Quote of the Day: “Love is a continuous act of forgiveness.” – Maya Angelou
Photo by: Alok Verma
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?
244 years ago today, the Articles of Confederation were officially adopted by the Continental Congress after ratification by all 13 states as the supreme law of the land in post-Revolutionary America. Calling into existence the most limited and constrained form of government ever achieved by modern man, affording it only those powers the former colonies had recognized as belonging to the King of England. There was no president, no executive agencies, no judiciary, and no tax base. READ More… (1781)
Legislation under the moniker “right to repair” has now been introduced in all 50 states, marking a major milestone in this grassroots consumer movement.
GNN has reported on the march of right to repair laws across the US, but also the kind of entrepreneurialism they engender: like an aftermarket auto parts company that makes replacements for well-known faulty components in automobiles.
Passed in New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon, Wisconsin just became the final US state to introduce some sort of right to repair laws.
In broad terms, all of these bills would generally guarantee a consumer’s right to access replacement parts for devices and machines, repair manuals or other relevant documents for expensive products, diagnostics data from original manufacturers, and even in some cases, such as automobiles, appropriate tools necessary for maintenance.
They may also ban the use of technological protection measures, sometimes called “software locks” that are designed to restrict repair only to authorized repair technicians.
“Americans are fed up with all the ways in which manufacturers of everything from toasters to tractors frustrate or block repairs, and lawmakers are hearing that frustration and taking action,” Nathan Proctor, right to repair director for consumer rights group PIRG, told 404 Media’s Jason Koebler, who has been tracking right to repair legislation for 10 years.
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He details that at first, big tech and big engineering, such as Apple, John Deere, and others, ardently lobbied against these bills, saying that trade secrets protections would be violated if they were forced to turn over diagnostics, telemetry, or other insider data to non-company actors.
The progressive difficulty with which modern products, particularly electronics, are designed prevents most amateurs from being able to repair them if they break.
MORE RIGHT TO REPAIR NEWS: EU Approves Groundbreaking New ‘Right to Repair’ Laws Requiring Appliances to Be Easier to Fix
Screws are forsaken in favor of plastic locking toggles which break if removed, fuse or wire cover panels are replaced with jointless polymer molded covers, both of which and many more examples besides are designed to deter the fix-it-minded folks enough so that they will just throw the product away and buy a new one.
Electronic waste is one of the largest sources of non-recyclable landfill waste, and hopefully enough of these right to repair bills pass that some of these millions of powerstrips, lamps, phones, computers, and televisions can be kept out of the ground.
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An Italian soccer star suspended for ten months after violating sports betting regulations spent that time helping natives to his new English city kick their gambling addictions.
The supporters of Newcastle United were buzzing with excitement when in the summer of 2023, the club signed Italian midfielder Sandro Tonali. The highly-rated midfield general was seen as another vital brick in a team structure that was fast becoming one of the most formidable in the English Premier League.
But just a few months after arriving in Newcastle, Tonali was found guilty by authorities in Italy and England of violating European rules against players engaging in sports betting. Having cost the club over $70 million, its star player was suddenly sidelined.
In a recent tell-all style interview with Italy’s La Republica Tonali opened up about his gambling addiction, and how it was assisting others with similar problems that helped lead him to kick his own.
Tonali, described as “a young man who smiles, who never lowers his gaze, who jokes freely, and who has been relieved of an enormous weight,” said he doesn’t remember when he made his first bet, but that it had become a habit even at the tender age of 17.
“The fact that it was online hid me from everyone,” the self-described introvert admitted. “When a person finds themself in a situation of this kind, it’s difficult to look inside and ask if it’s a sickness.”
That sickness followed him throughout his yet-brief life as a soccer player that saw him succeed enormously with the Italian teams Brescia and AC Milan. He had played just 12 games for Newcastle when it was discovered he was betting on the results of his former team, Milan.
His suspension included time with a psychologist and a strict no-smartphone policy. In the interview, Tonali praised the UK, and particularly Newcastle, as being a place that was supportive of him and non-judgemental, and it was in the city he was able to use his time outside the game to change lives.
