These police officers went above and beyond the call of duty for a 91-year-old woman whose pocket was picked while grocery shopping in a supermarket.
Security footage of the grocery store shows the senior being subjected to a distraction theft: a robbery in which one shopper distracted the woman from her shopping cart while their accomplice slipped her wallet out of her bag.
When Officer Janelle Jumelles arrived at the Boynton Beach, Florida store, she immediately paid for the senior’s groceries.
Overcome with gratitude, the woman started crying and embraced the officer, thanking her for the kindness.
Jumelles then helped the woman cancel her credit cards and suggested the senior go home and get some rest.
Later that same day, the cop returned to the woman’s home with a $60 gift card to the supermarket to replace the food stamps that were stolen from her purse.
(WATCH the video below)
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Money may not be able to you happiness, but the public is rejoicing over the latest report stating that Americans gave $390 billion to charity in 2016 – a 4% increase from the $379.89 billion donated in 2015.
Detailed in the publication Giving USA 2017: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2016, this is only the sixth time in the last four decades that has reflected improvement across all nine sectors of philanthropy: religion; education; human services; giving to foundations; health; public-society benefit; arts, culture and humanities; international affairs; and environment and animals.
Amongst individuals, corporations, estate donations, and foundations, individual Americans were shown to improve the most by donating 4% more than the previous year. Corporations and foundations also showed improvement, while estate donations fell slightly.
“This report tells us that Americans remained generous in 2016, despite it being a year punctuated by economic and political uncertainty,” said Aggie Sweeney, chair of the Giving USA Foundation. “We saw growth in every major sector, indicating the resilience of philanthropy and diverse motivations of donors.”
“Individual giving continued its remarkable role in American philanthropy in a year that included a turbulent election season that reflected a globally resurgent populism,” said Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “In this context, the absence of a dramatic change in giving is perhaps remarkable, but it also demonstrates the need for us to better understand the multitude of individual and collective decisions that comprise our record of national giving.”
Pay It Forward: Click TO Share With Your Friends(Photo by Tracy O, CC)
Researchers have developed a solar paint that can absorb water vapor and split it to generate hydrogen – the cleanest source of energy.
The paint contains a newly developed compound that acts like silica gel, which is used in sachets to absorb moisture and keep food, medicines and electronics fresh and dry.
But unlike silica gel, the new material, synthetic molybdenum-sulphide, also acts as a semi-conductor and catalyses the splitting of water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen.
Lead researcher Dr. Torben Daeneke, from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, said: “We found that mixing the compound with titanium oxide particles leads to a sunlight-absorbing paint that produces hydrogen fuel from solar energy and moist air.
“Titanium oxide is the white pigment that is already commonly used in wall paint, meaning that the simple addition of the new material can convert a brick wall into energy harvesting and fuel production real estate.
“Our new development has a big range of advantages,” he said. “There’s no need for clean or filtered water to feed the system. Any place that has water vapor in the air, even remote areas far from water, can produce fuel.”
His colleague, Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, said hydrogen was the cleanest source of energy and could be used in fuel cells as well as conventional combustion engines as an alternative to fossil fuels.
“This system can also be used in very dry but hot climates near oceans. The sea water is evaporated by the hot sunlight and the vapour can then be absorbed to produce fuel.
“This is an extraordinary concept – making fuel from the sun and water vapor in the air.”
(Source: RMIT University)
(WATCH the video below)
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From growing discontent over the Vietnam war, which necessitated the drafting of 40,000 young men into military service each month, to the blossoming music scene with its psychedelic colors and consciousness-altering drugs, 1967 was fast becoming a fulcrum for change in American cultural history.
50 years ago today, The Monterey Pop Festival opened the floodgates for all that would define the legendary ‘Summer of Love’. The festival marked the first major US appearance for Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, and Ravi Shankar. It secured California as the focal point for the counterculture movement and became an inspiration for future music festivals, like Woodstock two years later. (Learn more and watch the documentary trailer)
San Francisco’s de Young Museum is celebrating the half-century anniversary with an exhibition that features more than 300 significant cultural artifacts that recall the art, fashion, and political discourse of the era — and, of course, the music, which provided the drum beat for a youth-driven revolution.
Despite being a millennial, my parents were successful in raising me to love the same kind of music they grew up with (e.g. The Beatles, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan). My peers and I were also eager to adopt the hippie fashions that eventually came back around in style—as you can see from my recent visit to the de Young…
Yet, after going to see the exhibit, “The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll,” I was forcefully reminded that I had no idea what it was like back then. The closest thing that 20-somethings like me can use for comparison to the Summer of Love is Burning Man – but, that involves all generations, not only mine, and in terms of cultural impact, the two don’t even come close.
