An inspiring new book by Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow reveals a few instances when President Obama personally helped struggling Americans whose stories reached him as part of a daily ritual to read ten letters from average citizens every day.
At her Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005, Kamael Sugrim listened intently to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. A year after he was first diagnosed with cancer, Jobs told the graduates that time is limited, so have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Sugrim, a business grad, had her future life of prosperity assured, but Jobs' words never left her. She took them to heart and changed her life.
Harold Hackett has spent two decades throwing bottles containing messages into the Atlantic in the hope that he may be able to contact people from far off shores. Since 1996 he has received over 3,100 responses from people all over the world.
Thousands attended the formal dedication Sunday of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall – an emotional day for those, including President Obama, who came to honor the slain civil rights leader, calling him a man who stirred our conscience and thereby helped make our union more perfect.
The latest artistic stunt by Improv Everywhere featured a constructed custom wooden lectern with a megaphone attached and a sign that read, "Say Something Nice." See what happens when New Yorkers are given the opportunity to amplify their voices and "say something nice."
A store clerk's mistake led to a $25 million lottery win for an unemployed Georgia woman. Kathy Scruggs, 44, asked for the sale of a Mega Millions ticket, but when she was handed a Powerball drawing along with the first ticket, she accepted them both.
In the final stages of cancer, an Arkansas grandmother was unable to hear her grandson in his marching band, playing the trumpet that she had bought him. Instead, the band came to her -- all 120 members with drums and horns and cymbals -- playing a concert beneath her window and granting her last wish.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, activist Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and rights activist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen share the honor of being awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday. They were chosen for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work.
A little Brazilian girl born with a cleft palate often hid her face behind a doll. But 24 hours after Operation Smile's life-changing surgery, a cameraman turned around the viewfinder, to let her see her new smile for the first time. The amazement in her eyes is unmistakable.
When the former drug addict and biker thug, Sam Childers, (along with his former stripper wife) got a hold of some old-time religion, he became an unlikely hero to over a thousand children in war-torn Sudan. He is now the subject of the new movie "Machine Gun Preacher" starring Gerard Butler.
Looking out of the windows of Seattle Children's hospital, patients eagerly search for new names painted on steel beams by union workers constructing a 7-story building across the street. It all started a few weeks ago when one of the ironworkers painted a beam in tribute to a teenager who had died at the hospital. Then, It went viral.
A 2-week-old baby girl, her mother and grandmother were pulled alive from the rubble of an apartment building on Tuesday in a dramatic rescue, nearly 48 hours after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake toppled some 2,000 buildings in eastern Turkey. Weary rescuers clapped and cheered as the baby was removed from the wreckage.
Most people think the world is more violent than ever, with more wars and murders, but in reality, we've never had it so peaceful. That's the thesis of a new book by prominent Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. It uses graphs and statistics to reveal dramatic reductions in war deaths, family violence, racism, rape, and murder.
A big tipper is spreading wealth and joy in the city of Madison. A customer at Vasillio's Greek restaurant left a $1,000.00 tip on just a $31.94 bill.
The Make-a-Wish Foundation teamed up with "America's Next Top Model" photographer Nigel Barker to fulfill a shared dream of four teenagers — to become models for a day.
A group of New York firefighters have always credited bookkeeper Josephine Harris with saving their lives after the World Trade Center attack. Nine years later they would return the favor, as a final salute.
UPDATE: The heroes who saved a biker from beneath a burning car have described the moment they dropped tools to leap to the rescue of the trapped Utah college student.
A man was incredibly lucky to be alive after his car flipped into a river near the Idaho-Washington border. The 20 year-old squeezed through the rear seats and into the trunk of his two-door Hyundai Tiburon as chill, fast-flowing waters engulfed all but 6 inches of head room, creating a life-saving air pocket.
Two social psychologists from UC-Berkeley, both avid basketball players themselves, recently analyzed 90 hours of televised pro basketball play. They looked at every team and every player in the league and concluded the teams that touch the most win the most -- and the individual players who touch the most perform the best.
Japanese soldiers discovered a crying 4-month-old baby buried beneath the rubble. She was swept from the arms of her parents by the tsunami but reunited with them shortly after her rescue.
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