This image is from today. A Black woman sits on the DC metro as masked white nationalists prepare to march on our nation's capital.
This is America's 250th anniversary. REUTERS/Cheney Orr
A woman who had been blind for 13 years bent down to kiss her guide dog, hit her head on a table, and woke up the next morning able to see again.
Lisa Reid, from Auckland, New Zealand, lost her sight at the age of 11 due to a tumour pressing on her optic nerve.
By 2000, she had been completely blind for over a decade, living with the support of her guide dog, Ami, and New Zealand's Blind Foundation.
On the evening of 16 November 2000, the 24-year-old bent down to kiss Ami goodnight and knocked her head against a coffee table. It didn't seem serious. She went to bed as normal.
When she woke the next morning at 9:30am, she could see. She kept it to herself for a few hours at first, content to play with Ami in the back yard.
Then she called her mother and read aloud a health warning from a cigarette packet down the phone.
Auckland Hospital eye surgeon Ross McKay confirmed she had regained 80 per cent vision in her left eye.
He had no explanation for the recovery and said he had never encountered a similar case in 25 years as an eye specialist.
"For some reason she's got her sight back, and don't ask me for an explanation, because I don't have one," he said.
Among the most emotional moments of her recovery was seeing her brother for the first time since he was a boy.
"He was a man, with a goatee and everything. My brother's a man," she said. When she saw her mother, she told her: "You look the same but older."
"It's the little things," Reid later reflected. "Like the colour of the grass, how blue the sky is, the things we all take for granted."
She went on to write a memoir about her experience, titled Angel Eyes.
A young woman named MacKenzie Tuttle graduated from Princeton in 1992 with a degree in English. One of her professors was Toni Morrison, who later described her as one of the finest creative writing students she had ever taught.
After graduation, MacKenzie took a job at the New York investment firm D. E. Shaw. There she met a colleague named Jeff Bezos, who had an ambitious idea: selling books on the internet.
She didn’t laugh at the idea.
They married in 1993, and the following year drove across the country to the Seattle area to build what would become Amazon.
In the beginning, there was no global empire.
There was a garage.
MacKenzie handled accounting, wrote business materials, answered customer emails and phone calls, and packed orders alongside Jeff. Like many startups, everyone did whatever needed to be done.
As Amazon grew, MacKenzie stepped away from day-to-day operations to raise their four children while continuing to pursue her own passion for writing.
Her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, won the American Book Award. She later published a second novel and quietly built a respected literary career.
Meanwhile, the story of Amazon became one of the most famous business stories ever told.
Jeff Bezos became one of the world’s most recognizable entrepreneurs.
MacKenzie’s role was rarely part of the public narrative.
She never seemed interested in changing that.
What many people don’t know is that she also knew financial hardship.
Her family filed for bankruptcy while she was still a student, and she has spoken about the kindness of people who helped her through difficult times—acts of generosity she never forgot.
In 2019, after her divorce, MacKenzie Scott received approximately 4% of Amazon’s shares.
Almost immediately, she made a decision that surprised the world.
She signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate the majority of her wealth during her lifetime.
Then she did something even more unusual.
Instead of building a massive public foundation or attaching her name to buildings, she began giving away billions of dollars through large, unrestricted grants.
Universities.
Food banks.
Housing organizations.
Rural communities.
Women’s health initiatives.
Tribal colleges.
Climate organizations.
Small nonprofits that had never imagined receiving gifts of that size.
Many recipients reportedly thought the phone calls were scams.
They weren’t.
Since 2019, MacKenzie Scott has donated tens of billions of dollars to thousands of organizations, making her one of the most significant philanthropists of the modern era.
Despite giving away enormous sums, her fortune has remained substantial because of Amazon’s continued growth.
The woman who once packed Amazon’s first orders is now helping fund opportunities for millions of people she will probably never meet.
She never asked for buildings in her name.
She never demanded headlines.
Sometimes the greatest legacy isn’t the company you help build.
It’s what you choose to do with the success that follows.
In July 2013, five-year-old Jocelyn Rojas vanished while playing near her home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, triggering an urgent community search.
Among the volunteers were 15-year-old Temar Boggs and his friend Chris Garcia, who decided they couldn't just stand by.
The two teenagers grabbed their bicycles and joined the effort, riding through nearby streets while keeping an eye out for anything unusual.
Not long into their search, they noticed a young girl matching Jocelyn's description sitting inside a vehicle.
Convinced they had found her, the boys began pursuing the car on their bikes, staying behind it for roughly 15 minutes and refusing to give up despite being vastly outmatched.
Realizing he was being followed, the driver eventually stopped and let the little girl out of the vehicle before fleeing the scene.
Jocelyn was found unharmed and safely reunited with her family.
Police later arrested 73-year-old Troyer Robert Glass in connection with the abduction.
Temar Boggs' determination and quick thinking transformed an ordinary summer afternoon into an extraordinary act of courage, proving that sometimes heroes are simply teenagers who choose to act when others might hesitate.
July 3, 2022. Moss Point, Mississippi. A car carrying 3 teenage girls drives down the I-10 boat launch and plunges straight into the Pascagoula River.
The driver later tells police she was following her GPS. She never realized it was guiding her straight into the water. By the time she understood what was happening, the car was already floating.
Then it began to sink.
The vehicle drifted farther from shore as the girls scrambled onto the roof. It was the middle of the night. The river was dark, deep, and known for something few people think about until it matters.
Alligators.
Nearby, 16-year-old Corion Evans heard desperate screams coming from the water.
He didn't stop to think.
He dropped his phone, kicked off his shoes, pulled off his shirt, and jumped in.