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“In Newcastle, at a factory that produces covers for undersea gas pipelines, there were several men who said to me in different months, ‘I stopped betting on sports because of what happened to you,'” Tonali remembered. “They had been compulsive gamblers for years.”
Tonali explained that one of the reasons he visited the factory was because sports betting is extremely common in England. A worker told him about one of his colleagues who made about £2,000 per month, but said he occasionally needed to take extraordinary measures to provide for his family because he threw away too much gambling on sports.
KICKING OUT ADDICTION: Retired Colonel Heals Thousands of Addicts with Empathy, Yoga, and Service
Sports betting companies make up more than half of the main jersey sponsorships for teams in the English Premier League, and the nation has a major problem with gambling addiction.
“Talking is the most difficult part,” Tonali said adamantly, “but it’s the only true help—to open up.”
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A popular whale watching service recently spotted a superpod of perhaps more than 2,000 dolphins in the water beyond Monterey Bay.
Consisting of Northern right whale dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins, as well as a large number of calves, the sight left the boat’s crew entranced, and they quickly sent up a drone to capture the phenomenon from the sky.
“Superpods like this are rare, especially of Northern right whale dolphins,” Monterey Bay Whale Watch, the tour operator that recorded the superpod, wrote on Facebook.
Along with taking people out to spot whales, Evan Brodsky, the boat’s captain, will also go on marine research trips. It was on one such trip in 2023 that Brodsky recorded another superpod of long-beaked common dolphins, though he referred to it as a megapod at the time.
“When they jump, they look like flying eyebrows,” Brodsky told AP, referring to the Northern right whale dolphin’s lack of a dorsal fin. “We were so excited, it was hard to hold in our emotions. We had the biggest grins from ear to ear.”
MORE AMAZING DRONE FOOTAGE: Drone Captures Mesmerizing School of Rays that Appear Like Confetti in the Water
“In pods, dolphins play, babysit, alert each other to danger like predators, practice courtship, and hunt together,” according to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. Superpods tend to be collections of pods rather than thousands of individual dolphins.
Scientists have few sophisticated answers as to why pods come together to form these superpods. Dolphins are very social animals, and in the same way that human behavior tends to change amid a crowd, perhaps dolphins experience the same psycho-phenomenon when clustered in groups.
WATCH the video below…
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Slovenia is home to the highest per capita number of beekeepers in Europe. Out of a population of 2 million, 11,000 keep bees.
This small Eastern European country leads the EU in good pollinator policy, conducting research through the vast beekeeping network, creating legislation or best practices, and watching them spread from country to country like a bumblebee flitting between flowers.
Explained by Kaja Šeruga, a Slovenian writer published at Reasons to be Cheerful, the success of the country’s beekeeping exploits is down to there being only one national beekeepers union.
This monopoly remains in constant contact with the Ministry of Agriculture and allows bees and wild pollinators alike to receive protections fast if threats are identified.
Šeruga details how it was the Slovenian Beekeepers Association that first linked the pesticidal compounds neonicotinoids to pollinator die-offs in 2011. It didn’t even take a year for the Association’s recommendations to be adopted by the Ministry, and for a state-wide ban on this neurotoxic pesticide to come into effect—before being adopted by the whole of the EU seven years later.
Šeruga further explains how the national pastime and enterprise of beekeeping makes it easy to change people’s attitudes around how pollinators are treated. Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana was the founding city in the EU’s Bee Path Cities Network, which now contains cities in Portugal, Poland, Romania, Greece, and Italy.
Key to this initiative that seeks to make room in urban areas for pollinator species including but not limited to bees is the city-wide practice of “delayed mowing.” With 350 beekeepers within the city limits, in 2020, the city authorities responsible for public grassy areas decided they would not conduct any mowing until June as a way of ensuring that bees and other pollinators coming out of winter inactivity can gorge on the nectar of wild flowers like dandelion.
Now, spokesmen at the Department for Environmental Protection say they’re more likely to receive photos from concerned citizens if a park or median strip has been mowed prematurely, than if the grass has taken on a wild and unkempt appearance.
