When Johntell Franklin's mother lost her battle with cancer on February 7, 2009, no one was surprised to hear that Franklin, a senior forward for the Milwaukee Madison High School basketball team (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), was not going to play in his team's game that day against DeKalb High School (DeKalb, Illinois).

But then he showed up.

Midway through the second quarter, Franklin walked into the gym, ...

Peggy Noonan describes an encounter with an American CEO in her book John Paul the Great:

I am talking with the head of a mighty American corporation. We're in his window-lined office, high in midtown Manhattan. The view—silver sky-scrapers stacked one against another, dense, fine-lined, sparkling in the sun—is so perfect, so theatrical, it's like a scrim, like a fake backdrop for a 1930s ...

Several workplace-related studies in 2008 suggest that the majority of working Americans aren't all that fond of who they work with.

• When asked if a colleague has ever tried to make them look bad, 50 percent of respondents said yes; 48 percent said no; 2 percent said they didn't know.
  
  
• When asked to identify which causes more stress at work—co-workers or workload—51 percent of respondents said co-workers, while 49 percent said workload.
  
  

Elliot Huck, a 14-year-old from Bloomington, Indiana, decided to skip a preliminary to the National Spelling Bee. Though he placed 45th out of more than 250 spellers in last year's competition and was a favored to go again, he felt convicted to stay home this time around. More precisely, he felt convicted to stay in church. The 2007 Bloomington Herald-Times championship was held on March 4, 2007—a ...

By any measure, Shane Hamman is a big man. For the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, this super-heavy weightlifter weighed a hefty 350 pounds. He boasted a 62-inch chest with biceps just a couple inches shy of two feet in circumference.

Despite the muscle, "America's Strongest Man" could do a standing back flip, dunk a basketball, and squat lift a world record 1,008 pounds.

Nobody's kicking sand ...

On April 26, 2008, the Western Oregon women's softball team played against Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. During the course of the game, Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky hit the first homerun of her college career. She dropped her bat and started to make her way around the bases. In the midst of all the excitement, she forgot to tag first base. When the first base coach ...

When Virginia's Henrico County School system decided to get rid of 1,000 laptop computers, they offered the 4-year-old Apple iBooks to the public for $50 each. People started lining up hours before the sale was to take place at the Richmond International Raceway.

One woman was so desperate to hold on to her place in line that she wet herself rather than give it up. By the time the gates opened at 7:00 ...

Fans of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will do anything they can to help their team get an edge on their bitter rival. It's not uncommon for some to attempt to put a jinx, either seriously or jokingly, on the opposing team.

Exhibit A is Gino Castignoli. When the Yankees were building a new stadium in 2008, Gino—a Red Sox fan—was a construction worker on the project. He decided ...

Surf's Up is an animated film about a young penguin named Cody Maverick (voiced by actor Shia LaBeouf), who longs to leave his hometown and become a famous surfer like his hero, a penguin known as Big Z. His dream leads him to the island of Pen Gu, where he competes in the "Big Z Memorial Surf Off" against the nine-time champion, a bully of a penguin named Tank Evans.

The movie spoofs documentary films; ...

The notion that "the first will be last" doesn't seem to bother some folks. When Apple's revolutionary iPhone hit the market in late June, 2007, it sold for $599. Ten weeks later the price went down to $399—a 33 percent reduction. While many who bought the iPhone at the original price were outraged, others would have paid any price to be among the first to own the new technology.

"If they told ...