John Doe wrote:

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Digger wrote:

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John Doe wrote:

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Digger wrote:

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A 30-year-old Swedish woman named Emmy Abrahamson was on a trip to Amsterdam. She was waiting to meet up with a friend, so she sat on a park bench. A young homeless man approached her. His beard was long, and he smelled awful. But Emmy saw a handsome man with intelligent eyes underneath the dirt.He asked, “Excuse me, miss, do you know what time it is?” They both glanced over to a gigantic clock that was in front of them, and Emmy burst out laughing at his cheesy pickup line. They talked for a few minutes.Emmy learned that this man’s name was Vic, and he was from Canada.

He became homeless after a backpacking trip gone wrong. He spent most of his days begging for money, drinking, and stealing food. Without any money to fly back home, he was sleeping under a bush every night.[2]When her friend showed up, Emmy turned to Vic and asked, “Can I see you again?” They met up a few days later at the same bench and had a picnic in the park. Emmy had to go home to Vienna, but she gave Vic her number. He knew that if he wanted to see her again, he needed to clean up his act. No more drinking or stealing.He saved up the money to catch the train to Vienna and called her.

Fast-forward a few years, and Vic had finished his college degree in mechanical engineering. The two got married, and now they have two children.

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Was the 'l' a mistake? 

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 Not sure what you mean.    

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 Yeah, and I am John Holmes! 

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 Vodka, Gin or Beer?   

Digger wrote:

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John Doe wrote:

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Digger wrote:

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John Doe wrote:

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Digger wrote:

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A 30-year-old Swedish woman named Emmy Abrahamson was on a trip to Amsterdam. She was waiting to meet up with a friend, so she sat on a park bench. A young homeless man approached her. His beard was long, and he smelled awful. But Emmy saw a handsome man with intelligent eyes underneath the dirt.He asked, “Excuse me, miss, do you know what time it is?” They both glanced over to a gigantic clock that was in front of them, and Emmy burst out laughing at his cheesy pickup line. They talked for a few minutes.Emmy learned that this man’s name was Vic, and he was from Canada.

He became homeless after a backpacking trip gone wrong. He spent most of his days begging for money, drinking, and stealing food. Without any money to fly back home, he was sleeping under a bush every night.[2]When her friend showed up, Emmy turned to Vic and asked, “Can I see you again?” They met up a few days later at the same bench and had a picnic in the park. Emmy had to go home to Vienna, but she gave Vic her number. He knew that if he wanted to see her again, he needed to clean up his act. No more drinking or stealing.He saved up the money to catch the train to Vienna and called her.

Fast-forward a few years, and Vic had finished his college degree in mechanical engineering. The two got married, and now they have two children.

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Was the 'l' a mistake? 

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 Not sure what you mean.    

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 Yeah, and I am John Holmes! 

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 Vodka, Gin or Beer?   

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 Do a dance for me and I will tell you! 

Digger wrote:

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A frozen lake can be a haunting place. As the ice cracks, eerie pinging noises can echo across the surface. Looking down, you might be able to see animals that have become frozen and trapped. But perhaps the most amazing ability of a frozen lake is to form waves of ice that crash on the shore.

If only the top layer becomes solid when a lake freezes, it is possible for the ice on top to move. If a warm wind passes over the lake, the whole sheet of ice may begin to move. All that ice has to go somewhere.

 

As the ice reaches the shore, the sudden friction and stress causes the ice to shatter and build up. Sometimes, these ice waves can be several feet high and travel inland. The cracking of the crystals that make up the ice sheet gives the creation of ice waves an eerie tickling sound like thousands of glasses being shattered.

 

 

This one is scary, I cant imagine how awful it would be to see a frozen lake creeping towards my home. I imagine it could do a lot of damage with no way of stopping it.

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Digger wrote:

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A worn, ragged-looking man shows up in a rural Haitian town claiming to have died on May 2, 1962. One of the problems with this picture is that the year was 1980. Clairvius Narcisse swore that he had been pronounced dead in Deschapelles, Haiti, at Albert Schweitzer Hospital. He also said that he was awake and conscious during the entire ordeal.

Narcisse also claimed that he had been completely paralyzed and could do nothing but lie there in horror as he was pronounced dead, nailed into a coffin, and unceremoniously buried alive. He also claimed that the bocor (Haitian witch doctor) who had made him a zombie had also dug him up and forced him to work as a zombie.
In Haiti, zombies are not only common in folklore but commonly feared as well. Scientists have uncovered innumerable reports of the bodies of friends and family members coming back to life. According to the legends, zombies are not aware of anything in their surroundings so they are generally harmless unless, of course, you allow them to regain their senses by eating salt.