Besides an amazing array of hand-crafted fashion from the day, including the story of how a local seamstress got Levi Strauss to create the fist bell bottom jean, the exhibit featured informational flyers to give direction to the thousands of young people who left home to make a new life in San Francisco.
Posters included the one made by Joan Baez (above, bottom right) to encourage girls to only “say yes to boys who say no” to the draft, and helpful hints for newcomers about how to avoid bad drug trips and where to get free food (top, center). There were even tips about how to deal with the police officers who were rounding up youth and trying to reunite them with their worried parents.
The original Captain Trips hat worn by Jerry Garcia
Rock-poster artists such as Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson, all generated an exciting array of distinctive works that summer emblazoned with distorted hand-lettering and vibrating colors (below). In various rooms of the exhibit, wild light shows were dazzling the visitors, such as the creations of Bill Ham and Ben Van Meter that served as expressions of the new psychedelic experience.
After leaving the museum, I headed over to Haight-Ashbury, the magnetic San Franciscan neighborhood that became a magnet for as many as 100,000 young people from all over disillusioned America – and while it’s been 50 years since the original Summer of Love, many of the original inhabitants of the neighborhood are still there to this day, as living relics of decades past.
One such resident was Franklin: an original “tertiary acquaintance” of none other than “Uncle Ken” – the pseudonym of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author and psychedelic revolutionary Ken Kesey.
When asked about his recollections from those old friendships, he remembered fondly some advice he took to heart. “As Uncle Ken always used to say… ‘Stay in your own movie, man,” he said chuckling, before wandering outside to smoke a bowl of “medical marijuana” and inspect the buttons for sale on the sidewalk.
If you’re interested in catching a glimpse of one of America’s most pivotal eras–and definitely the most colorful one, the de Young exhibit runs through August 20, 2017 – and the hippies who lived through it are ‘feelin’ groovy’ not far away.
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Thousands of Michigan families will now have the opportunity to send their children to university free of charge.
The University of Michigan has just announced the implementation of their new Go Blue Guarantee: a program that allows all Michigan families earning less than $65,000 per year to qualify for four years of free undergraduate tuition.
The program will apply to students currently enrolled at the Ann Arbor campus – as well as any student who is accepted to the school – starting January 2018.
According to a U.S. census, the annual median Michigan household income was $51,000 in 2015.
“There are many students growing up in families that look at the University of Michigan and think that we’re too expensive,” President Mark Schlissel told WXYZ. “Even if their kids are talented are hard-working, they’re just afraid. They’re afraid to let them apply because if they get in, imagine telling your kid ‘congratulations, but we just can’t afford it’.”
Now however, the Go Blue Guarantee opens the university’s doors to thousands of low-income students seeking a quality education.
“I think about the seventh grader in Ypsilanti or Detroit or Grand Rapids whose mom or dad can say to them, ‘Work hard. Do well in school. You can go to the University of Michigan,’” Schlissel said, according to MLive. “There are a lot of folks now that can’t really say that because they don’t know if they can afford it. Now there’s a whole rising generation in our state that can aspire to our great university. I’m extremely, extremely proud of that.”
(WATCH the video below)
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In honor of the late Batman actor Adam West, Los Angeles city officials joined with Batman fans and West’s television co-stars to shine the official Bat-signal on City Hall last night.
With Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Department Chief Charlie Beck present, the event was reminiscent of a New Year’s Eve countdown. By the time they were ready to turn on the signal, Batman fans decked out in their utility belts and Bright Knight capes were cheering in anticipation.
“So I’m a real life chief of police and I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to turn on the Bat-signal,” said Chief Beck.
West passed away last Friday at the age of 88 after a battle with leukemia. According to a DC Comics press release, West’s family encourages any Batman fans not in attendance to donate to the Adam West Memorial Fund for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Idaho-based charity for children diagnosed with cancer and their families, Camp Rainbow Gold.
As of this morning, the Memorial Fund has raised $6,800.
This good Samaritan is a prime example of Biblical kindness.
David Lee Witherspoon Jr. was leaving his volunteer shift at a food pantry in Phoenix, Arizona when he was shocked to see a man crawling across the road on all fours.
The volunteer immediately stopped his car and walked over to the man to ask what was wrong.
The man explained that he had become homeless because of an argument that he had had at his last place of residence. Without having time to grab a pair of shoes, he had run out the door in only his socks.