Later, he explained it simply: "I can't let these people die. They need to get out the water."
That was all he was thinking about.
The car was disappearing beneath the surface. The girls were terrified. The current was moving. The darkness made everything worse.
Corion swam roughly 25 yards out into the river and reached them.
His friend, Karon Bradley, known as KJ, followed right behind him. Together they helped the girls stay above water on top of the sinking vehicle.
But Corion didn't stop there.
One by one, he began swimming them back toward shore.
Every trip drained more strength from his body. His legs burned. His lungs fought for air. Yet he kept going.
Two girls made it safely to land.
The third girl couldn't swim and remained stranded when Moss Point Police Officer Gary Mercer arrived and entered the water to help.
Mercer reached her and started bringing her back. Then panic took over.
The frightened girl grabbed onto him and pulled him underwater.
Suddenly, the rescuer needed rescuing.
Corion saw the officer struggling.
He was already exhausted. He had already spent his energy saving others. Most people would have stayed on shore.
Instead, he turned around and swam back out.
He reached Officer Mercer and helped pull him toward safety until the water became shallow enough to stand.
All four people survived.
The officer and the three girls were transported to the hospital and later recovered. Officials publicly stated that without Corion's actions, the outcome could have been tragic.
The city honored him. The Mississippi Senate formally recognized him. His mother said she was proud that he thought about saving others before himself.
When reporters asked whether he was scared, Corion gave an answer nobody forgot.
"Anything could've been in that water. But I wasn't thinking about it."
And maybe that's what makes courage so remarkable.
Not the absence of fear.
But choosing to help anyway.
Four people are alive today because a 16-year-old boy saw strangers in danger and decided their lives were worth risking his own for.
"If I have given birth to six children, then I will bring out six children."
Those words were the only thing keeping a young mother moving as she ran barelegged into a roaring furnace. Six children were trapped inside a house that was quickly turning to ash.
The air was thick with toxic black smoke, the wooden stairs were collapsing, and the heat was melting everything in sight. Any normal human being would have backed away, frozen in terror.
But Emma Schols was not thinking like a normal human being. She was thinking like a mother.
It was an ordinary night in the small town of Edsbyn, Sweden, when the thirty-one-year-old mother woke up to a nightmare. Thick smoke filled her bedroom. Within seconds, she realized that her entire home was on fire. There was no time to wait for firefighters, and there was no time to think about her own safety. Barefoot and completely unprotected, Emma ran straight into the blazing heat.
The fire was aggressive, but Emma was more determined. She forced her way up the burning staircase to reach the bedrooms where her six children were sleeping. One by one, she gathered them. To protect the youngest ones from the spreading flames, she had to make the terrifying decision to drop them out of a second-floor window into safety.
Even when the staircase finally crumbled into ash, cutting off her exit, Emma refused to stop. She went back into the inferno four separate times. She inhaled thick, poisonous smoke and felt the fire consume her skin, but she kept moving. She pulled every single one of her six children out of that burning house. Because of her incredible bravery, not a single one of her children suffered a single scratch.
Emma paid a terrible price for her heroism. She collapsed immediately after the rescue and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors put her into a medical coma to save her life. Fire had destroyed ninety-three percent of her body, leaving her with severe, life-threatening burns. She spent more than two months fighting for her life in that hospital bed and underwent more than twenty complex surgeries.
When Emma finally opened her eyes and gained consciousness, she could not see her own reflection, and she could not feel her limbs. But her mind was focused on only one thing. She looked at the doctors and asked, "Are my children okay?"
Hearing that all six of them were safe and unharmed was the only medicine she truly needed. In the year 2020, Sweden officially named Emma the Hero of the Year.
Today, her body carries deep scars from that awful night, but she views them as medals of honor rather than marks of tragedy.
She proved that when a mother loves her children, she becomes completely unstoppable.
Love did not just survive the fire that night. Love won.
A lady who took a NYC trash can was fired from her job. But cops around the country are allowed to resign from their jobs after they are charged with domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual assault of a minor , etc.
Loud about the wrong things.
To George and Laura, Bill and Hillary — we're grateful for your friendship, counsel, and devotion to this country. And to Joe and Jill, thank you for being on this journey with us.
The Obama Presidential Center is finally opening!
Tune in today on https://t.co/GYkEOK8EuT starting at 11am CT as Michelle and I share what this moment means to us and celebrate with friends, family, and members of the community in Chicago.
UPDATE to the dad who took his two young girls in QT women’s restroom & had the cops called on him by a man.Tyler said the cops got there & explained he did nothing wrong & they made the man leave.They calmed the little girls & the staff gave them ICEEs.The manager Melissa rocked
OMG!! I love everything about this, especially the “I love you” clips at the end & graduation. Congrats! ☺️ Our son is only 2 - I’m not ready. I need time to slow down a bit. 🥹 💚
This Administration has removed the achievements of the Air Force’s first female Thunderbird pilot Retired Colonel Nicole Malachowski. The removal of these articles have sparked criticism because her place in Air Force history is not a Political slogan it’s well documented.
This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.
More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.
And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.
Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.
The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.
Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.
We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.
https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl
I know it’s become pretty cliche and cringey to talk about at this point but if you’re under like 25 I cannot stress enough how one time Obama wore a tan suit and people spent a week arguing over whether or not it was demeaning to the Oval Office and they were serious about it.
Weak men are obsessed with loyalty. Real leaders are obsessed with results.
The best commanders I ever served under didn’t care what color you were or how you pray.
They didn’t care if you were a man or a woman.
They cared if you could lead soldiers and accomplish the mission.