Despite countless reports, investigators could locate little evidence either proving or disproving the phenomenon. A common theme with the zombie stories concerns people dying without receiving any medical care before their alleged deaths. This raises the red flags of fraud and possible mistaken identity for investigators to deal with.
Right about this time in the early 1980s, anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis just happened to be in Haiti to investigate the causes of zombies. Davis was there at the request of anesthesiologist Nathan Kline, who theorized that a drug was somehow involved and that it could have valuable medicinal uses. Davis was hoping to get his hands on samples of these zombie concoctions so that they could be chemically analyzed in the US for medicinal purposes.

Davis managed to gather eight samples of zombie powder from four different regions of the country. The ingredients in all of them were not the same, but seven of the eight had four ingredients in common. They were the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin (derived from puffer fish), the marine toad (also containing numerous toxic substances), the Hyla tree frog that secretes a very irritating but not lethal substance, some other ingredients derived from indigenous animals and plants, and even ground glass.
The use of puffer fish was the most intriguing to the scientists because the active ingredient tetrodotoxin causes both paralysis and death, and those poisoned with it are known to stay conscious right up until it occurs. The scientists theorised that the powder would create irritation if applied topically and subsequent scratching would break the skin of the victim and allow the tetrodotoxin to enter the bloodstream.

This would paralyse the victim and cause him to only appear to be dead. After the family buries the victim, the bocor returns and digs up the grave. If everything goes according to plan and the victim survives the horrific ordeal, the toxin would eventually wear off. Through the use of other debilitating drugs, the victim could come to truly believe that he had been turned into a zombie.

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A sweet story, this man got his happy ending as did she.  

Syl wrote:

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Digger wrote:

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A frozen lake can be a haunting place. As the ice cracks, eerie pinging noises can echo across the surface. Looking down, you might be able to see animals that have become frozen and trapped. But perhaps the most amazing ability of a frozen lake is to form waves of ice that crash on the shore.

If only the top layer becomes solid when a lake freezes, it is possible for the ice on top to move. If a warm wind passes over the lake, the whole sheet of ice may begin to move. All that ice has to go somewhere.

 

As the ice reaches the shore, the sudden friction and stress causes the ice to shatter and build up. Sometimes, these ice waves can be several feet high and travel inland. The cracking of the crystals that make up the ice sheet gives the creation of ice waves an eerie tickling sound like thousands of glasses being shattered.

 

 

This one is scary, I cant imagine how awful it would be to see a frozen lake creeping towards my home. I imagine it could do a lot of damage with no way of stopping it.

 

It's really creepy like it's alive.   The worst thing is the implacable way it's moving, relentless and unstoppable.    All those shards of ice looks like insect feet.

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Digger wrote:

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In the eyes of certain jerks, having ovaries immediately disqualifies you from being human. Jason Householder and his nitwit pal John Stockum were two such jerks. After getting drunk in their tiny Ohio town one day, the pair decided to show their affection toward a nearby woman by hurling beer bottles and abuse at her car. Unfortunately for them, and very fortunately for the rest of us, the local jail was overcrowded when cops brought them in for sentencing. So a local judge came up with a much more fitting punishment.

Householder and Stockum were both forced to put on dresses, wigs, and makeup and parade down Main Street for an hour, in full view of a crowd who taunted them, wolf-whistled, and even chucked a soda bottle. In other words, the two jerks got to experience exactly what they put their victim through—in stereo.

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 Apart from all the other amazing stories on this thread, this one stands out as an example of true justice in action.

try that over here and every human rights lawyer would go into meltdown.

I've always said the best way to get someone to empathis and understand another is to get them to walk a mile in their shoes/stilletoes

Digger wrote:

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When Roger Lausier was four years old, he wandered away from his mother during a trip to the beach in 1965. He made his way alone into the water and tried to swim, but an undercurrent pulled him down. He would have died, but a stranger named Alice Blaise dove into the water and pulled him to shore, where she revived him and saved his life.

Nine years later, 13-year-old Roger was out on the same beach when he heard a woman scream, “My husband is drowning!” Roger didn’t realize this was a woman he’d met before, but he rushed into action anyway. He jumped onto an inflatable raft, paddled out to the man, and pulled him on, saving his life.

Nobody there realized the strange, cosmic coincidence that had just happened until the news reported on it the next day.^[2] It wasn’t until then that Alice Blaise realized that the young man who had saved her husband’s life was the four-year-old boy whose life she’d once saved.

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There are some amazing true life stories here  but this one caught my eye as soon as I started reading them!