With temperatures in Arizona climbing well into the hundreds, the city tarmac had become scorchingly hot, which led the man to crawling with his shorts barely covering his knees, and his socks covering his hands.
Without hesitating, Witherspoon grabbed a spare pair of shoes and a water bottle from out of his car. He then carefully washed and dried the man’s feet before slipping on the footwear.
The volunteer says that he keeps multiple pairs of shoes in his car so he can switch them out between his work at the office of Phoenix Veteran Affairs and the St. Vincent de Paul’s food pantries at St. Mary’s Basilica.
Though Witherspoon is being hailed for his compassionate act, he stands by the fact that he was simply doing what any person should do.
“A lot of people give up on people now and that’s the biggest problem,” Witherspoon explained in the video below. “I mean, you don’t have to… empty your wallet or anything like that; just a simple, kind act.”
(WATCH the video below)
Bless Your Friends: Click To Share (Photo by St. Vincent de Paul)
The world’s first Museum of Happiness is set to open its doors in September.
Though the Museum of Happiness has been a nonprofit organization for the last two years, they haven’t actually had a permanent location. The volunteer team has simply organized pop-up events, classes, and workshops for drop-in participation.
After successfully raising over $36,000 in one month, however, the organization is set to open up their physical museum at Arlington House – the UK’s biggest homeless hostel in Camden, London.
“Three years ago, the Museum of Happiness was an idea discussed on summer strolls around Hyde Park. We wanted to offer a sanctuary where people of all ages and backgrounds could come together to feel safe, peaceful and happy and learn about their own wellbeing,” says the museum team.
One year later, the happiness crew started hosting workshops for all kinds of things: mindfulness origami, laughing yoga (yes, it’s a thing), ukulele lessons, art, and dancing.
“People from all over the world were coming to our events and asking, ‘where is the museum of happiness actually based? I want to bring my friends next week!’ We would sadly tell them it was folded up in a shed – which wasn’t exactly great for our image!”
Assuming the museum can make enough money from memberships and general programs, the facility will be free to visit. Additionally, the museum team hopes to orchestrate several outreach programs that can work in accordance with homeless shelters, nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and youth centers.
Considering that the World Health Organization says that depression is “the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease”, it’s honestly surprising that a facility like this hasn’t come sooner.
“At the Museum of Happiness we offer tangible, science-based tools you can implement into your everyday lives. Our society needs such physical spaces like a Museum of Happiness to explore this vital skill, emotion and state of being in a secular way,” says the team. “Most importantly, we can run initiatives to bring people together to create friendships, have fun and find balance in a city of chaos, regardless of your background or belief system.”
If you want to volunteer or learn more about the museum, check out to their website.
This new aerial survey of the New England area shows that the gray seal population is making a huge comeback.
Using drone footage, thermal cameras, and images from Google Earth, scientists at Duke University have found that there are now twice as many gray seals than originally thought in the Cape Cop, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket area.
“Past surveys based on traditional methods of counting, using occupied aircraft to survey seals on beaches, islands and seasonal ice cover, counted about 15,000 seals off the southeastern Massachusetts coast,” said David W. Johnston, assistant professor at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
“Our technology-aided aerial survey, which used Google Earth imagery in conjunction with telemetry data from tagged animals, suggests the number is much larger – between 30,000 and 50,000. This is a conservation success that should be celebrated,” he added.
Gray seals were popular hunting prey up until the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in the early 70s. As their numbers started to recover, scientists found it incredibly difficult to count the marine mammals due to their ability to camouflage into their environment.
With thermal imaging technology, however, cameras can detect the heat signature of the seals, rather than depending on pure vision alone.
“Seal pups are born with a white coat, which makes them hard to see against ice or snow using traditional imagery,” said Alex Seymour, the study’s lead researcher. “But they can’t hide from thermal imagery.”
(WATCH the video below)
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In recognition of the life-saving treatment he received several months ago, an anonymous top Palestinian official has just made a massive donation of tens of thousands of shekels to an Israeli hospital.
The official of the Palestinian Authority, a man in his 40s known only as M, had been hospitalized at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa for a cancerous tumor earlier this year. As he was there, he was struck by how the hospital’s staff treated Palestinians and Israelis with equal attention, compassion, and diligence.
He was also moved by the amount of children who were residents from Gaza and the West Bank.