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Slovenia has its own native honey bee species, called the Carniolan, and the nation supplied the Hapsburg monarchy with its first royal beekeeping coach. It holds multiple senior positions at the International Federation of Beekeepers, known also as Apimundia, and is generally considered a world leader in the field.
It should come as no surprise then that May 20th, World Bee Day, was first proposed by Slovenians.
MORE GOOD BEE POLICY: Farmers Use Bees to Deter Elephants from Romping Over Crops–a Win-Win for All
“Beekeepers have the problem that the environment is changing in ways that aren’t friendly to bees and other pollinators,” Peter Kozmus, vice-president of Apimundia, told Šeruga. “We can solve some of these problems ourselves, but for others we need help, and a World Bee Day seemed like the best opportunity and tool to get that.”
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Quote of the Day: “You rise to a higher level of consciousness by taking your attention away from your present limitations and placing it upon that which you desire to be.” – Neville Goddard
Photo by: Abhijith P
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?
2,227 years ago today, the Gaozu Emperor (given name Liu Bang) claimed the Mandate of Heaven and established the Han Dynasty—one of the three great dynasties of a unified Imperial China. Among the hundreds of Chinese emperors, Liu Bang was among the few born to a peasant family. Though he ruled briefly—just 7 years—it was enough to usher in the historical era known in the West as the first Pax Sinica, from as far south as the Pearl River to as far north as the Mongolian steps, and as far west as Xinjiang. In the last years of his reign, he instituted free-market reforms including privatized coinage and lower taxes. READ more about his life and the founding of the Han Dynasty… (202 BCE)
A pair of nonprofits have teamed up to help zero out medical debt balances for over 1,000 working families in Maine.
Mainers for Working Families (MFWF) and Undue Medical Debt partnered together in the effort to help families in the state breathe a little easier. Thanks to their advocacy, they were able to buy debts worth up to $1.8 million for pennies on the dollar.
The method, now becoming something of a mainstream charity movement, was explained in an earlier GNN story.
Some hospital patients can’t or won’t pay their huge bills for years at a time—so, a hospital’s claim to $50,000, or even $100,000 suddenly begins to look quite worthless. They could take legal action, but there’s no guarantee they would collect, and it’s expensive to pay the legal fees resulting.
So, Undue Medical Debt, (once called RIP Medical Debt) comes into the picture and offers $5,000 in immediate payment to take that claim off their hands—essentially buying the debt for pennies on the dollar.
The organization was founded by Wall Street investors in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and has since wiped out $14.8 billion in unpaid medical debt from thousands of Americans.
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In Maine, the action was taken on behalf of 1,508 low-income people who had taken on medical debt worth 5% or more of their annual income, or who sat at an income 4-times lower than the national poverty line.
MORE ON THIS TOPIC: Mom Channeled Her Terminal Cancer into Debt Relief Fundraiser–Wiping Out $65 Million in Medical Debt
Together, these 1,508 people held around $1.8 million in debt, which was bought via a donation from MFWF of just $12,740.
“We can’t turn back the clock for these people, but we had to do something,” Evan LeBrun, MFWF’s executive director, said in a statement.
BREAKING: Mainers for Working Families is partnering with @unduemeddebt to purchase and forgive $1.8 million in medical debt for over 1,500 Mainers across the state. pic.twitter.com/gkf4QELoiA
— Mainers For Working Families (@ForMainers) October 24, 2024
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King Tutankhamon is famous for many things, but what most know about the discovery of his unlooted tomb is that it was the last time archaeologists found the tomb of a pharaoh.
Now, 103 years since Howard Carter cracked open King Tut’s final resting place, the tomb of Thutmose II has been identified near the Valley of the Kings and becomes the first opportunity in two generations to study a pharaoh’s burial chamber.
This however proves to be a much more modest discovery, as the tomb was completely empty and has likely been so for 3,500 years, after retainers noticed their deceased lord was going to be swimming to the afterlife.
“In fact, the tomb turned out to be completely empty, not because it had been robbed, but because it had been deliberately emptied,” said archaeologist Piers Litherland, who had been excavating the area for a decade, but who assumed when he first found the tomb shaft that it belonged to a royal wife.
