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KINDNESS • Upworthy
Two 11-year-olds finished 50 free lawns and earned a surpriseTwo 11-year-olds in Gadsden, Alabama, mowed 50 lawns for free, and the man who challenged them to do it showed up with new equipment. Ja'Torrian Taylor and Tevin Rice, founders of TJ & JT Mowing Service, completed the 50 Yard Challenge created by Rodney Smith Jr., cutting grass for the elderly and people who could not manage their own yards. Smith, known as the Lawnmower Man, learned the pair had been sharing a single mower a neighbor had donated. He drove down from Huntsville and handed each boy a mower, a blower and a trimmer. "These are good, hard-working kids that deserve some gratitude," he told KMBC. Smith started mowing lawns for free in 2015 and went viral the next year helping a 93-year-old woman. As of May 2023, 4,588 kids had joined his challenge. "Remember, this is not the end; it's just the beginning," Smith told the boys.
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
He grilled sausages for bagpiping strangers. Now he's Miami-bound.An estimated 30,000 Scottish football fans descended on Boston last week, and the city is still recovering, in the fondest possible way. It began at 6:30am, when a crew staying at an Airbnb roused a quiet Massachusetts suburb with bagpipes. Mike Morrison, the neighbor across the street, filmed it. Instead of calling anyone, he grilled the jet-lagged fans some sausages. Airbnb is now sending him to Miami for Scotland's June 24 match against Brazil so he can reunite with the Tartan Army, who handed him an honorary membership certificate and repeated offers of a morning beer. The Samuel Adams Boston Taproom drank through 4,000 pints in four days and needed four emergency restocks. Sgt. Connor Hardy juggled a soccer ball in full tactical gear, and his captain bought him a kilt after the video spread. The Providence police chief, watching 6,000 Scots prepare to leave, said simply, "We simply don't want them to leave."
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NATURE • Good News Network
5,000 flamingo chicks hatched on a lake that nearly vanishedAbout 5,000 flamingo chicks have hatched this season at Lake Tuz in central Turkiye, a salt lake that had almost completely dried out five years ago. The lake, once the country's second largest, lost thousands of greater flamingo hatchlings in 2021 when high temperatures and scarce rainfall left the lakebed bare. Drone footage from June 10th shows the young birds clustered under their parents, learning to feed and to watch for threats. The recovery follows a 2022 water supply project that pumps water into the wetlands where the chicks nest, located about 90 miles southeast of Ankara. "The current number is more than double that of last year, which was more than double that of the year before," said Fahri Tunç, President of the Bird's Eye View and Ecology Association. He expects this year's brood to make up for the earlier losses. The lake has no outlet. It waits on the spring rain.
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DELIGHT • NPR Stories
Childhood sweethearts said real vows, and the audience explodedOscar Diaz and Janelly Mendoza were legally married on stage on June 11, after a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Public Theater's Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Their officiant was Francis Jue, who plays Friar Lawrence in the production. The couple, who have known each other since childhood, traveled from Laredo, Texas, where they met associate artistic director Saheem Ali. Ali set his Romeo and Juliet at the U.S.-Mexican border, and the pair told him about a local ritual where a Mexican citizen and a U.S. citizen marry on a bridge, each standing in their own country. He proposed a real wedding to mirror the play's. "Just regular people like us don't do that stuff," Mendoza said. They brushed it off, until Ali messaged again. A real wedding or vow renewal follows every performance this summer, 32 in all. Diaz and Mendoza knelt to say their vows, and the audience exploded. "It's real now," Mendoza said.
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DELIGHT • Upworthy
A man with 13 cats names strangers' kittens for freeA TikTok creator known online as Unc, who posts under the handle @UncGotThaMunchies, has become an unlikely consultant for strangers who cannot name their kittens. He is the father of 13 cats, with names that follow a logic only he fully controls. There is Hersberry, because she's berry pecial. There is Midas, because there Midas well be no other kitties on the planet. When a stranger sent a photo of an orange kitten asking for help, Unc delivered. "When people see dis kitty right here, they will say, 'Oh, dis kitty is so beautiful. Oh, dis kitty is so pecial.' So I think his name should be O'dis," he said. Another tabby's owner wrote that the universe had sent her a kitten with no name. Unc said he'd had a premonition this would happen. He named her Won'Da. The owner replied in the comments: "Won'Da it is!! Thank you!!"
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With love, The Editor
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