A bus driver gave a sweet surprise to his thirsty passengers—and a thrill to some local young beverage entrepreneurs.
On a hot summer day last week, Boston bus driver John Lohan asked his riders if they’d mind making a short stop at a roadside lemonade stand – his treat.
So the 19-year veteran driver for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority pulled over on his West Roxbury neighborhood route and hopped off—then on—then off again, to bring each of his passengers a cold glass of lemonade.
The refreshing gesture took all of 90 seconds – about the time Lohan says he typically spends at a red light.
“The biggest thing I thought was that the children have a story they can tell for the rest of their lives. And then afterwards, I thought, ‘Well, so do the passengers,’” Lohan told WBZ-TV.
Lohan gave the kids $10 – a hefty tip for 7 glasses of 50-cent lemonade.
He says it’s still the cheapest round he’s ever sprung for.
(WATCH video below from WBZ or READ more at Boston.com) – Photo: WBZ video
During the entire distance and duration of a 2700-mile off-road cycling race, she never showered, never slept indoors, and only sat down to a meal once. Instead, with bloody knee and bruised shoulder, she pushed to the finish line and kept ahead of her nearest competitors.
Though it was her first attempt on the mountainous Tour Divide trail race, Lael Wilcox beat all but five male competitors, and set a new course record for women.
The 28-year-old cyclist – who rode the 2,745-mile event with a respiratory infection – shaved more than two days off the previous women’s record, finishing in just over 17 days.
In June, before arriving at the starting line in Banff, Alberta, she rode 2,000 miles solo from her home in Anchorage– quite a warm-up, with just a week’s rest, for the longest mountain bike race in the world.
The race route uses trails that run along the Continental Divide from Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, on the border of Mexico–challenging riders with 200,000 feet of elevation changes (60,000 meters).
Unlike the Tour de France, cyclists have no support teams and have to rely on themselves for food, water and bike maintenance. One of 150 riders in the race, Wilcox finished sixth, and says she’s happy to be an inspiration to other cyclists starting out.
“They look at me, and they’re like ‘If this little girl can do this, maybe I can do something,” she told Outside magazine. “And that’s good. I want to empower people, to inspire them. I mean stop making excuses. At least try.”
Also among the endurance riders, Josh Kato, a 40-year-old nurse from Washington State, shredded the men’s course record, finishing in 14 days, a full day quicker than the previous record.
(WATCH her interview below from KTUU or READ more at Outside Online) Photos: Nicholas Carman Gypsy By Trade – Story Tip from Andrew Norris
For years, doctors dismissed her complaints that she was dizzy, tired, weak.
Elli Thatcher was 15 years old when she first got dizzy during basketball practice, a feeling that reoccurred often, no matter how many iron pills she took. Several medical professionals told her it was “just hormones.” Even her family thought she was being dramatic when she said she had to sit down repeatedly on trips to the mall.
But she knew something was wrong and continued enlisting the help of another doctor, then another.
“Everyone thought I was crazy, because I was having this feeling, but every doctor said nothing was wrong,” Thatcher, now 19, told Good News Network. “Even my parents thought I was being dramatic.”
Even after a lump had grown on her neck, nobody could give her answers.
Last year, as a freshman studying pre-med at Ohio State University, she took a part-time job as a Student Assistant at Ohio State’s James Cancer Hospital, acting as a liaison between patients and their families and the hospital staff.
“I went up to one of the doctors, knowing what he specialized in, and asked him if he would look at the bump on my neck. I told him I had tried everything.”
Two days later, they found a tumor the size of a baseball.
The lump itself wasn’t the tumor–the tumor was pushing the walls of her throat outward. Dr. Matthew Old, the head and neck cancer surgeon at the hospital, at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center, was the first doctor to look down her throat and notice that it was asymmetrical.
Elli Thatcher with nurses (All photos courtesy of Ohio Wexner Medical Center)
“It took being in the right place in the right time and going up to someone who had seen something like this before and would know what to look for,” she said.
As it turned out, she had a condition called paraganglioma, and it required a 17 hour surgery to treat last April.
Though the surgery and the condition has caused her some setbacks, she hopes to become a doctor and help others who are experiencing lesser-known symptoms.
She is using her time at the hospital where she still interns, to encourage everyone to be their own best advocate, and listen to their heart, when it comes to their health.