“We then worked out that the tomb had been flooded. It had been built underneath a waterfall, and it had filled with water at some stage within about six years of the burial.”
Thutmose II, who reigned from 1493 to 1479 BCE, was identified as the occupant via his name carved on shards of alabaster, while a decoration on the tomb’s ceiling indicated royalty.
Litherland reckoned the pieces had been broken during the move, “and thank goodness they did actually break one or two things, because that’s how we found out whose tomb it was.”
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To editorialize, that was Litherland’s academic side speaking, for it was when he saw the ceiling covered in a dark sky motif studded with golden stars and featuring visual depictions of the Amduat, a religious text reserved for kings, that he knew he had found what he had so long sought.
Thutmose II was the husband of Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh of renown who ruled without any stipulation regarding her gender. He was also her half-brother, and father of Thutmose III, a brilliant military commander who created the ancient world’s first professional navy and who raised the New Kingdom to its absolute zenith of territorial power.
MORE ROYAL TOMBS FOUND: 4,100-year-old ‘Stunning’ Tomb of a Conjurer-Dentist Who Treated Pharaohs Discovered in Egypt
Mohsen Kamel, assistant field director on the exacavation stated that “the possible existence of a second, and most likely intact, tomb of Thutmose II is an astonishing possibility.”
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In Vermont, a family-owned skiing business is rising to prominence as a backcountry and downhill paradise in an area and age saturated with big corporate luxury ski resorts.
Just 30 minutes east of Burlington, Bolton Valley Resort trades luxury for comfort and status for friendly, powder-loving vibes.
Featured in a great travel piece in the New York Times, Bolton Valley has been run by the same family for decades, finding its feet between the corporate resorts of Stowe and Sugarbush by offering skiing to the common man at an affordable price.
Ralph DesLauriers, now 90 years old, opened Bolton Valley in 1966 with his father for that express purpose. Today, it’s run by his daughter Lindsay.
“Skiing was a luxury sport for out-of-staters,” she told the Times’ David Goodman. “He wanted it to be accessible to Vermonters.”
Along with offering cheaper passes, they installed flood light systems on the slopes to allow working Vermonters to ski after work. Every afternoon, yellow school buses disgorged students who swarmed over the 71 slopes while honing their skills, an idea of her father’s and grandfather’s that she says probably helped save the resort in the long run.
That’s because nearby areas became larger and more accommodating, with bigger hotels, slopeside lodging, and hundreds of ski trails all developed at the cost of tens of millions fronted by resort conglomerates marketing for a more luxurious clientele.
Bolton Valley had issues competing, and the ownership of the resort passed to the bank 31 years after its lifts first started lifting. After several new owners failed to make it profitable, locals moved in to save it—perhaps some of those who learned to ski under the floodlights.
Bolton Valley Resort’s crown jewel was a 1,200-acre network of backcountry skiing trails of rare continuity. In 2011, residents learned it was going to be sold, and in opposition to that notion, worked with the Vermont Land Trust to raise $1.8 million to buy and then donate the land to the state for inclusion into Mount Mansfield State Forest with the provision that it should be kept open to backcountry skiers.
MORE AMERICAN TRAVEL DESTINATIONS: Man is Creating 1,500-Mile Trail Across Texas for Hikers, Bikers and Horses, Investing $10,000 to Get it Done
In 2017, Mr. DesLauriers bought back the resort for less than what it cost him to build it half a century before.
Now run by Lindsay and her brothers Evan, Adam, Eric, and Rob, it’s become a profitable venture for the first time in decades in a classic case of large corporations leaving gaps in the market to be filled by charming, alternative options. A ski pass at Bolton costs $100, around half or even a third of other East Coast ski resorts like Stowe and Sugarbush.
IF YOU LIKE SKIING, WATCH THIS: Watch Breathtaking Alpine Ski Run Through Forest, Ice Cave, and Rooftops By Extreme Free-Skier
For that price, you get six ski lifts with wait times of around 4 minutes, 1,700 feet of slopes, and nighttime skiing. Bolton is also the only place in the region that offers backcountry skiing and snowboarding, lessons, guides, and rentals all out of the same establishment.
