【推荐1】My name is Linda. I am from Isla de Maipo, Chile. I live with my dad, my mom and a rabbit happily. But I was born with a cleft lip (唇裂).

I don’t remember anything about my first years with my cleft lip. All I know is that when I was young, my parents found Fundación Gantz in Santiago, where I had been for free treatment.

Every time when I went to Fundación Gantz, my heart was full of thanks to my parents. It was not easy to arrive on time for medical examination. We had to get up at six in the morning to drive for more than an hour and be careful not to get hit by other cars, but my parents never complained about such busy and tiring days.

Doctors at Fundación Gantz helped me a lot. First, they healed my cleft lip. Then, with orthodontic treatment (正畸治疗), they managed to correct my bite, and later they performed an operation on my jawbone.

I thank the doctors there who treated me, and Dr. Angus is my favorite — he has known me since I was born. When I was in the waiting room waiting for my operation on my jawbone, I was sweating all over in fear. Dr. Angus came to my side and talked to me endlessly about the things I was interested in, such as Kayros’ music and Bolano’s books, making me feel relaxed.

In the past, before the treatment, I had no confidence, and children made jokes on my cleft lip at school. I started training in Taekwondo (跆拳道) at the age of four in a gym next to my kindergarten and it was just what I needed at that time. It changed me and the children around me — before, children played tricks on me, but later they respected me. Today, when people talk about something on my lip, I will tell them the little mark never bothers me because it is so small that it can hardly be seen.

I want to tell the medical experts at Gantz to keep it up because their work is admirable, and they help a lot of people in need.

【推荐2】Everyone faces difficulties in their life. Daniel Kish was born with a special eye illness and lost his eyesight before he was only 14 months old.

Soon after, however, he started to do an amazing thing. He learned to make clicks (咔哒声) with his tongue to help him move around. Kish now moves about using sonar (声呐). He is so good at it that he can ride a bicycle by himself on public roads. And he started the organization World Access for the Blind (WAFTB) in 2000, teaching others how to use sonar. In the interview with National Geographic, he explains how the sonar works.

“When I make a click sound, it produces sound waves. These waves reflect (反射) off surfaces all around and return to my ears. My brain then deals with the sound and turns it into pictures in my mind. Each click is like a camera flash, which helps me make a 3-D picture of my surroundings for hundreds of feet. It’s like having a conversation with the environment.”

Kish feels it is exciting to ride a bike using sonar, although he needs to click twice a second, much more than he usually does. “It may sound a bit dangerous to move around the world in this way,” he says. “But most people in the world live in fear of things that they imagine. I love hiking and mountain-biking. I go almost everywhere. And I’ve never had an accident and hurt myself.”

He is happy to be able to help more blind children to improve their life. “We’ve served over 10, 000 students in nearly 40 countries,” he tells the reporter. “Many students are surprised how quickly results come. Seeing isn’t in the eyes. It’s in the mind.”

【推荐3】

Tommy Rhomberg was a twelve-year-old young boy in Iowa. Last summer, his home state was destroyed by Great Derecho. He soon came up with a creative idea to raise money for his community by making and selling baseball bats out of wood brought down by the storm.

The idea for the bats originally began as Tommy prepared a birthday gift for his friend. Then many others expressed interest in owning Great Derecho bats of their own. At first, Tommy didn’t take it seriously, but since so many people in the area needed help after the storm, he determined to make a difference to them.

The first bat took Tommy 10 hours to carve and sand (用砂纸打磨) out of a tree branch that had fallen in his yard. With blisters (水泡) on his hands, Tommy had to refuse his brother’s request for making another bat. But as he began receiving more orders, he streamlined the process with a machine with the help of his grandfather. Tommy promised $20 from each order would go to the local disaster relief fund to rebuild the community.

When asked why he started the “bat business”, Tommy replied, “We got kind of lucky with the storm. We didn’t have much damage, but just driving around town there were people with houses destroyed, and I just wanted to raise money so we could help them rebuild. I feel like it’s really helping people.”

Tommy has made more than 100 bats, raising more than $2,500 to help out his community, and orders have come in from as far as Arizona and Connecticut. Tommy is not taking additional orders at the moment, but it’s possible that he’ll make more bats in the future, according to his website.

【推荐2】Aron Lee Ralston was born in a middle class American household. His family moved to Colorado when Aron was 12 years old and this move laid the foundation for his love for hiking around the canyons (峡谷).

Aron’s life changed on April 26th, 2003, upon facing the event that threatened to take his life, and almost took it. He was hiking through the Blue John Canyon and he accidentally displaced a huge rock he was climbing down from. The rock caught his right hand in between itself and the canyon wall.

