Three long-time chums who made a pact to split the pot if one of them ever won the lottery got their payday last week, Georgia Lottery officials announced on Thursday. "I was just as tickled for them as I was for myself," Kenneth Wilson told NBC News. "We just had a verbal agreement and I felt like that had to be honored."
Since leaving his job as Microsoft's China business development director in 1999 and dedicating his life to improving global literacy, New York-based John Wood has put books in the hands of more than 7.8 million children in 10 countries in Asia and Africa.
Since the November election, 240 California prisoners facing potential life sentences have been set free. That's because voters changed California's tough three strikes sentencing law, which sent thousands of people to prison for terms of 25 years to life for minor, nonviolent crimes. The campaign's success is due in no small part to Sue Reams. Her son was one of those released, after 17 years in prison.
Twenty years ago, Harris Rosen had amassed a fortune with his seven Orlando hotels and decided it was time to give back. He targeted the local crime-infested neighborhood of Tangelo Park where the high school graduation rate was 25 percent. He gave every parent a daycare and pre-K program, but didn't stop there.
A mother who is recovering in the hospital after losing both legs below the knee while watching the Boston Marathon went from being devastated to feeling better. The woman and her daughter -- who is also recovering in the hospital -- were visited by U.S. Marines, men who understand what it's like to lose limbs.
Six-year-old Brantley Rogers severely injured his eye last week and was nervous about returning to class with an eye patch. But his Jacksonville, Florida kindergarten teacher made a world of difference for him when she crafted eye patches for all the students in the class.
A retired teacher, who has poured her $900,000 retirement nest egg into a technology classroom on wheels for underprivileged children, has gained an outpouring of national support, after her story aired last week on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.
A National Guardsman lost both legs in Iraq, but found a new mission helping others. It was a life-altering injury, but from the beginning, Dale Beatty had a positive attitude about it. Beatty created an organization Purple Heart Homes after a Builders Association -- of which he was a member -- helped him build a wheelchair-accessible home with wide doorways and roll-in bathrooms.
Richard A. Herman lived in the Watergate for more than 40 years and was a longtime patron of the arts, but the shy railroad heir was virtually unknown in Washington social circles for much of his long life. Family Matters of Greater Washington today announced that Herman, who died in November at 100, left the nonprofit organization 60 percent of his vast estate — $28 million, which the group says is one of the largest gifts ever to a local social service organization.
Typically, post office lines breed anger and frustration. But at the head of this queue on the campus of Penn State University in State College, Pa., you'll find nothing but joy. My mission is to make them have a little bit of levity on the way out and say, 'Hey, it's not so bad after all,' says Mike Herr. To that end, Mike lives by a simple motto: if you can't say something nice about someone, you're just not looking hard enough.
Albert Lexie, the longtime shoe shiner, has been giving back to others for years. He is Pittsburgh's hero in disguise. This man is a guardian angel who changes lives one dollar at a time. A shoe shine costs $5, but Lexie's customers have been generous with their tips and every cent goes to the hospital's children in need.
Former surgeon general C. Everett Koop died Monday in New Hampshire at age 96. Koop is justly renowned for spearheading the war on tobacco in the 1990s. But Koop was also pivotal, and saved just as many lives, because he forced the Republican Party to address the rampaging AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
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