Share This Advice With Your Friends and Family (Click below)…
This preschool is all about snacks, naps and rock and roll.
The kids are learning everything from geography to shapes through the head-bobbing music videos they churn out with their teacher.
“We’re like if Bill Nye the Science Guy joined Blink-182 and started singing about trapezoids,” Jarred Geller told MTV News.
Geller came up with the idea because he believes the four-year-olds in his Oklahoma City classes are smarter than people give them credit for. He says most preschools rely on teaching through memorization, but he says the kids “can learn anything that you throw in front of them.”
He’s written eight songs and created videos, like the one below about shapes — all with the typical preschoolers topics, but with fist-pumping refrains.
Geller has a rolled all his videos into program for other teachers to follow called Punk Rock Preschool.
The program also exposes kids to a variety of career fields beyond being a firefighter or cowboy. The music curriculum provides glimpses into 50 potential careers of interest— including rock star.
(WATCH the HooplaHa video and READ more at MTV News) — Photo: Punk Rock Preschool, Video
Give This Story An Encore Performance By Sharing It…
Donate cash and get Greek goods in return – that’s the idea behind one Englishman’s effort to help Greece during its economic crisis.
More than a quarter million Euros were raised in 14 days with donations from 14,000 people around the world.
The campaign was started by Thom Feeney, a 29-year-old from London, who just wanted to help the embattled people of Greece.
He set up an Indiegogo crowdfunding page while the world waited for any action by the EU on a second bailout. Feeney wrote, “This is a humanitarian crisis, not just an economic crisis and it’s about bloody time someone did something.”
Everyone who donated to the now-closed campaign will receive Greek-made products, like postcards, and bottles of Greek wine or Ouzo.
Feeney says he wanted to offer the donation incentives to help stimulate trade and investment, and says all profits will go to Desmos – a non-profit foundation aimed to help fight youth unemployment in Greece.
This is Feeney’s second bailout crowdfunding effort. His first campaign was set up to raise a fixed amount, rather than collecting whatever funds were donated – which he now admits was a mistake. Because he chose the former option and set the goal too high, all 2 million Euros in donated cash had to be refunded.
A pair of firemen in Bolingbrook, Illinois had a hard time getting their grocery shopping in the bag last week when duty called not once, but twice, in the middle of their errand.
Firefighters usually shop for their fire station’s food while on duty, taking along their truck or ambulance in case they need to respond quickly to a call.
After having to abandon their cart mid-store so they could respond to one call, Ryan Klavohn and his partner returned and got as far as the register when they had to drop everything once again to respond to yet another ambulance call.
When they returned a third time, they found that everything had been paid for, and a note was waiting for them.
The handwritten message from the anonymous stranger said, “It was my pleasure to pick up your grocery tab today,” and expressed thanks to all the firefighters at the station for their service.
The local union posted the note on its Facebook page.
“It’s not only surprising and humbling, but the fact that someone took their hard-earned money and spent it on us is inspiring,” Klavohn told ABC News. “It’s just a testament to the great people in our community that we have the privilege to serve.”
(READ more at ABC News) – Photo Credit: Bolingbrook Fire Fighters Association IAFF Local 3005, Facebook
Put This Uplift In The Bag For Your Friends– Share It…
Aside from being adorable, this photo may have actually saved the lives of the two adorable pups pictured in it.
An Atlanta-based animal rescue organization posted the photo of the shelter pups, Kiera and Kala, along with a pleading message, saying the two dogs would soon be separated—and headed for death row.
The folks at Angels Among Us Pet Rescue hoped that the picture would help Kiera and Kala find a home in the nick of time.
The photo was shared thousands of times, and, as a result, the furry pals were claimed just two hours later by the man pictured below and brought home—together.
Makes me cry happy tears!! What rescue is all about.. You are truly saving a life!!
Sometimes the smallest acts of kindness come with the greatest rewards, even if you think nobody is watching.
17-year-old Kailen Young was washing windows at the Knoxville, Tennessee, Hardee’s where he works, when he stopped to offer an elderly woman a hand getting to her car in the parking lot.
Sounds simple enough, but not everyone would have left their post to hold her hand and take the slow stroll.
A passerby who was moved by the gesture snapped a photo, which was instantly shared almost 4,000 times on Facebook.