Aron had decided to go on the adventure alone and hadn’t informed anybody about it. So, when he was unable to free his right hand, he felt he would be stuck forever in there. He tried hard to get his hand out but failed, and screaming for help was of no use either. Moreover, he didn’t want to wear himself out as shouting for help would take a lot of energy, which was essential (重要) for surviving the unfortunate event for a long period of time.

After a couple of days, he knew it was impossible for him to set himself free from an 800-pound rock. He decided to cut off his right hand. He had a blunt (钝的) pocket knife with him,   which wasn’t sharp enough to cut through the bone. Some time passed and his water and food supply ended. He carved his name, date of birth and a possible date of death on the stone.

But luckily he got a strange idea that he could use the torque (扭转力) and his bones to separate his arm from his body. With the help of his very limited tool, he finally succeeded and walked out of the canyon, bleeding in large amounts. Fortunately, a holidaying family saw him and gave him food and water, and then took him to a hospital.

After the accident, Aron got a prosthetic limb (假肢) and continued mountain climbing,   considering the accident as a “turning point in his life”.

【推荐1】If there had to be a father of handwashing in history, it would be Ignaz Semmelweis. While working at Vienna General hospital, the Hungarian doctor, faced with a situation in which maternal death (孕产妇死亡) in hospitals were significantly higher than local clinics, tried hard clues as to why.

Germs (细菌) were yet to be discovered, and it was still believed in the 1840s that disease was spread by bad smells in the air. So it didn’t seem a problem that trainee doctors hanging out of labs to dissect (解剖) human bodies would pop up to the maternity ward (产房) to deliver a baby without washing their hands.

Then an accidental finger cut by a knife during a dissection caused a doctor to die, seemingly of the same sign the mothers had been getting. Semmelweis assumed that something from the dead bodies was to blame, which might, through the hands of doctors, make their way into women’ s bodies during childbirth.

To test his theory, he ordered doctors to wash their hands and instruments in some chlorine solution. As a result, the death rate for new mothers dropped to about 1 percent, compared with that of as high as 18 percent before the experiment.

However, he faced great resistance, and met a sad end. People at that time didn’t think of themselves as sort of walking Petri dishes. And the majority of doctors then were from middle- or upper-class families, and thought of themselves as very clean people.

Over the next 40 years, a better understanding of germs developed, and attitudes to hygiene (卫生) gradually shifted. In 1876, the German scientist Robert Koch discovered the anthrax bacillus (炭疽), kicking off the new research field of medical bacteriology. Many more germs were later identified. Surgeons started to take handwashing seriously.

By the 1890s and into the early 1900s, handwashing moved from being something doctors did to something everybody had been told to do.

【推荐3】Here is the story of American aviation (航空) pioneer Amelia Earhart.

Once upon a time, on July 24th 1897, a little girl was born in Ashes Kansas. As a child, Amelia was adventurous, climbing trees, collecting bugs, hunting rats with their rifle and exploring the neighborhood. Many historians have described Earhart as a “tomboy” growing up because of this.

Throughout her teen years, she moved around the middle west with her family. There after seeing the wounded soldiers returning from World War I, she decided to work as a nurse’s aid and got to know many of the wounded pilots and grew to admire them.

On December 20th, 1920, an important moment happened in Earhart’s life. She attended an air show with her dad in Long Beach. And she took a ten-minute plane ride that forever changed her life. She recalled, “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly.” Amelia’s new mission (使命) was to learn how to fly and she worked hard to achieve this new dream. She worked several odd jobs to save up for the very expensive flying lessons. Amelia had flown her plane to 14,000 feet, the world altitude record for female pilots. On may 15^th, 1923, Earhart became only the 16th woman to be issued (颁发) with such a pilot’s licence.

In the mid-1920s, Earhart was not able to make a living as only a pilot, so she became a teacher and later a social worker. One afternoon in April 1928, a phone call came for Earhart at work. “How would you like to become the first woman to fly the Atlantic?” Captain Hulton Archive asked her on the other line. “Yes,” Amelia immediately replied. She became the first female to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, but only as a passenger, as Wilmer Stultz and Lewis Gordon acted as pilots. When the three returned to the United States, they were greeted with a parade in New York and a reception held by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.

In August 1928, Amelia became the first woman to fly alone across the North American continent and back. In 1929, she entered Will Rogers Power Puff Derby and placed third. Earhart also became involved with the Ninety-Nines, an organization of female pilots, and then became their first president in 1930.