Ben Wilde* was a popular and academic 14-year-old when he received a chatty Facebook message from a girl he’d never met, who claimed she was friends with someone on his school football team.
The pair ended up corresponding online about what Ben calls ‘all the normal stuff’; family, school, friends.
Nothing seemed remotely out of the ordinary — until a few weeks later, when the ‘girl’ revealed she was, in fact, a grown man. Now armed with reams of personal
Nothing prepared me for this extraordinary phenomenon.
With the moon bouncing just enough light off the snow to light my path, I gaze up at the Northern Lights for as long as I can withstand the cold. It’s -27C, I’m wearing six layers of clothing and my hair and eyelashes are coated in frost.
‘I’m here,’ I tell myself, alone in the silence as the group I’m with climbs back on the bus.
The aurora borealis occurs when energy waves
When I first heard that Israeli civilians were being massacred on the country’s Gaza border, I thought of my friend Amir Tibon. Amir is an exceptionally talented journalist who is fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and who has devoted his life and skills to humanistic coverage of what can often be a dehumanizing region. His writing includes award-winning reporting on efforts to achieve a two-state solution and a biography of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
On Sunday, I didn’t
A Marine who was severely injured during the U.S. military’s evacuation from Afghanistan in August 2021 recalled an awkward encounter he had with President Biden after he arrived at a hospital for treatment in the United States.
Describing his recovery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who lost an arm and leg as a result of the suicide bombing that took place outside the Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport, said he was greeted by a number
When Esmae Hodgetts was suddenly struck down by a banging headache, the 20-year-old thought nothing of it.
Nor did she consider anything sinister was to blame for the minor twinge felt in her shoulder and neck the week before.
So, obviously, Esmae, who prided herself on being fit and healthy, was disturbed to discover the true cause of her agony — a stroke which has turned the dental nurse’s life upside down.
Although considered an affliction unique to the older
Big moments in this Ashes not involving Jonny Bairstow have been few and far between and he was in the thick of it again on Friday just when England seemed to have taken full advantage of Australian timidity.
It looked certain England would have a big first innings lead in this final Test when 18-year-old substitute George Ealham summoned up the spirit of Gary Pratt to seemingly run out Steve Smith with a brilliant piece of fielding.
Bairstow had taken
A woman who beat terminal cancer twice and survived a near-fatal car crash has revealed how she now lives life to the fullest after cheating death.
When Aria started experiencing painful flare-ups under her right arm, she thought a typical infection had taken hold – but these were actually mini tumors.
The Los Angeles native was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a blood cancer, and underwent 16 brutal surgeries and multiple rounds of chemo and radiotherapy.
After being given the all-clear,
Microbial stress can be a boon for young trees.
Saplings grown in soil microbes that have experienced drought, cold or heat are more likely to survive when faced with those same conditions, researchers report in the May 26 Science. And follow-up tests suggest that the microbes’ protective relationship with trees may linger beyond initial planting.
The team’s findings could aid massive tree planting efforts by giving new saplings the best chance of survival over the long run, says Ian
In his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway offers a succinct, highly quoted answer to the question of how a person goes bankrupt. “Two ways,” he writes. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
“Gradually, then suddenly” may also describe how Mortal Kombat, a game with precisely nothing to do with Hemingway (although Motaro, the Centaurian sub-boss of the third game in the series, looks a little bit like a bull), came to exist. And shook up both the fighting
On the afternoon of March 3, 2020, Governor Mike DeWine stepped to a lectern inside the Ohio statehouse to announce his most difficult pandemic decision. Ohio, the governor announced, would bar most spectators from the upcoming Arnold Classic, a bodybuilding and fitness festival hosted annually by Arnold Schwarzenegger that draws a quarter of a million people from 80 countries to Ohio’s capital city. “Everything in life is a risk,” DeWine said. “We all make calculated decisions. We don’t eliminate
