As Americans continue to live longer,more of them are getting married in their golden years.Last year,2.4 percent of all newlyweds were over age 65,double the figure from just four years earlier.In the senoir citizen mecca of Florida,octogenarians applied for six times the number of marriage licenses in 2005 than they did in 1980. Frequently,these couples meet in retirement homes."It's a great catalyst for romance," said Paul Williams,of the Assisted Living Federation of America."We
're hearing about it more and more.
It Wasn't All Bad
The Domesday Book,one of the world's most valuable historical documents,is now online. Compiled in 1085, the priceless book is a comprehensive survey of 13,418 English locales during the time of William the Conqueror,complete with place names,records of land holdings,and estimated populations.Reproductions of its handwritten papge can be downloaded from the internet for $6.60 each,complete with a translation fron the original Latin."It is important that people of all ages should be able to read and use this national treasure,"said Adrian Ailes of Britian's National Archives."Everyone is related in some way to this piece of history."
Ten years after being falsely linked to the bombing at the Atlantic Olympis guard Richard Jewell has been honored for saving lives on that day.On July 27,1996,Jewell motoned people away from a suspicious backpack in Contenial Park just before it exploded,killing one person and injuring 111.Though never arrested or charged,Jewell was considered the top suspect for a time and was widely tarred with the crime in thousands of news reports around the globe.The real killer,Eric Rudolph,was caught in 2003."No one can rewrite history," said Jewell upon receiving his award from Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. "We can only learn from it."
The city of Boston is a little less messy,now that its streets have been equipped with 50 solar-powered, spill-proof,self-compressing garbage cans.With a capacity of 150 tons of trash,or five times that of a standard city receptacle,the device --called a BigBelly-is driven by photoelectric panels that generate power to motordriven compactors.Although about 200 BigBellys currently operate in the U.S. and Canada,this latest version can run for several weeks without sunlight."I'm more impressed with the public toilets," said one passerby,"but this comes a close second.
Dikembe Mutombo,the towering center of the Houston Rockets,has donated more than $15 million to build a 300 bed hospital in his hometown of Kinshasa,the capital of Congo. Mutombo, who has been named the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year four times, created a foundation for the effort in 1997 when his mother died;she couldn't get to a hospital because civil war had closed the streets.The new facility,which will open next month,will be named for her."I felt that building a hospital was the No.1 way to change things," Mutombo said,"where people can go and it is not a road to death but a road to return home.
A British verterinary nurse has become the first woman to ride horseback across the Australian Outback.Anna Hingley,24, made the 145-day trek with her boyfriend across 1,960 grueling miles,coping with poisonous snakes,swarms of flies,dense jungle,floods,and searing heat along the way.They were accompanied by filmmaker Tom Guerrier,who made a documentary about their trek and raised about $10,000 for charity in the process."I didn't realize when I started out how huge the country is," Hingley said."I didn't know what an epic journey it was going to be.It's been tough both physically and mentally,but there was never a moment when I thought,What the heck am I doing out here?"
Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Isabela,Puerto Rico,believed to be the world's oldest person,has celebrated his 115th birthday.Though hard of hearing and blind for the last four years,Mercado is otherwise in good health.He attributes his longevity to a healthy diet,no alcohol,and having given up smoking at the age of 90.At an outdoor birthday party,Mercado was serenaded by his favorite singer,Latin pop star Iris Chacon,and the mayor of Isabela declared that a residence for the elderly would be named in Mercado's nonor."I feel happy," Mercado said."I never thought I would last so long."
The Automat is back.The legendary restaurant chain formerly had 180 outlets in New York and Philadelphia where you could drop a coin in a slot.open a tiny glass door,and pull out a serving of pie,Macaroni and cheese,or other comfort food.But the last Automat closed in 1991,the victim of cost ineffectiveness.Now a new incarnation called Bamn! has opened in Manhattan.The offerings,once again in little windows boxes,include pizza dumplings and chicken nuggets,all priced between $1.50 and $2.50."After spending just $5.00 said one customer,"I was full and satisfied."
Cindy Kienow,a bartender at an Applebee's in Hutchinson,Kan., has been waiting on one of her steady customers for three years. He's always tipped her well,sometimes leaving as much as half the tab.Now he has outdone himself.The customer,whom Applebee's declined to name,gave her a $10,000 tip for a $26 meal last month. He usually signs his ticket and flips it upside down,said Kienow.But this time he had it right-side up and said,"I want you to know this is not a joke."
To discourage blacks from participating in the civil-rigts movement,in 1962,white town leaders in Gee's Bend,Ala., shut down a ferry that traveled to nearby Camden,where the organizing was centered.Instead of a 15-minute ride across the river,residents had to travel 40 miles over narrow back roads-assuming they could afford a car.This week,ferry service was restored,effectively reuniting Gee's Bend with the larger community, and improving access to jobs and services.This will be tranaportation,said Alabama Transportation Director Joe Mcinnes, for those people who have been ignored for so many years.
