It was rush hour on the morning of June 1 in the West Texas city of San Angelo. Heather Santellano, 36, was driving her white Mazda on Houston Harte Frontage Road with her nine-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son in the back. Suddenly, a red truck cut them off. Santellano turned the wheel hard to the right, sending the Mazda skidding off the road and down an embankment (路堤) that ended in a drop-off after about 50 feet. If the car didn't stop, it would fell onto the road some 20 feet below.

Then a bit of luck: As the car raced toward the edge, its undercarriage got stuck on the embankment shelf, stopping it cold.

The occupants, however, were far from safe. The car had come to rest on top of a retaining wall (护墙), hanging on the edge of disaster. One sudden move by anyone inside could send it over.

Jacob Rodriguez watched the scene from the truck-accessories company where he works. An experienced driver, he whispered a Navy word: “Ship, shipmates, self,” then he and four other men ran to the car. They jumped over onto the trunk (后备箱) to balance the weight as the terrified kids in the back seat watched.

Meanwhile, Julio Vasquez and his nephew, Marco Vasquez, were driving to their jobs at nearby Premier Auto-motive. Julio jumped out of the car to help while Marco went to the shop, grabbed a heavy-duty belt, and returned to the hanging car. He tied the Mazda to an F-350 truck that had been driven over by one of the other rescuers. With the car secured, the group carefully opened the back doors and helped the children out.

But when the children got out of the car, it lost its balance. And Santellano was still in the car. If nothing were not done immediately, the car would rolled down from the embankment and Santellano would be in danger.

Luckily, the men were still on the trunk.

The terrified children ran to their mother quickly as she got off the car.

5 . Those with closed minds refused to consider any contradictory facts, and they proceed with their planned course of action, full speed ahead, with their “minds made up” and tightly shut. As an illustration, consider the situation in 1986, prior to the space shuttle Challenger’s disatrous launch that killed all seven astronauts aboard, there was a heated telephone debate between two engineers from the company that produced the shuttle booster rockets and the top officials of NASA (the federal government’s space agency). The engineers insisted that the flight was too risky because of freezing temperature at the Florida launch site. They explained that some of the seals on the fuel tanks were not designed to withstand such low temperatures and might leak under pressure, thus endangering the craft and crew.

Despite the pleas to stop the flight, officials at NASA overruled the engineers, who were best qualified to make judgments about the complex technical problems of space flight. What caused the officials to ignore the engineers? Several flights had already been postponed, and it would not look good to postpone another. It would be bad public relations to disappoint the crowds of people and news reporters waiting for the launch. Top government officials were ready to appear on the national television and take the credit for another safe flight. As a result, with their minds absolutely closed to the facts presented by the engineers, NASA officials ordered the Challenger to take off. Seventy-three seconds later, the spacecraft was enveloped in flame.

Incredibly, seventeen years later, the lesson of the Challenger disaster was repeated. In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart while re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, killing another crew of seven. During the shuttle’s liftoff, a piece of foam insulation(泡沫隔热材料) had broken off, hitting the shuttle's wing at five hundred miles per hour. Lower-level engineers at NASA begged for photographs of the Columbia in orbit, which might have shown the extent of the damage, but their closed-minded superiors ignored their requests. It was the damage caused by the 1.7 pound chunk of insulation that doomed the Columbia.

There is no virtue in ignoring contradictory facts and “sticking to your guns” when the course taken shows all the signs of being the wrong one. Closed minds are especially noticeable in political campaigns and debates. Many people line up to support one candidate or another and won’t listen to any facts presented by the opposing candidate.

All those with an open mind say is this: “I don’t know everything, so I’d better keep my mind, eyes, and ears open to any new facts that may come along.” The world would be a much better and safer place if everyone had this attitude.

6 . It was late, about 10:15 p.m., when Janice Esposito arrived at the Bellport train station; she jumped into her Honda Odyssey and began the 20-minute drive home to her husband and seven-year-old son. She’d just returned from visiting her mother and had traveled the route many times before. She practically _______ on autopilot: a left onto Station Road, then a left on Montauk Highway, and then—wham! Out of nowhere a car T-boned Esposito’s minivan, _______ her to move backward some 100 feet onto the railroad tracks. She _______ in the minivan, bruised (撞伤) but mostly just knocked out by the _________ and the airbags.