A 60-room hotel may not score big on luxury, but makes up for it with the lack of traffic jams, waiting times in restaurants and ski lifts, and parking space. Bolton Valley is included on the Indy Pass, a multi-mountain ski lift pass that includes smaller operations like Bolton.
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From Corpus Christi comes the story of a commercial mariner who developed a passion for saving lives—cold, imperiled, and scaley lives.
It started back in 2018 when Captain Brandon Upton was out in the gulf waters during a particularly chilly afternoon, and he saw a dark shadow floating nearby.
The owner and operator of Sea Tow, a boating assistance company, Upton thought he had seen everything the Gulf of Mexico could conjure, but soon he saw more dark shapes, and then even more.
He realized to his shock that they were sea turtles.
“I didn’t touch it, because I know they are endangered and protected,” Upton told the Dodo. “On my way in, I saw more and more sea turtles and was very confused. In all my years on the water, I had never seen anything like it.”
Rather than take any actions himself, Upton did the right thing and contacted the relevant animal authorities—in this case, the ecologists at San Padre Island National Seashore, who explained the turtles had been cold-stunned.
Cold-stunning is a normal phenomenon in which the cold-blooded turtles fall into a comatose state if the seawater temperatures fall below 56°F. Their heart rate and metabolism plummets, and they float, incapable of moving. This puts them at risk for boat strikes, drowning, and even land predators if the tide and surf should take them onto the beach.
Every winter since then, Upton has remained vigilant for potential cold-stunning events. If the water temperatures start to fall too low, Upton will bring an airboat to tow alongside him, into which he will toss any sea turtles he finds.
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“While sea turtle rescue typically requires special training, we started in an emergency situation,” Upton said. “We picked up two or three boatloads of floating turtles that very first day.”
San Padre Island workers receive these cold-stunned animals and place them in a rehabilitation center where their bodies are gradually warmed up to the temperatures needed to restart their systems. Then they’re released.
OTHER STORIES FROM THE GULF: Watch 2,200 Cold-Stunned Turtles Being Released by Volunteers Back Into the Gulf
Upton described his 7 years of pro bono help as “only natural” since he carries around a lot of specialized equipment that makes rescuing turtles easy and is a proud part of the close-knit boating community.
He’s an animal lover to boot, and whether it’s “taking a spider outside” or helping cold-stunned turtles, he considers them all like a second family.
SEE how many turtles he might rescue in a day…
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Quote of the Day: “I attribute my success to this: I never gave any excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
Photo by: Fellipe Ditadi for Unsplash+
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?
29 years ago today, the world of Pokémon went public, emerging from the mind of game designer Satoshi Tajiri onto Nintendo Gameboy systems. In the six years it took to create the game and its first three “pocket monsters” (Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Charmander), Tajiri’s Game Freak studio nearly went out of business, but the little creatures—some disarmingly cute, like, Pikachu—would take the world by storm and handheld Gameboys would assume a second life. READ more about the franchise… (1996)
A recent LiDAR survey in southern Mexico has revealed that a known site of pre-Colombian fortifications was actually a thriving urban center of 5,000 people or more.
Despite being known to Spanish explorers, modern historians, and archaeologists, the site of Guiengola in the hills above the modern town of Santo Domingo Tehuantepec is now understood to contain ballcourts, roads, temples, and neighborhoods.
Guiengola was built as early as 1350 and abandoned as late as 1521. The architects and inhabitants were the Zapotecs, a pre-Colombian people who inhabited areas making up the modern Mexican state of Oaxaca as far back as the 6th century BCE.
An early Spanish chronicle testifies to the site’s use as a fortification by the Zapotecs in a conflict with the Mexica (Aztecs), but due to the site’s remote position at high elevation and shrouded by dense forest canopy, it was never properly studied writes Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis, organizer of a LiDAR survey of the site.
According to Ramon Cellis’ paper on the survey, published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, the Spanish account “does not provide information about Guiengola beyond its significance as a fortification,” with there also being no “sufficient historical data on how non-elites were incorporated into the construction and everyday life of the site.”