“When I arrived at Rambam, I saw a medical team that treats its patients with dedication, but I also saw the suffering of sick children,” said M, according to a statement. “Palestinian children, Israelis, Syrians, and children from other countries who are being treated at Rambam for serious illnesses and are in need of all the help they can get.
“I decided to make a donation to help save human lives apart from any political considerations.
“Both Israeli and Palestinian societies suffer from violence and I am striving for a situation where we all can contribute to peace and health: to treat children, save lives, share knowledge, and train Palestinian doctors at Rambam, in order to improve the state of the health systems and the capacity to treat people in the PA areas, and to encourage others to donate and contribute to the betterment of health within our two nations.”
“Medicine is a bridge between peoples and my hope is that with the help of this small contribution and others like it in the future, we will all see a better tomorrow,” M added.
M’s donation will go towards the construction of a new recovery room for children undergoing chemotherapy in the .
Click To Share The Inspiring News With Your Friends(Photo by Moshe Shai/Flash90)
Jerry Garcia passed away 22 years ago, but the legacy of the lead singer of the Grateful Dead lives on in a new effort to boost wild honeybee and monarch butterfly populations.
Embarking on a summer tour across America, Dead & Company, the group headed by former Garcia bandmates Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann (with special guest John Mayer), will give fans at each venue a way in which they can help repopulate the winged creatures.
The band will be hosting a charity outreach program in the form of Participation Row: a series of tents dedicated to presenting meaningful causes and organizations. One of the tents will feature the most recent work of the Jerry Garcia Foundation.
To encourage butterfly and bee conservation among Deadheads, the Foundation will be passing out free milkweed seeds and garden pollinator packs to the first 300 concert-goers to visit their tent at the venues, courtesy of the Save Our Monarchs Foundation.
Anyone who actually ends up planting the seeds can participate in an interactive art project by submitting photos of the blossoming garden to the foundation’s Facebook page with the tags #SaveTheMonarchs, #SaveTheBees, or #RippleEffect.
“Save Our Monarchs has generously donated thousands of Non-GMO milkweed seed packets and pollinator garden seeds,” said Keelin Garcia, Jerry’s youngest daughter and co-founder of the Jerry Garcia Foundation. “We are sharing these seeds in hopes that gardens will be planted to nourish butterfly and bee populations across the US.”
The initiative comes at an appropriate time, too. Garcia’s birthday is coming up on August 9th, and the program supports a cause that would have been very dear to him. Additionally, National Pollinator Week is running from June 19th-25th.
The Garcia foundation has already donated several of the singer’s colorful art pieces to benefit Save Our Monarchs and the urban beekeeping organization Honey Love.
“Jerry was an environmentalist who advocated for the preservation of the rainforests and the coral reefs,” said Manasha Garcia, Jerry’s wife and co-founder of the foundation. “It is a blessing to continue this work in his honor.”
Encourage The #RippleEffect: Click To Keep This Story Truckin’ – OR, (Photos by the Jerry Garcia Foundation)
Thanks to a progressive move announced by Facebook last week, video content has now been made available to over 360 million people worldwide.
That’s because the social media giant has just made it so that Facebook Live videos can now feature closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing, 30 million of which live in America alone.
Regular Facebook videos have been able to feature closed captioning since 2014, however with 20% of Facebook video content now being broadcasted through the live feature, the deaf community has been unable to participate in that category of content since it launched in 2016.
Facebook officials have even found that a large majority of viewers who aren’t hard of hearing simply enjoy closed captioning for other reasons.
“Making Facebook accessible to everyone is a key part of building global community. Today we’re allowing publishers to include closed captions in Facebook Live, helping people who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience live videos,” wrote Facebook representatives last week. “Today’s milestone represents the next step in our efforts to make content on Facebook accessible to more people.”
This sympathetic police officer wasn’t about to punish a driver for making safe decisions.
Officer Jim Hellrood was making his rounds for parking control on Thursday morning in Wausau, Wisconsin when he found a car that had stayed overnight in a metered lot.
As he was about to issue a ticket to the car, however, he noticed a handwritten note in the windshield.
The note read: “Please take pity on me. I walked home… safe choices.” The words were followed by a little smiley face.
As it turns out, the plea for sympathy worked. In response to the endearing note, the officer simply printed out a warning saying: “Pity Granted, Just A Warning”.
“Parking Control Officer Jim Hellrood can appreciate people making safe choices, and a good sense of humor,” wrote the Wausau Police Department. “That’s why he recently issued a warning to a vehicle left in a metered lot overnight. Thanks to this resident for sharing!”