In response, the fast food chain gave Young a $1,000 check to reward him for his kindness – which Young said is just a “normal thing for me.”
Bobbi Clare, the woman he assisted, told WBIR-TV, “I felt a little touch of heaven, that kindness and goodness in the world. We need that so much, don’t we?”
Young plans to put the money towards college, where he hopes to get an engineering degree.
(WATCH video below from WBIR) – Photo: David Yardley Facebook, Story tip from Sarah
My son Brock was diagnosed in 2014 with Autism-SPD-impulsivity control issues. He has severe anxiety which makes it difficult to communicate with strangers. This past school year, he has overcame so many challenges, however this left him exhausted and angry at the start of the summer.
But everything changed when we go to meet a few officers from the police department.
The first time I saw him truly smile was when I made a stop at the Osceola Police Station and one of the officers stopped to show him around the station while I was taking care of a past parking ticket. He answered all of his questions with a patience that is hard to come by anymore, even ones as silly as “Why do cops have refrigerators?” He spent almost 20 minutes answering my sons repetitive questions, all with a smile. When we left that day, my son told the officer he was his hero, and it really reinforced his dream of becoming an officer as an adult.
What he really wanted was to get his picture taken with an officer so he could hang it on his wall. About three weeks later, there was an officer responding to a call in my neighborhood, and Brock waited patiently for about an hour until the officer was done.
He worked through his nerves and started approaching the officer. His anxiety got the best of him a few times, but he finally got up the courage and kept saying “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! I’m really doing this, Mom!”
And he did!
He asked the officer and was able to get a picture with Officer Morgel and his K9 Officer Riko as well. The officer was incredibly patient, and truly listened to my son which doesn’t happen very often (he tends to get brushed off by people sometimes.) He made my child feel special, and Brock has smiled more in the last few days then I’ve seen in a very long time.
Sometimes the smallest things can make a huge difference in our children’s lives. I’m incredibly grateful to these Wisconsin officers for taking time out of their busy schedules (while on duty) to put a smile on a boy’s face.
What would you do if you saw an injured shark swimming a few feet away from you?
These two brothers decided to pull it to shore in order to save its life.
Marcus and Logan Lakos were relaxing on a beach in Destin, Florida, when they noticed the hammerhead shark nearby, tangled in fishing gear. Logan immediately swam out and dragged the shark to shore.
“Logan, he’s the brave one,” Marcus told WJHG News. “I’m sitting there, and out of nowhere, he’s dragging this thing onto shore.”
Logan said people were “freaking out” when he first pulled the shark to shore, but joined in once they realized he was trying to help it.
It took two attempts — the shark got away once and they had to chase it along the beach. But the teens and their impromptu rescue team removed two fish hooks and a lure from the shark’s mouth before releasing it back into the Gulf of Mexico.
(WATCH the video below from WJHG News) — Photo: Marcus Lakos, WJHG video
Some of Roger Federer’s biggest—and youngest—fans are probably too tiny to know about his victories on the tennis court–and too touched by poverty to care much.
They just know he’s the man behind the creation of preschools across southern Africa where now are learning and growing healthy, with a hearty meal every day.
They were thrilled this year when the tennis great came to visit them for the first time, in celebration of the tenth anniversary of his Roger Federer Foundation.
The 34 year-old Swiss athlete has funded the building of schools for years, like this one in the video located in Malawi. He spent the day at the preschool visiting, sitting in classes, helping cook and serve lunch, and hanging out with the kids on their playground.
The early childhood centers are scattered throughout six countries, with more than 50 preschools in Malawi alone.
“I’m so happy and emotional that I can see a preschool of this quality here–it’s quite extraordinary,” said Federer during his visit. ”The community is so committed to helping the kids, its so important (as) the foundation for learning.”
To date, the Roger Federer Foundation has spent $13 million over the past decade, touching the lives of more than 285,000 children. With renewed focus and the involvement of local teachers and NGOs, it plans to be feeding and teaching one million kids by 2018.
A simple request was enough to rally a group of Minnesota motorcycle riders to hit the highway searching for a keepsake of love.
Rhonda Thill lost her husband, Randy, in a motorcycle crash last month and sometime during the tragedy his wedding ring had also flown off.
After word spread that she was hoping to recover that symbol of her 18-year-marriage, more than a dozen bikers – some she didn’t even know – headed out to Highway 61 to find it.
