The man who invented the operation that saves babies born with blue-baby syndrome had no medical degree, no college degree, and was listed on the payroll as a JANITOR.
He guided the first operation from a stool behind the surgeon's shoulder, telling him where to cut.
Vivien Thomas. He had been saving to study medicine when the 1929 crash wiped out his savings and the bank holding them.
He took a job as a lab assistant at Vanderbilt for a janitor's wage, because that was the classification available.
Within a couple of years he was running experimental surgery — developing techniques, performing operations on his own, training surgeons.
He moved to Johns Hopkins with Alfred Blalock in 1941, where he was still paid as a janitor and had to enter through a back door.
He was the only Black man in that building not carrying a mop.
He worked out the surgical fix for tetralogy of Fallot — the condition killing infants who turned blue and died — and built the instruments for it.
The first operation on a child was in 1944. Blalock, who had never done the procedure, asked Thomas to stand behind him and talk him through it.
The surgeons on the paper became world famous. Thomas was not credited.
Hopkins hung his portrait in 1971 and gave him an honorary doctorate in 1976. Generations of surgeons he personally trained insisted on it.
He was paid as a cleaner while inventing heart surgery.
Auschwitz couldn't kill her. So she gave birth to a rock legend.
Flora Klein was 19 when she was thrown into a cattle car and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered there in just months.
She watched her parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins her entire family walk into the gas chambers. Only she and one brother walked out alive.
She was 19 when her world was erased. She lived another 74 years carrying it.
After liberation, she spent years in displaced persons camps with nowhere to go. In 1949, in Haifa, Israel, she gave birth to a son Chaim Witz. The marriage didn't last.
In 1958, with no English, no money, and an 8-year-old boy, she got on a ship to America. Alone.
Washington Heights. Then Queens. She worked brutal hours in New York's garment factories, stitching clothes piece by piece to keep them alive. She never remarried. She was fiercely protective of the tiny family she had left.
She never talked about the camps. Never explained the nightmares, the silences, why she saved every scrap of food and couldn't throw anything away.
She didn't have to. Her life said it all.
From her, her son learned two rules: Nothing is impossible. And survival means outworking everyone else.
Those rules built a rock empire.
Chaim Witz became Gene Simmons the fire-breathing co-founder of KISS.
Everything I am is because of my mother, Gene said. She survived hell and still had the strength to raise me. Nothing I've done compares to what she survived.
For almost 60 years she refused to speak publicly. Then in her 80s, she finally did testifying for Holocaust museums because survivors were dying and denial was rising. She wanted her grandchildren to know where they came from.
She died in December 2018 at 93, surrounded by family.
Her obituary read Gene Simmons' mother.
But she was so much more. She was Flora Klein the 19-year-old girl who should have died in Auschwitz, and instead survived to raise a legend.
A 7-year-old girl was riding her bike when a stranger pulled up, grabbed her and forced her into his car.
Her aunt, Alecia Swejkoski, saw it happen and sprinted toward the vehicle.
Alecia threw herself halfway through the driver’s side window and started fighting him while her niece was still trapped inside. The man punched her, grabbed for the wheel and violently jerked the car forward and backward, trying to throw her off and get away.
But Alecia kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other fighting to get his grip off the little girl.
Then another driver, Scott Van Luven, saw what was happening and pulled his vehicle in front of the car to block the suspect in. He rushed over, helped pull the man out and held him there until police arrived.
Alecia was hurt, but her niece got out safely.
Because Alecia refused to let go and Scott chose to stop and help, that little girl made it safely back to her family.
Alright white people, let’s settle this. I'm truly sorry if I offended anyone while I was wearing my "PALEFACES" shirt. I thought I was honoring you.
If you’re offended by the shirt, than ask yourself why.??
can’t believe this angel turns 42 today, still believe she owns the fountain of youth, jokes aside i’m beyond proud of her because she's still herself and i keep seeing the little Avril in the beautiful ocean eyes of this woman.
happy birthday mama 👑
A mother woke up around 4 a.m. to find flames blocking the only way out of her second-story apartment.
She grabbed her two daughters, ran to a bedroom window and started screaming for help. Nearby, Joe Hollins was sleeping outside with his wife when he heard her.
Joe ran toward the burning building and stood beneath the window while the mother made an impossible decision: she was going to have to drop her children to a complete stranger.
She lowered her 16-month-old daughter first, then her 8-year-old, and Joe managed to catch them both safely. With the fire still spreading, the mother eventually had no choice but to jump too.
The family lost nearly everything in that fire, but because one man sleeping outside nearby chose to run toward the danger, they all made it out alive.
His name is Joe Hollins, and he deserves some recognition for what he did that night.