“Although you could reach the site using a footpath, it was covered by a canopy of trees,” Ramón Celis said in a statement released by McGill University where he works as a post-doctoral researcher.
“Until very recently, there would have been no way for anyone to discover the full extent of the site without spending years on the ground walking and searching. We were able to do it within two hours by using remote-sensing equipment and scanning from a plane.”
“I would say that at least 5,000 people were living permanently on the site,” Ramon Cellis tells Live Science.
To explore how power was distributed in the city, Ramon Cellis has calculated how much building space was given over to elite areas such as the temples and ballcourts, for example, compared to what was built in the areas used by commoners.
MORE SOUTH AMERICAN CIVILIZATION: Ancient Mayan City Hidden for Over 1,000 Years Discovered by LiDAR
“Because the city is only between 500 and 600 years old, it is amazingly well preserved, so you can walk there in the jungle, and you find that houses are still standing… you can see the doors… the hallways… the fences that split it from other houses” he told his university press.
“So, it is easy to identify a residential lot. It’s like a city frozen in time, before any of the deep cultural transformations brought by the Spanish arrival had taken place.”
MORE LIDAR DISCOVERIES: Two Lost Cities Discovered Along the Silk Road–the Iconic Ancient Trade Route
Ramon Cellis plans to return to conduct more research at Guiengola later this year, saying that as a point of reference and pride for the Zapotec people, it could provide key insights into their ancestors’ ways of living, as well as an example of a civilization that resisted the Aztec’s conquering push southward, which has always been assumed to have gone on without encountering any major military setbacks.
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The struggle to keep one of the world’s largest and rarest antelope species alive has taken a massive step forward in Kenya.
17 mountain bongos have been flown to Kenya from the Rare Species Conservation Center in Florida for eventual reintroduction into their natural habitat.
A subspecies of bongo, the largest of the forest-dwelling antelope, the eastern, or mountain bongo, numbers less than 100 individuals, and is listed by the IUCN as Critically-Endangered. More survive today in zoos than in the wild.
The history of the animal is an interesting one, as it’s believed to have become a forest species when climate change turned savannah areas into forests thousands of years ago. In the case of the mountain bongo, their home range is located in southern Kenya, on the slopes of Mount Kenya National Park and in the surrounding woodland.
They are the world’s third-largest antelope species behind the giant eland and common eland.
Tourism Minister Rebecca Miano described the arrival of the bongos at the country’s main airport on Sunday night as “emotional and so cool.”
The animals will first be kept in an acclimation center run by the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) that will protect them while they re-hone their instincts for wild living.
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Within three months, the BBC reports, the KWS will be welcoming another shipment of these bongo from captive breeding programs across Europe.
The last time a large shipment of animals like this made it to Kenya was in 2004, when 18 animals arrived safely. They successfully integrated with the wild population, and though some died of tick-borne diseases, it demonstrated that captive animals can successfully make it in the wild if given time and training.
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Despite holding the presidency of the student council and being voted most likely to succeed, 16-year-old Shawn Moyer had his prom night invitation declined.
Moyer needed a backup, and though he didn’t know it at the time, the young lady with ringlet curls and an ear-to-ear smile he found would end up saving his life 35 years later with a kidney donation.
Key to this remarkable story is the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center’s (UPMC) innovative “paired exchange program.” Let’s say you want to donate a kidney to a friend, but the two of you don’t genetically match. The program will match your kidney with someone in need, and in return bump your friend up to the top of the waiting list.
Well, 35 years ago, Moyer invited Elena Hershey to the Dallastown Area High School senior prom, a decision that would change his life.
“He needed a backup,” recalled Hershey, a younger girl whom Moyer remembered as “smart,” “pretty,” and a “remarkably nice person.” “And, you know, of course, I would love an invite to a prom. What girl wouldn’t? So I was happy to go.”
As a junior, she was only able to attend prom if directly invited by a senior, which Moyer’s arm facilitated. Not even a full year had passed after the lovely night that the two, as is so often the case, drifted out of touch.
