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The Good World News Team

The Good World News Team

The Good World News Team is happy to bring good news and smiles to the world :)  The team actively collects good news from around the world!

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Man Sends 4th Place Medals To Olympians Who Came Close

Published in Sports

"There used to be 84 countries in the Olympic Games, now there are 204. Performance levels have become so much higher that it is so hard now to get a medal. I thought, it's time this increase in the competitiveness and the standards was taken account of."

And with that, David Mitchell from Derbyshire, England decided that the Olympics needed fourth place medals. And he was the guy who was going to make it happen.

So Mitchell went to a local trophy store and spent his own money to have some custom hardware made for the most disappointed of all Olympians. On one side would be the athlete's name and event and on the other, "In Recognition of your 4th Place Olympic Games 2012." The first recipients? British divers Peter Waterfield and Tom Daley.

The pair was well on its way to a medal (and possibly even the gold) when they botched their fourth dive. In the end that mistake was enough to knock the duo just off the podium. In a tweet following the match, Daley summed up his feelings:

Source: @TomDaley1994

Well now, thanks to Mitchell, Daley and his partner will have something to show for their performance, which though disappointing, left them as the fourth best synchronized divers in the world. And after all, being the fourth best anything in the world is something worth celebrating.

But before you cry homerism, Mitchell's not limiting his operation to athletes from the UK. He's said he plans to send medals to select fourth place finishers from around the world. His only worry?

"I hope they don't find it insulting, because it's meant seriously and supportively."

Good Guy Of The Olympics: David Mitchell

Good Guy Of The Olympics: David Mitchell
 
 

Moore, Jack. "British Man Sends 4th Place Medals To Athletes Who Came Close" Buzzfeed. 21 August 2012. Web.

View original good news article at buzzfeed.com:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/british-man-sends-4th-place-medals-to-athletes-who

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Stephon Tull was looking through dusty old boxes in his father's attic in Chattanooga a few months ago when he stumbled onto something startling: an audio reel labeled, "Dr. King interview, Dec. 21, 1960."

He wasn't sure what he had until he borrowed a friend's reel-to-reel player and listened to the recording of his father interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. for a book project that never came to fruition. In clear audio, King discusses the importance of the civil rights movement, his definition of nonviolence and how a recent trip of his to Africa informed his views. Tull said the recording had been in the attic for years, and he wasn't sure who other than his father may have heard it.

"No words can describe. I couldn't believe it," he told The Associated Press this week in a phone interview from his home in Chattanooga. "I found ... a lost part of history."

Many recordings of King are known to exist among hundreds of thousands of documents related to his life that have been cataloged and archived. But one historian said the newly discovered interview is unusual because there's little audio of King discussing his activities in Africa, while two of King's contemporaries said it's exciting to hear a little-known recording of their friend for the first time.

Tull plans to offer the recording at a private sale arranged by a New York broker and collector later this month.

Tull said his father, an insurance salesman, had planned to write a book about the racism he encountered growing up in Chattanooga and later as an adult. He said his dad interviewed King when he visited the city, but never completed the book and just stored the recording with some other interviews he had done. Tull's father is now in his early 80s and under hospice care.

During part of the interview, King defines nonviolence and justifies its practice.

"I would ... say that it is a method which seeks to secure a moral end through moral means," he said. "And it grows out of the whole concept of love, because if one is truly nonviolent that person has a loving spirit, he refuses to inflict injury upon the opponent because he loves the opponent."

The interview was made four years before the Civil Rights Act became law, three years before King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, and eight years before his assassination. At one point in the interview, King predicts the impact of the civil rights movement.

"I am convinced that when the history books are written in future years, historians will have to record this movement as one of the greatest epochs of our heritage," he said.

King had visited Africa about a month before the interview, and he discusses with Tull's father how leaders there viewed the racial unrest in the United States.