The police department has since explained that the law enforcement team is more than happy to show more leeway towards any drivers who choose not to drive home after a night of drinking. Though the unidentified driver did not mention it explicitly, the parking officer inferred from the note that they opted to accept a parking ticket rather than drink and drive.
Click To Share This Sweet Story With Your Friends (Photo by the Wausau Police Department)
This engineer has come up with an awe-inspiring method of providing freshwater to his village during the dry season.
Sonam Wangchuck is an engineer who lives in Ladakh: a village that sits 11,500 feet up in the southern Himalayas.
Since the village depends on mountain glacial runoff as their primary source of freshwater, Ladakh struggles with drought in the springtime. Combined with the effects of climate change, the region has often been at the mercy of nature.
That is, until Sonam created the village’s first ice stupa – also known as an ice pyramid, or an artificial glacier.
Sonam created a pipeline that ran from the freshwater sources over a mile up in the mountains, all the way down to the village. During the winter, the pipeline would pour gallons of water into a kind of stationary sprinkler system. As the water was sprayed into the 0 degree Fahrenheit air, it would eventually keep building and freezing on top of itself until it made a pyramid.
Because large volumes of ice melt more slowly if it is a part of a smaller surface area, the pyramid was able to provide Ladakh with over 1.5 million liters of freshwater through the dry spring months up until late July.
In 2015, Ladakhi villagers were able to plant over 5,000 saplings using water from the ice stupa, resulting in the creation of a desert oasis capable of surviving all weather conditions.
Thanks to the innovation of his design, Sonam was a 2016 Rolex Award laureate. The engineer plans on using his $100,000 cash prize to establish a tree-planting program with the addition of 20 more stupas in Ladakh, thus providing over 10 million more liters of freshwater to the village.
(WATCH the video below)
Click To Share This Cool Story With Your Friends (Photo by the Rolex Awards)
It may be a lifeguard’s job to keep a watchful eye over the lives of swimmers, but this teen wasn’t expecting to save a life within minutes of being put on the job.
15-year-old Jack Viglianco had just started his first shift as a lifeguard at the Charles A. Foster pool in Lakewood, Ohio last Thursday when – after only being on the clock for 20 minutes – he heard a cry for help.
A 4-year-old boy who had been on a summer camp outing had accidentally moved into the deep end of the pool when he started struggling to keep his head above water.
As he splashed around in desperation, Jack leapt into action, jumping into the pool and helping the boy to safety.
And just like that, the teen was a hero.
“I was realizing that I just saved a kid’s life,” Jack told WJW. “And that is something not many other people can say. Nothing my friends have ever said.”
According to pool workers, lifeguards are a hugely necessary part of the facility; during last summer alone, there were over 42 incidents of people starting to drown. All were saved thanks to the lifeguards on duty.
(WATCH the video below)
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As summer temperatures soar in the south, these police officers weren’t about to let a WWII veteran soak in his own sweat all day.
The Fort Worth Police Department in Texas received a 911 call from a 95-year-old man distressed over his broken air conditioner. Though it wasn’t exactly considered an emergency, two boys in blue dropped by the senior’s house to check out the situation.
Officers William Margolis and Christopher Weir drove over to Julius Hatley’s house where the senior was sitting out in the shade of his porch in the early morning 90-degree heat.
Not only was Hatley’s air conditioner broken, but his central air conditioning was broken as well. Heartbroken by Hatley’s sweltering situation, Margolis promised to return with a solution.
The officers then went to Home Depot and asked the employees which unit would be best for Hatley’s house. The store employees were so touched upon hearing about the veteran’s situation, however, that they decided to throw down $150 of their own money so they could split the cost of an air conditioner with Margolis.
The officers then brought the unit back to Hatley’s house with another coworker so they could make sure it was properly installed.
“This is what being an officer is about,” Weir’s wife wrote on Facebook. “This is what the media doesn’t report on but happens every single day by officers all over.”
“He was actually really excited,” Margolis told CBS News. “He said he knew if he needed help to call 911 and we actually were able to help him, so he was really excited about it.”
Additionally, since the story of the officers’ good deed has spread on social media, a repair company has offered to fix Hatley’s central air conditioning free of charge.
The officers plan on continuing to assist Hatley by repainting his house, installing new windows, and distributing a weekly supply of groceries to his house.
(WATCH the video below)
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The kids in this Catholic school class learned plenty about history, math, and science this year – but most importantly, they learned about kindness, unity, and love.
