didn’t last long enough for the family to see the event, they got to see the impact it had on the little patients when they saw Santa, or a local sports mascot, a firefighter, or national guardsmen, appear outside the window.
“Hearing all the stories about it and the impact and joy it brought to the children made me want to be a part of this event with SSFD,” Minter told GNN. “The amazing team at the Children’s hospital we like to call family inspired me to do more. Their dedication and the love they show do not go unnoticed. It inspired me to give back in any way I can.”
On December 19th, heroes real and mythical alike latched the ropes onto their harnesses and descended to the glass windows of the children’s rooms, waving, high-fiving through the glass.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: Superhero Brings Smiles to 100,000 Sick Children and Families, Healing Himself Since Mom Died of Cancer in 2009
Atlanta was fortunately far south enough so as not to bother Superman there in his tights on the windy rooftop—though he could have asked the impeccably-dressed Santa Claus for his warm winter coat.
“Those moments are unforgettable,” Sweeney said after the event. “You can see the surprise turn into excitement almost instantly. The high fives through the glass, the smiles, and the laughter make all the effort worth it.”
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“One of the most memorable parts is bringing Santa along and walking through the hospital afterward to deliver gifts. Many of the gifts are donated by Sandy Springs citizens, which makes it even more special.”
“Over the past three years, seeing this event grow with support from organizations like the Georgia State Fire Marshal’s Office, the Georgia Sprinkler Association, Cherokee Fire Department, Atlanta Fire Department, Georgia Power, Mileshko Photography, The Atlanta Braves. The Atlanta Falcons, and The Atlanta Hawks has been incredible. Every year, it becomes more meaningful, and every year, the reactions from the kids remind us that even small moments can make a lasting difference.”
WATCH a bit of the action below…
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