"I had the opportunity to talk with most of the major leaders of the new independent countries of Africa, and also leaders in countries that are moving toward independence," he said. "And I think all of them agree that in the United States we must solve this problem of racial injustice if we expect to maintain our leadership in the world."

Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland's Morgan State University, said the tape is significant because there are very few recordings of King detailing his activity in Africa.

"It's clear that in this tape when he's talking ... about Africa, he saw this as a global human rights movement that would inspire other organizations, other nations, other groups around the world," said Winbush, who is also a psychologist and historian.

"That to me is what's remarkable about the tape."

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Freedom Rider and lunch counter protester who worked with King while a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said hearing King talk about the sit-ins took him back to the period when more than 100 restaurant counters were desegregated over several months.

"To ... hear his voice and listen to his words was so moving, so powerful," said Lewis, adding that King's principles of nonviolence are still relevant today.

"I wish people all over America, all over the world, can hear this message over and over again," he said.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King, agreed.

"I can't think of anything better to try," Lowery said of nonviolence. "What we're doing now is not working. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Matching violence with violence. We've got more guns than we've ever had, and more ammunition to go with it. And yet, the situation worsens."

A spokeswoman for King's daughter Bernice, head of The King Center in Atlanta, said she was traveling and couldn't comment on the audio.

Tull is working with a New York-based collector and expert on historical artifacts to arrange a sale. The broker, Keya Morgan, said he believes that unpublished reel-to-reel audio of King is extremely rare and said he's confident of the authenticity of the recording based on extensive interviews with Tull, his examination of the tape and his knowledge of King. He's collected many of the civil rights icon's letters and photos.

"I was like, wow! To hear him that crisp and clear," Morgan said. "But beyond that, for him to speak of nonviolence, which is what he represented."

 

 

Johnson II, Lucas. "AP Exclusive: Unheard King audio found in attic" AP. 21 August 2012. Web.

View original good news article at yahoo.com:

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-unheard-king-audio-found-attic-192456893.html

Lions are known as some of the most ferocious animals on the planet, so a tender moment between a father and his cub captured on camera in the wilds of Africa is generating a lot of buzz.

"The lion photos have hit it quite big because it's the cub meeting his dad for the first time ever," said the wildlife photographer who captured the meeting, Suzi Eszterhas. "It's a major part of a lion's life growing up."

This particular cub met his dad for the first time after seven weeks with his mom.

"When lion cubs are babies, the mom keeps them in a den for the first six to eight weeks of life, and it's during this time that she keeps them very hidden," Eszterhas told Goodmorningamerica.com. "After, she will bring them out and introduce them to the pride. It's at that point they meet dad for the first time."

(Courtesy: Suzi Eszterhas)Eszterhas was able to capture such a rare moment by embedding herself with the pride of lions on the Masai Mara National Reservein Kenya for three months while she was living in Africa for three years. This particular series of photos was captured in 2008 or 2009, she said.

"That was literally the moment the cub first saw his dad ever," Eszterhas said. "He kind of walked up shyly and then the dad immediately tried to play with him and the mom is watching the whole time to make sure the dad behaves. The whole moment is really special."

The California-based photographer spends nine months of the year in the field, documenting wildlife around the world.

"I spent a lot of hours just sitting with these animals watching them from sunrise to sunset," said Eszterhas, who traveled alone around the reserve in a Jeep taking photos. "Very quickly you just become a part of the landscape and they don't notice you at all. You're always safe but you're quite close to them and they get quite used to you."

The lion photographs have been published in "Lion," the latest edition of her six-title series of children's books, titled " Eye on the Wild," which documents an animal's life from infancy to adulthood in photographs.

Other editions have focused on bears, gorillas and cheetahs.

 

 

Kindelan, Katie. "Lion Cub's First Meeting With Dad Captured on Camera" Reuters. 22 August 2012. Web.

 

View original good news article at yahoo.com:

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/lion-cubs-first-meeting-dad-captured-camera-194456247--abc-news-topstories.html

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