Owen Guertin of Carondelet Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota was diagnosed with an arteriovenous malformation in November: a condition in which the blood vessels in the 4th grader’s brain were tangled. If the malformation is left untreated, the vessels can rupture, causing death.
Though Owen’s parents were understandably devastated – as the boy’s cousin recently passed away from the same condition – Owen’s classmates and teacher in room 101 were also upset.
As the boy prepared for surgery at the Boston Children’s Hospital, his fellow students missed his presence in the classroom. Every day, Owen’s favorite teddy bear dressed in the Catholic school uniform would be dropped off at school to save his owner’s seat, providing comfort to the classmates.
Then, one day, the room 101 teacher Kristen Rafferty was reading an excerpt from Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr, a book about a young woman with leukemia on a mission to fold over 1,000 paper cranes. One of her students piped up in response, asking if the class could fold 1,000 paper cranes for Owen.
Rafferty was more than happy to encourage the mission, allowing the children to fold cranes during recess, lunch, and prayer time. The kids felt that even though their collection of birds may be made out of paper, they would still help Owen recover from his surgery.
“I just knew the more we made the more Owen would heal, I didn’t want to stop because I wanted him to get better,” 4th grader Adie Scheel told KARE11.
By the time Owen was in recovery from a successful 17-hour surgery, room 101 was adorned with a “crane-bow”: hundreds of tiny origami birds hanging from the ceiling in big rainbow bunches.
When the boy returned to the classroom on Valentine’s Day, he was welcomed back with an emotional greeting.
(WATCH the video below)
Click To Share This Crane-tastic Story With Your Friends – Photo by Joanie Witberler
A 12-year-old girl is being hailed as a hero after she used a first aid technique that she learned from reading The Hunger Games series to help treat her friend’s leg injury.
Megan Gething, Mackenzie George, and several of their other friends were playing in a Gloucester, Massachusetts marsh on Saturday morning when Mackenzie slipped through the mud and slashed her leg open on a piece of steel.
The wound, which was about 10 inches long and 3 inches wide, started bleeding profusely, sending the youngsters into a state of panic – except for Megan.
Remembering a scene in the Suzanne Collins novel, Megan quickly requested a pair of her friend’s shorts so she could tie a tourniquet on Mackenzie’s leg. As she applied pressure on the tourniquet, she calmly told one of the other teens to run and get help.
“I knew it from a book I read,” she told the Gloucester Times, referencing the young adult book series. “I figured it was a well-known method of stopping bleeding.”
Mackenzie’s family members arrived a few minutes later and carried the injured youth back to their home where she was taken to the local hospital. She then underwent surgery to make sure that there was no bacteria in the wound. Since the injury caused no nerve or muscle damage, Mackenzie is expected to make a full recovery by the end of the month.
Paramedics say that the situation could have been much worse if Mackenzie had continued to lose blood – and it’s all thanks to Megan’s quick-thinking under pressure.
“Megan was the star of the show. Thank goodness she was there. Mackenzie would have lost a lot more blood, and it could have been life-threatening if she hadn’t done what she did,” the youth’s father told the Gloucester Times.
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Finland’s capital city of Helsinki is celebrating its 75th summer of serving hot free meals to their young residents at public playgrounds.
The city’s 71 public parks and playgrounds have consistently served nutritious meals to kids ages 1 to 16.
Thanks to the funding from the Helsinki Social Services Department, hot meals and drinks have been distributed to the children every summer weekday at noon since 1942.
Since most of the kids have parents who are at work during the day, the parks and playgrounds provide a valuable space for them to play.
Additionally, volunteers, mothers, and works supervise the children with games, activities, singing, and dancing, which creates a tangible community spirit amongst the youngsters.
If this photo proves anything, it’s that this teenager and her dad are just as close as they were 13 years ago.
The photos depict a 5-year-old Brittany Gayler being walked to her first day of kindergarten by her father – and then again as an 18-year-old going to her last day of high school.
Brittany, who is a senior at Alvord High School in Alvord, Texas, says that it was a “bittersweet” moment that she’ll “remember forever.”
Her father, 38-year-old Jason Gayler, says that he was pretty choked up over the emotional flashback and the amount of praise that he received for his parenting skills on social media.
“It has been a bit shocking with a mix of happiness,’” Jason told TODAY about the overwhelming online response to the photo comparison. “It brings me great joy if we were able to help people think back to that time, even if just for a brief moment, and smile. I can hope one day when I’m old I can look back at this and smile!”
(WATCH the video below)
Click To Share This Dad-tastic Story With Your Friends (Photo by Brittany Gayler)
