In 2001, American firefighter Gary Box vanished without a trace during the 9/11 attacks; his remains have never been found.
His parents spent nine long years searching for any sign of him. Finally, in 2009, his mother discovered a photograph at once heartbreaking and a source of relief in the National 9/11 Museum’s photo archives and on the memorial's official website; the firefighter captured in the image was indeed him.
The photo was taken on September 11, 2001, by Danish businessman Erik Thorsen. While stuck in traffic at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, he looked through his windshield and captured the image of Gary rushing toward the Twin Towers. He later uploaded the photo to the National 9/11 Museum’s online archive, making this long delayed "reunion" possible. #USA911 #USFirefighter
The background on this story and guy is nuts!
Xu Bo dropped out of junior high in Wuhan, started in NetEase customer service, then helped design Fantasy Westward Journey.
He walked out, founded Duoyi Network, and became a gaming billionaire who owns almost the entire company.
Then he started building a family like a product pipeline.
He calls himself “China’s first father.”
His line was “having more children solves everything.”
He wanted 50 “high-quality sons.”
He talked about his kids marrying Elon Musk’s kids.
His ex says 300 children.
His company said no, “only a little over 100,” and that just 12 were born in the U.S. through surrogacy.
In 2023, a Los Angeles judge noticed the same name on petition after petition.
Xu appeared by video from China.
He said he wanted about 20 U.S.-born boys to take over the business.
He said he preferred boys. He also said he hadn’t met some of the kids yet because work was busy. They were with nannies in Irvine.
Later he posted a photo of about 100 children sitting in rows.
A U.S. surrogate who thought she was carrying for a single dad saw it and said he was “creating an army.”
How he did it is not a secret loophole. It’s the law as written.
If a baby is born on U.S. soil, the 14th Amendment makes that baby a citizen.
The parents can be Chinese. They can be billionaires. They don’t even have to live here.
Commercial surrogacy is legal in California.
You hire an agency, use IVF, pay a surrogate, get a parentage order, and the child is born American.
There is no federal limit on how many times you can do this.
China bans the practice at home, so the money just moves to states that allow it.
Crazy!
BREAKING: Chinese billionaire Xu Bo is revealed to have fathered 100–300 children through American surrogates, granting them U.S. citizenship at birth.
33 YEARS AGO:
On September 14th 1993, Michael Jackson marches with the Russian soldiers in Moscow.
During his 1993 trip to Moscow, Michael visited military personnel and barracks, met with officers, signed autographs, and participated in a short march.
Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge
Although refurbished during the reign of his daughter and named ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge’, it was Henry VIII who ordered the building of this hunting lodge at Chingford in Epping Forest near London during 1543. Here are some images of the exterior and interior of this fine example of a Tudor hunting lodge.
As featured in ‘Henry VIII in 100 Objects’ paperback available from Pen & Sword Books with a 50% discount (offer ends 30 November 2026).
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Available in the UK @Waterstones
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🚨 NEW: The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland say the future of their nations "belongs in the European Union" as they call for independence from the UK
Michael had a guest, and his children were too loud. He repeatedly asked them to be a bit quieter, but to no avail.
"When the noise escalated again Michael looked at me with a smile and shook his head. He turned to Prince and Paris and said, "You know you guys, I would've been spanked by now." I asked him if that was really the case and he said "Absolutely. My dad used to beat us a lot. When we were kids I remember when he'd come through the gate after work, all of us would run and hide. We were so scared of him. I made a promise to myself years ago that I would never spank my children or make them afraid of me the way I was afraid of my father."
😭💔 Janet Jackson Didn’t Return as Patricia Because of What Happened With Michael Jackson
Janet Jackson’s absence from Why Did I Get Married Again? has fans asking one BIG question: Where is Patricia?! 😭
Janet famously played Dr. Patricia Agnew in the first two movies, but her real-life connection to the franchise became incredibly emotional when her brother, the legendary Michael Jackson, passed away while Why Did I Get Married Too? was being filmed in 2009.
Production was temporarily halted, and Tyler Perry and the cast rallied around Janet during one of the most heartbreaking moments of her life. Perry later recalled how the entire set came together to support her. ❤️🩹
Janet ultimately returned and finished the movie, but that experience was understandably deeply emotional. She later described returning to work as difficult and draining.
Now, Patricia is missing from Why Did I Get Married Again? — and while the movie gives Patricia a storyline involving a lecture tour and grief, Tyler Perry has said the real-life reason Janet wasn’t able to return was her Las Vegas residency and scheduling conflicts. He also said she said returning to the scene wouldn’t be right because of what happened with her brother during the last film.
Knowing everything Janet experienced with this franchise makes her absence hit a little differently. 🥹💔
Patricia was definitely missed! ❤️ #JanetJackson #WhyDidIGetMarried
🚨HE COOKED FOR THEM. THEN HE SAVED THEM. 🕊️
Benjamin "Keefe" Clark was a former U.S. Marine turned corporate chef, cooking meals every day for over 250 Fiduciary Trust employees on the 96th floor of the South Tower.
When the North Tower was struck, he didn't wait for instructions. He swept the entire floor, personally making sure every single person got out and started heading down.
He kept going, floor by floor, even stopping to help a woman in a wheelchair on the 78th floor with three other workers. That's the last place he was ever seen.
"My son was a marine," his mother said. "So you know he wasn't going to leave anybody behind."
He's credited with helping save hundreds of lives. He never made it out himself. 💔
25 years later. Never forget. 🇺🇸🙏
On September 11, a fire chief climbed 37 floors of the South Tower with 50 pounds of gear on his back and reached the exact floor where the plane had hit.
