Dane Ray Cummings, a driver with Waste Management, was ordered by his boss to cut his shift short and to immediately get out of the area because of a dangerous spreading wildfire that would soon engulf the entire district. Rather than obeying his bosses order, Cummings decided to check on his elderly customers before leaving the potential danger zone. He reasoned that some of his customers may not be informed or aware of the encroaching wildfire rapidly moving within their Magalia, California, neighborhood, while others may be too frail to actually leave their homes. One of his customers in particular…
Author: Robert Amoroso
When we think of someone suffering from an occupational hazard, it’s usually thought of as an unforeseen accident suffered at the workplace. Seldom do we think of someone knowingly choosing a job, career or profession that in time would likely end their chosen vocation by an expected physical abnormality suffered at birth. Nevertheless, that’s exactly the dilemma that faced Karren Visser when she was just a child knowing that her rare degenerative eye condition would likely get worse as she grew older, and perhaps end forever her passion for photography. Her parents first became aware of her sight problems when…
Boater Scott Thompson was convinced he was “going to die” after he accidentally tumbled overboard into the frigid Pacific Ocean waters, while his boat was still in gear, leaving him stranded in the middle of the night miles away from Santa Barbara Channel. Thompson immediately realized after a huge wave rocked his boat sending him head first into the sea that he had made a rookie mistake. “I was taught by the best urchin divers in the business about safety, but for whatever reason, I was careless, and did not take the boat out of gear,” he wrote in a…
Something didn’t sit well with Instacart shopper Jessica Higgs after she delivered groceries to the elderly customer who seemed pale and unsteady on his feet and didn’t look well when he answered the door to pick up his food order. The Georgia mom said she received the order from a woman who was ordering food for her elderly dad, along with instructions to just leave the package on the porch, according to Instacart policy. However, after witnessing the elderly man’s physical condition, she became alarmed that he may be in immediate danger. Higgs shared the story of her recent delivery…
Annually, approximately 15 million individuals between the ages of 25 to 75 will suffer the debilitating effects of a stroke, the majority being 65 years and older, with roughly 6 million fatalities annually. According to the National Stroke Association, by definition; “a stroke occurs when the blood flow to the brain is blocked, or a blood vessel in the brain suddenly ruptures. Without blood, brain cells start to die.” That stark, clinical analysis and the data provided by the medical community fails to tell the real story and emotional trauma of stroke victims like Kevin Eubanks, who suffered a life…
Most of us who are blessed with children find it almost inconceivable that we would abandon our child, and yet there are those individuals who can simply walk away without any self-recrimination or guilt. Perhaps in the long run they may actually be doing that child a favor, sparing it from further abuse. This is the tale of one such infant abandoned for over 5 months at Franciscan Children’s hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts. The child had become a ward of the state and had been hospitalized, suffering from multiple health issues, one of which was being born prematurely and weighing…
If you’re an R&B and blues aficionado, then you’ve no doubt heard of musician Daryl Davis. What you may not know, aside from his incredible talent, is that Davis has a unique and perhaps dicey way of confronting racism; by seeking out KKK members and other White supremacists for a congenial sit-down. Born in Chicago in 1958, young Daryl experienced outright bigotry for the first time when he was about 9-years old, marching in a Cub Scouts parade while several white kids began taunting him because he was black. One even threw a rock that almost hit him. Confused, he…
According to the Guinness World Records, Anthony Mancinelli was the world’s oldest working barber at 108-years old. The honor was bestowed upon him in 2007, when Mancinelli was a mere 96 years old. Born in Naples, Italy in 1911, young Mancinelli came to the United States with his family when he was about 8-years old, landing at Ellis Island in New York Harbor on September 11th, 1919. The family settled in Newburgh, which is now New Windsor, because an aunt of his lived there. Mancinelli began cutting hair in 1921, when he was just 10 years old and a haircut…
According to a UN report more than 780 million people worldwide lack basic clean drinking water, and by 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in drought affected areas, along with a staggering population growth of over 10 billion people by 2050, and over 10.9 billion by 2100. Ironically, about 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and almost 97% is ocean seawater, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Seawater, up until now, wasn’t safe for human drinking consumption. However, thanks to a group of dedicated scientists in Australia they have been able to…
According to a recent study (the first of its kind), there’s clear and decisive evidence that the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica is beginning to close. Scientists measured the hole within the ozone layer back in September of 2015 and calculated at the time to be around 4 million sq. km smaller than it was in 2000, an area estimated to be the size of India. Researches who worked on the study believe that the phasing out of certain manufactured air-born chemicals may be partly responsible for the dramatic shift, the study also sheds new light on the…