It took less than an hour for one of the men – on their hands and knees in waist-high grass – to spot the gold ring glimmering in the dirt and deliver it to Rhonda.
“It just kind of feels like I’ve got a piece of us back together,” Rhonda told KARE-TV.
Rhonda says she’s grateful for the kindness of strangers who banded together to bring her husband’s ring home.
A large drop in bluefish mercury levels suggest a healthier seafood supply – and that U.S. coal regulations are working.
Mercury levels in bluefish caught off the U.S. Atlantic coast have officially dropped 43% since 1972, according to a new study in Environmental Science & Technology.
Scientists say the drop is due to federal restrictions on coal emissions that have resulted in less mercury being transported by rainfall into the ocean.
Emissions from the top 100 U.S. electric power producers have decreased by 50 percent during 2000-2012, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council report.
The lower mercury levels are promising for bluefish and other predatory fish like tuna and swordfish, which have been considered a major source of mercury exposure in the U.S. and linked to health complications in pregnant women and their children.
Local masons in Timbuktu, Mali have rebuilt eight ancient mausoleums, turning the tombs into monuments to tolerance and peace three years after an invading army destroyed them.
When militants first took over the city in 2012, they declared the Sofi Muslim mausoleums a form of idolatry and destroyed them. After only three months, the invaders were forced out of the city, and the United Nations set out to rebuild the historic tombs.
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) hired local masons to rebuild a total of 14 of the mud and brick mausoleums. Eight have already been completed.
“Your work is a lesson in tolerance, dialogue and peace,” UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova told the masons during a visit Saturday alongside the Malian government and local leaders.
The mausoleums have been part of Sofi pilgrimages for centuries, and the whole city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Timbuktu was a major cultural and education center in the 15th and 16th centuries, and scholars were able to rescue 28,000 priceless manuscripts from the city’s “Golden Age” before militants took the city.
The European Union, along with France, Norway and Switzerland, each provided money or technical assistance to the rebuilding project.
(READ more at Yahoo! News) — Photo: emilio labrador, CC
Build Some Interest In This Story, Share It With Your Friends And Followers…
We’ve all been warned not to pick up hitchhiking strangers — and few of them are stranger than this dude.
But trust us, it’s perfectly safe to pick up hitchBOT, the hitchhiking robot from Canada–but you will have to actually pick it up.
Last year, this little guy hitchhiked 3,800 miles across Canada in 26 days relying on the kindness of strangers and his powers of speech recognition – which lets him actually carry on brief conversations. Its Cleverscript speech technology allows it to answer questions about where it comes from or its favorite pastimes.
This summer, he’s hitchhiking across America yellow thumb pointed up to help him move from Massachusetts to California.
HitchBOT is the brainchild of Ontario professors Frauke Zeller, from Ryerson University in Toronto, and David Harris Smith, from McMaster University in Hamilton.
The duo, curious to see the way people would interact with robots, simply placed hitchBOT beside the road and bid farewell. It hit the road in Massachusetts on July 16.
HitchBOT carries a bucket list of activities he’d like to accomplish, including doing the wave at a sports arena, visiting Millennium Park in Chicago, and hearing Jazz music in New Orleans. Strangers that meet him along the way are invited to share their hitchhiking stories and pictures using #hitchbot on Twitter and Instagram.
Besides being friendly with humans hitchBOT is also great with pets, and has gotten to interact with lots of dogs along the way.
Beyond the chips and processors, the robot sports swim noodles for arms and legs, bright yellow boots, and a big LED smile. You can keep up with hitchBOT’s adventures at his Storify page featuring daily updates.
There’s also an interactive map so you can track his travels – or to swing by and give him a ride.
Editor’s note: We’ve been referring to hitchBOT as a guy, but his voice sounds an awful lot like Siri—take a listen for yourself by WATCHING the video below.
Remember in October when we showed you a viral video of a dance party launched on a commuter train in Perth, Australia?
The same group who danced their way into the hearts of 40 million YouTube viewers has just followed up with shenanigans on another commuter train–this time a singalong.
On a wintery run of the 7:51 express train, they led passengers in a rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow in a bold attempt to chase away the Monday morning blues with a ukulele player keeping time.
Peter Sharp, the founder of the participatory arts group called it, “Easily one of the most uplifting experiences we’ve ever helped create.”