He got on the radio.
His voice was out of breath, and completely calm. He said the fire was manageable. Two hoses. They could knock it down.
One minute later, the tower fell.
His name was Orio Palmer. Battalion Chief, Battalion 7, FDNY. Forty-five years old. A wife named Debbie and three kids, Dana, Keith, and Alyssa, in Valley Stream, Long Island.
Before he was a firefighter he was an electrical engineer who specialized in elevator repair. That detail is why this story exists.
When Palmer arrived at the South Tower after the second plane hit, every elevator in the building was dead. The impact was on the 78th floor. Hundreds of people were trapped above and around it. And the only way up was stairs. Seventy-eight flights, in gear, in smoke.
Palmer found a stalled elevator, got into the mechanism, and fixed it.
He rode it to the 41st floor. Then he started climbing.
He was a marathon runner. He had run the New York City Marathon and dedicated his first one, in 1989, to his daughter Dana's first birthday. He had won the fire department's physical fitness award five times. He was the fittest man in the department, and he was climbing 37 floors in bunker gear with an air tank on his back.
His radio transmissions were recorded. You can follow him up the building.
9:32. The 55th floor.
9:45. The 74th floor. He reports damage to the stairwell walls. No serious smoke yet. He tells the men coming up behind him to be careful.
Somewhere around the 75th floor he meets Fire Marshal Ron Bucca, who has climbed every step from the ground. Also a marathon runner. They go up together.
9:52. The 78th floor.
The sky lobby. The impact zone. The place where roughly 200 people had been waiting for elevators when a Boeing 767 came through the wall.
Almost nobody had been able to get that high that morning. Palmer and Bucca and a few men of Ladder 15 behind them were the only firefighters who reached the point of impact in either tower.
Palmer keyed his radio. Out of breath. Steady.
"Battalion Seven. Ladder 15. We've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines."
Then he reported what he was standing in. Numerous 10-45s, Code One. That is fire department language. Code One means dead. He was telling command that there were many dead civilians around him, and then, in the same breath, telling them where to send the water.
He called for more companies. More hose. More men.
At 9:58, he and the others freed a group of civilians who were trapped in an elevator on that floor.
At 9:59, the South Tower collapsed.
Orio Palmer, Ron Bucca, and everyone with them died in it.
The tapes of the radio traffic were kept sealed for months. When the Fire Department finally played them for the families, Palmer's widow Debbie went in afraid of what she would hear.
She came out and said the only thing she had heard in her husband's voice was that he was working.
No fear. No panic. Just a man on the 78th floor with two fires in front of him and a plan for putting them out.
At home they called him the Music Man. He played guitar. He made up silly songs. He invented fairy dances for his little girls. He took the neighborhood kids fishing.
Debbie died in 2021. His children have seven kids of their own now, on Long Island. They are the grandchildren of a man who fixed an elevator in a burning building so he could get closer to the fire.
Here is what that recording is.
It is the sound of how far up hope physically climbed that morning.
An electrician who could not stand to see a broken elevator. A runner who could not stand to stop. A chief who could not stand to leave people up there.
Seventy-eight floors.
He got there. He reported in. He called for water.
And the last thing anyone ever heard from him was a man who thought he could still win. 🇺🇸
Astounding footage from 9:59 AM yesterday as the South Tower collapses almost on top of ABC7 reporter N.J. Burkett - and the crowd running in terror from the cloud following them.
In Mali 🇲🇱, a team of Malian specialists at Gabriel Touré University Hospital in Bamako made medical history by successfully separating conjoined twin girls who shared a bladder and colon.
The twins, born on August 29, 2026, underwent the complex procedure with a multidisciplinary medical team and continued receiving care after the successful separation. A remarkable moment for Mali’s medical professionals and healthcare system!
A dying cattle ranch in the Mexican desert got handed to 47 bison last year. Within months the land started repairing itself, because bison and cattle treat the same ground in opposite ways.
Cattle camp. They park near water, eat everything in a radius, and compact the soil until rain runs off instead of soaking in. A century of that turned this stretch of Coahuila into crust and shrub.
Bison roam.
They graze a patch and move on. Their hooves punch through the hardened crust so water soaks in again. They eat the dead grass that fuels wildfires. Their dung pulls in beetles that aerate the soil, and seeds hitch rides in their fur and get planted miles away. Every behavior that made bison a nightmare for ranchers is exactly what degraded desert soil needs.
The animal is a walking restoration crew.
The results showed up fast. Camera traps at the reserve are catching pumas, lynx, and collared peccaries moving back in. Local birds are already lining their nests with shed bison fur.
Hunters wiped bison from this region around 160 years ago. The herd that fixed it descends from just 23 animals brought to Chihuahua in 2009.
Sixteen years from 23 bison to a desert that heals itself.
Nearly 4,000 years old—and every tiny symbol had a purpose.
This gold necklace belonged to Princess Khenmet, also known as Khnumit, of Egypt’s 12th Dynasty. Found on her mummy at Dahshur, it is inlaid with turquoise, carnelian and lapis lazuli.
Its miniature amulets represent ideas including life, power, stability and protection—turning the necklace into far more than decoration.
c. 1932–1898 BCE • Egyptian Museum, Cairo
"We bled Africa for four and a half centuries. We looted their raw materials, then we told lies that the Africans are good for nothing. In the name of religion we destroyed their culture. And after being made rich at their expense, we now steal their brains through miseducation and propaganda to prevent them from enacting Black retribution against
US." ~ Jacques Rene Chirac, former
President of France 🇫🇷