But they first met because of interlinked friends and siblings, which, 35 years later, intertwined their lives yet again.
Hershey’s friend Julie is married to one of Moyer’s friends, and word reached her that her prom date was stuck on dialysis waiting for a new kidney, something which he had already received twice in his life, once when he was 16, and again at 36.
As it happened, Hershey, a serious health and wellness disciple, was already considering a blind kidney donation and felt Moyer was as good a person as any to offer it to.
“A few weeks of having to rest and a few days of discomfort to extend someone’s life or save someone’s life?” Hershey told ABC News 27. “It really is kind of a no-brainer.”
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But while they made a clever match on prom night, they were not eligible to share organs, so Hershey and Moyer started the paired exchange process, wherein Hershey’s kidney would go to someone in need, and Moyer would receive another as soon as it was made available.
When a donor had been found, Moyer’s first response was to call Hershey.
MORE TRANSPLANT SUCCESSES: Woman Donates Kidney to Her Sorority Sister Despite Not Seeing Her for 10 Years
“He texted me [the news], and I saw it, and I caught my breath a little bit, and I started to cry a little bit,” said Hershey.
Having the opportunity to speak to the media about her decision, Hershey felt she had to emphasize how little the loss has affected her lifestyle. She was driving again in three days, and back on her stationary bike doing the intense cardio she diligently pursues within a month.
WATCH the story below from ABC…
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Martial arts teachers are quick to teach their students that what they learn in class is not to be used on other people except in emergencies.
Recently, a Philadelphia Karate practitioner nicely demonstrated this by swooping in “like a ninja,” thwacking a robber on his leg, and rescuing a woman’s stolen purse.
If you watch black belt instructor Stephen Venter perform a low kick on one of the bags in his dojo of Action Karate in the neighborhood of Northern Liberties, you’d hope to never be on the receiving end.
Venter was getting ready to teach a class when one of his students shouted that someone outside was crying for help.
“I’m just screaming bloody murder like a complete lunatic, like stop him, stop him, stop him, help, help, help to anybody around,” said Jennifer Romanelli, a local who was in the net door drycleaners on 3rd and Poplar getting her suit altered. A man had grabbed her purse and made a run for it.
Venter ascertained the situation and gave chase, Fox 29 News reports. Unfortunately for the thief, the sensei caught up to him, and offered a taste of the antique Japanese art form.
“I shouted at him, ‘Drop the bag!’ He wouldn’t drop it, I caught up with him, I gave him a kick on the leg,” said Venter in a characteristic South African accent. “As I got him a kick on the leg, he dropped the bag, stumbled, and then he kept running away.”
ALSO CHECK OUT: Watch Married Police Officers Cut Short Their Date Night to Stop An Armed Robbery at Restaurant
Romanelli said she was stunned by what had happened.
“Literally out of nowhere, like an angel, this guy appears, like a ninja, and he’s like ‘here you go,'” she said.
MORE HEROICS ON THE STREET: New Jersey Teacher Uses Body as Human Shield to Protect Teen from Group Attack
It’s no coincidence she described her savior like a ninja, as Venter was just about to teach his “ninja class.”
Fox reports that the incident inspired Venter to host a self-defense and kickboxing class for women. Romanelli contacted Venter’s boss to tell him what had happened and praise him for his heroism. The South African has only lived in Philadelphia for 6 months.
WATCH the story below from Fox 29…
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Quote of the Day: “Love the giver more than the gift.” – Brigham Young
Photo by: Shafi Muhammed
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2,772 years ago today, the Neo Babylonian king Nabonassar assumed the throne of the great city, which isn’t necessarily good news in itself, but 747 BCE is a date of tremendous importance, since it allowed the scientist and historian Claudius Ptolemy (100-175 CE) to provide for modern scholars a fixed date in history on which our conceptions of ancient years can be made accurate. The reason for this is that astronomers were able to prove claims of celestial phenomena like eclipses in an extant work from the time period called the Babylonian Chronicles. Combined with Ptolemy’s work Almagest, dates line up, and give us today an accurate way of counting backwards in time. READ more… (747 BCE)