The Liberators, as they call themselves–named for the sense of freedom they want people to feel when expressing themselves in public–have coordinated five different experiences on trains from story telling, to dancing, and singing.
“This is my full time job,” Sharp told the Good News Network. “I am able to get paid doing DJ gigs that combine these acts of freedom at music festivals & family festivals and working with businesses to create interesting and ethically driven video content.”
They recruited some of their own people to ride the train and help get the singalong started, but reported that around 60 percent of those on board were actual commuters.
Read more about their mission, and a crowd-funding campaign to bring their antics to trains in Europe on their blog.
After a year of silence, the Israeli prime minister phoned the Palestinian president to offer a holiday greeting—and a message of hope.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Friday night as a goodwill gesture on Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holiday that celebrates the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month.
Netanyahu told his Palestinian counterpart that Israelis want peace and will work toward regional stability. Abbas said he hoped the two could settle on a peace accord in the next 12 months.
The phone call came 13 months after the two last spoke in June, 2014.
(READ more at the New York Times) — Photos: U.S. State Department
Young people in poor neighborhoods are looking at 100,000 new job opportunities and a chance to undergo the right training to help them land one.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has recruited fifteen large American companies to help create the “100,000 Opportunities Initiative”, offering job training, internships, and apprenticeship programs to help prepare 16-24 year-old youth for “middle skill jobs” that don’t require a college degree. Currently, there are about 3.5 million of those jobs available in the U.S.
“It’s very personal for me, having grown up in public housing and understanding what it was like to be that poor kid,” Schultz told the Wall Street Journal. He and his wife are also giving $30 million from their family foundation to create local job training programs and mentoring projects within the initiative.
Other companies include Alaska Airlines, which is giving grants to improve technical training for high school students, CVS, which is pushing an apprenticeship program for pharmacy technicians in 40 cities, and Microsoft, which is placing 130 tech industry experts into high schools to help with training programs.
“In America, your ZIP code should never determine your destiny,” U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said about the initiative. “Breaking down barriers to employment for young people doesn’t just help the individual workers – it benefits entire communities and the economy at large.”
The initiative kicks off a series of job fairs in August starting in Chicago, Illinois, with more planned in other cities in coming months.
(WATCH the Wall Street Journal video below and READ more at CBS News) Photo by GotCredit, CC — Story Tip from carilyn
The 79-year-old counted on it to get her wherever she needed to go—that is, until it was stolen from behind her home in Fargo, North Dakota last week.
She put the following ad in the paper in hopes of getting back her only ride:
“I would like to make a request to whomever stole my three-wheeler bicycle: I really would like to have it back as I am an elderly woman who really enjoyed my bike as I never learned to drive,” the letter reads. “Thank you very much.”
Upon seeing her letter, Cassandra Maland – a stranger – set up a GoFundMe page. Within hours, the site raised more than $700 towards the replacement of Juelke’s bike.
“I’m dumbfounded, believe me. I just couldn’t believe it. It was really nice of everybody,” Juelke told WDAY-TV.
The new tricycle cost about $400. Maland says she plans on donating the rest of the money to a community bike shop — once she buys a lock to go with the bike.
(WATCH the video at WDAY or READ more at Inforum) – Photo: WDAY video
Thousands of teenagers from around the U.S. converged in Detroit, Michigan, last week to clean up the city’s neighborhoods.
A whopping 30,000 young folks spent the week cutting brush, hauling away trash, and painting walls.
The project was part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Youth Gathering, which pulls in the massive crowd of kids in different cities every three years for service projects to help the needy.
“Here’s my crew today…..these people worked sooo hard,” Jonathan Pommerville, one of their adult leaders posted to on Facebook (pictured left).
Pommerville’s group spent time cleaning out and boarding up one of the city’s 70,000 abandoned buildings. They left the old house with a freshly mowed lawn, too.
The last ELCA Lutheran teen gathering in 2012 was in New Orleans, Louisiana, where they performed similar community service projects.
While the kids were fixing up Detroit’s neighborhoods, the city was improving its image within the minds of young people – several told the Detroit Free Press they were surprised at how great the downtown area looked.
(READ more at the Detroit Free Press) – Photos: ELCA and Jonathan Pommerville, via Facebook – Story tip: David Alexander
Spruce Up Your Social Media Feeds With This Story, Share It Below…