A recent study found since the beginning of the pandemic nearly 2-years ago, over 20 million Americans go to bed hungry nearly every night. However a grass-roots movement that began in the city of “brotherly love” providing community refrigerators stocked with food is helping to feed hungry neighbors, who otherwise couldn’t afford buying food. The movement is part of a mutual-aid program that took off during the pandemic. Lifelong Philadelphia resident Darrell Brokenborough stood outside his row home at 308 N. 39th St., opened the brightly colored refrigerator, smiled and said, “It’s full.” Balancing himself on his cane Darrell peered…
According to a recent study published in JAMA Current Open, having a sense of purpose in life, whatever it may be, can mean the difference between an early grave or a long life span. Researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health analyzed data from nearly 7,000 individuals over 50-years-old and concluded that “stronger purpose in life was associated with decreased mortality”. They believe that “purposeful living may have health benefits”. The research was gathered from individuals who participated in the American Health and Retirement Study (HRS) long-term research program that gathered data from a cross-section of subjects…
We often hear after we encounter a story about someone’s near death experience how reluctant they were in coming back. Dr. Bruce Greyson is a respected psychiatrist and a renowned author, chronicling hundreds of cases of near-death experiences within his 50 years of research. He explains in his critically acclaimed book titled After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, why individuals who’ve survived a near death experience (NDE), return feeling a sense of sadness upon their return. Dr. Greyson also suggests that NDE’s are a lot more common than people realize; “Near-death experiences are fairly…
According to the eminent child author Charles D. Appelstein, MSW, there’s No Such Thing as a Bad Kid. That theory at several Baltimore school distracts has been successfully put to the test, thanks in part to a how educators “punish” unruly students. Rather than taking a student out of class, or sending them to the principal’s office, revoking privileges, calling home, or worst yet, suspending them, educators in several Baltimore school districts are sending those unruly students to a meditation room where they can calm down and decompress before rejoining their classmates. The room, dubbed the Mindful Moment room, is…
On August 4th, 2013, Illinois student Katie Lentz was driving her Mercedes convertible on Highway 19 when she was suddenly hit head-on by a drunk driver. The horrific accident crushed Lentz’s car in a mangled wreck, leaving her with life threatening injuries including multiple fractures, a ruptured spleen, and damaged liver. Emergency responders rushed to the accident scene, tasked with the responsibility of stabilizing the 19-year-old crash victim and extracting her from the tangled wreckage. However, the challenge in dislodging Lentz from the twisted metal proved daunting due to the equipment at the scene not proving strong enough to cut…
Most of us at some point in our lives have had uncanny experiences that we cannot explain. Whether it’s being at a place or event familiar to us, but never actually having been there, or recounting a set of circumstances eerily familiar, although never actually having experienced them. The French call it “Déjà vu”, which translates to “already seen”, meaning that a person has a feeling they’ve done something that they’ve already lived through, without actually living through it. However, another possibility may be the experience you’re feeling of familiarity may have already happened to you in another lifetime. According…
For those not familiar with Mellen-Thomas Benedict’s famous (or infamous) claim of his near death experience, please allow me to preface this story by acknowledging there are quite a few skeptics, along with an equal number of true believers, that Benedict’s journey to the other side did in fact happen, regardless of the fact that he’s made a handsome living from his claim. Benedict was a talented artist, author, musician, and inventor; in short, a true renaissance man. He was born on March 2, 1949, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and passed away on March 31st, 2017. His claim of surviving…
Who needs a literary publicist? Not 8-year-old Dillon Helbig from Boise, Idaho, who has just captured the attention of nearly all the major news outlets across the nation with his unique promotional skills of sneaking his self-made comic book, titled “The Adventures of Dillon Helbig’s Crismis” by “Dillon His Self”, onto a library shelf at the Lake Hazel Ada Community Library. The young, marketing-savvy, enterprising lad figured out the best way to have his comic book story read would be to simply place it within a section of the library that displayed similar books. Dillon was exposed to libraries at…
If you’re one of those individuals who enjoys going to the public library and signing out the latest copy of whatever critically acclaimed book is currently available, then there’s a good chance that at some point you may have kept a book a bit longer than intended, requiring the library to enforce a penalty fee. The nominal amount is usually dependent on how long the book was past due. Take, for example, the Boise Public Library which just received one of their past due books taken out on November 8th, 1911, 110 years overdue. The individual who returned the book…
Angel encounters captured within a photograph or on video footage, although still uncommon, are a lot easier to obtain today because of the advanced technology. Virtually any individual with a smart phone can instantly snap a photo, preserving almost immediately whatever subject of interest they’re photographing. However, capturing a photo of a “reputed angel” at a crash site 30 years ago is indeed an extremely rare occurrence. The first responders on scene were able to capture the illuminated figure while photographing the accident scene, hours after the accident occurred, still hovering near the scene. The dreadful auto accident took place…