Jesse Sullivan of Dayton,Tenn.,has become the first man to be fitted with a thought-controlled artificial arm.Sullivan, a former utility worker, lost both arms in 2001 when he suffered electrical burns.But thanks to a new process called "muscle reinnervation," he now has a bionic arm on his eft side. The limb is grafted to Sullivan's nerves,and when he wants to make a motion,his brain's electrical impulses activate motors that mimic the action of the real thing. "When I use the new prosthesis,I just do things.I do all the yardwork.I take out the garbage." Soon, he says ,he'll be casting a fishing line.
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For years,the Cold Springs Harbor Seahawks have done gridiron battle against their Long Island,N.Y.,rivals,the Roosevelt Rough Riders.Cold Spring is largely white and affluent,while Roosevelt is predominantly minority and poor--so poor,in fact it had to cancel its entire interscholastic sports program this spring.But then parents and students from both communities raised $45,000 to revive Roosevelt's sports program,with a Cold Spring Harbor businessman donating $20,000. Bless them, said Rough Rider captain Ebene Gabaud.Without them,we wouldn't have a season.
Pvt. Francis Lupo has been laid to rest,88 years after he was killed in World War I. The remains of Lupo, the longest-missing U.S. soldier ever to be recovered and identified,were found three years ago during an archaeological dig in France.DNA analysis eventually yielded his indentity. Barely 5 feet tall,Lupo was an uneducated immigrant laborer's son from Cincinnati; he was delivering newspapers for $8 a week when he enlisted.He died on July 21,1918,at age 23.At a burial ceremony in Arlington National Cemetary, Lupo's 73-year-old niece,Rachel Kieisinger,received the flag from his coffin.
A previously unknown poem by Robert Frost has been found by a graduate student at the University of Virginia.Written in 1918 in Frost's own hand,the poem was inscribed in a small leather-bound book in a school library.Entitled "War Thoughts at Home," it's about a woman pondering the Great War.She thinks of a winter camp/Where soldiers for France are made,"it reads in part. "She draws down the window shade/And it glows with an early lamp." The 35-line poem was published this week in the Virgina Quarterly Review."Finding the poem is the easiest part," said Robert Stilling,who made the discovery. "Learning to understand it taked a long time."
Maggie,an 11-year-old sea lion at the Pittsburgh Zoo,has learned how to paint.It took three months for her trainer,Kesha Phares,to teach Maggie to hold a brush in her mouth and then put the brush to canvas.Now every time Maggie completes a brush stoke,she gets rewaeded with a fish. The results are certainly abstract,but visitors are delighted. It's in a way, enriching,said Phares.Sea lions are very smart animals,and painting keeps their minds active.Occasionally,I'll give her the brush and she paint my face.
In 1959,divinity student James Lawson Jr. was one of three black students at Vanderbilt Univercity.A former missionary who had studied nonviolence in India,Lawson helped organized a lunch-counter sit-in to protest segregation in Nashville.He was arrested,and under pressure from segregationist,the university expelled him,tarnishing its reputation for years.This fall,Lawson, now 78,returned to Vanderbilt,this time as a visiting professor.It isn't often that an institution gets to corredt for a previous error,said Vanderbilt associate provost Lucius Outlaw. A methodist minister known for his scholarship on civil disobedience,Lawson says he has long forgiven the university.Still, he said,the invitation to lecture moved him deeply.I simply did not anticipate that Vanderbilt would do this,he said.
A 59-year-old Massachusetts man suffering from diabetes survived for four days after his car went off the road by eating crackers and drinking dew.Raymond Vachon injured his leg in the crash and could not go for help.So he hunkered down in his car hidden in thick brush,drawing periodically on his supply of insulin and a box of Wheat Thins. He avoided dehydration by drinking dew off leaves and the windshield and intermittently called out for help.Finally,local resident Roger Pikul,who was walking his dog,heard Vachon's cries.Vachon said of his resuer.He's my new best friend. Vachon does not own a cell phone,but says he now plans to buy one.
Diesel fuel once synonymous with foul fumes and environmental havoc,is about to get greener.Under new federal guidelines that go into effect this week,cleaner diesel fuel will be phased in to thousands of bus and truck engines across the nation. Scientists project that over the next 25 years,the amount of nitrogen oxides and other pollutants spewed by buses and trucks will be reduced by more than 90 percent.This is the single greatest achievement in clean fuel since lead was removed from gasoline 25 years ago,said EPA administrator Stephen l. Johnson.
Massabi and Koto,two orphaned baby gorillas captured by illegal traders in Congo in 1995 but subsequently returned to the wild,have each given birth to healthy babies.Confiscated from their captors before they could be sold,Massabi and Koto are amoung 45 African primates returned to their natural habitats by a British conservation group. They are only the second and third gorillas ever reintroduced to the wild to produce offsprings. These are not huge numbers,said Amos Courage,the project director,but they get across a very important message that the great apes are coming back.