As it happened, Pete DiPinto was getting ready for _______. He’d just closed his book   and was getting under the covers when he heard the sound of metal on metal and breaking glass coming from not far outside his bedroom window. A volunteer_______and retired teacher, DiPinto, 64, never _______to think. He grabbed a flashlight and, still dressed in his pajamas   (睡衣), ran out the door. “Any firefighter would have done what I did,” he told Newsday. “We’re always on_______.”

The first car he came upon, 2,000 feet from his front yard, was the one that had _______Esposito. Once DiPinto concluded the driver was OK, he looked around and __________Esposito’s minivan positioned on the railroad tracks. And then he heard a terrible sound: the bells signaling an oncoming __________.

“The gates were starting to come down,” he told Newsday. “I see the headlight of the train.” DiPinto ran quickly to Esposito’s minivan and knocked on the driver’s side window. She __________ looked at him, her eyes unfocused. “I don’t know where I am,” she said. She     seemed unhurt. “Honey, you’re on the railroad __________,” DiPinto shouted. “We have to get   you off right now!” He pulled hard on the __________, but the door was crashed in and __________. The   heavy diesel train, traveling at 65 miles per hour, was moving fast toward them. DiPinto ran to the passenger side and threw open the __________. “Please, don’t let her be __________,” he thought.     He pushed aside the deflating (瘪了的) airbags, grabbed Esposito’s arms, and__________her toward him across the passenger seat until he could help her out and quickly get her to ____________ behind a signal box a few feet away. Within six seconds, he estimated, the train crashed into the minivan. “It was like a Hollywood movie,” DiPinto told reporters the next day.

But this one had a twist. “Last night,” South Country Ambulance chief Greg Miglino told CBS New York, “the__________ arrived in pajamas, not in a fire truck.”

John Hydes, who served as a firefighter for 15 years in New Zealand before moving to Australia, is not only new to the neighbourhood, he’s also new to the country.But that didn’t stop him becoming a local hero recently when he pulled two kids from a burning house.

“What he did was fantastic.It was a very brave act.Our family can thank him for our lives.”The moment the kids’mother saw what Mr.Hydes did for her family, tears started welling up in her eyes and falling down her cheeks.

However, Mr.Hydes, who settled here six months ago, said he wasn’t thinking when he saved his neighbour’s son, 5, and daughter, 7, from their PointCook home minutes before the roof fell.

It was said that the children’s mother and the grandfather was occupied in housework outside the gate when the house caught fire.As they saw the thick smoke, they were scared out, unable to say a word.In spite of the phone call, the fire engine could not arrive quickly.The two children were in the bedroom.Desperate and hopeless, the kids’mother knelt down, crying at the top of her voice.Because of excessive shock, the old grandfather was in the hospital for a long time.

“When there are kids in danger you haven’t got time to think, you’ve got to act, ”the father of three said. “I hadn’t met my new neighbours before coming to their help.It’s just a different way of meeting them, ”he laughed.Actually, it was nothing new for Mr.Hydes to jump into a burning building.This time, however, he did it without protective clothing.Later on he recalled the thrilling scene of his fighting the fire.

Mr.Hydes was in bed when he heard screaming before 9 p m.

“I was greeted(映…的眼帘)by two black and whitefaces screaming for help, ”he said.

Excited screams of joy，the sounds of two happy little girls playing in the sand，rang across the beach. But I walked along，barely aware of it. I'd come to this remote beach on my sailboat，a place to escape. My wife and I had recently separated，our marriage in trouble. I worried about my two boys，just six and eight. It seemed like forever since I'd heard them laugh. But I didn't know what to do to make things better.

“Help！Help！”The girls shouted. I'd meant to tell them to stay away from the dangerous water. Now one of them was in the ocean，beyond the surf line. I could just hear her screams over the waves. Any second now she'd be swept away. I ran across the sand as fast as I could. The other girl was at the edge of the surf line，yelling.

“Wait！Stop！Don't go any farther！”I charged into the waves and was reaching for her when a wall of water dashed over us. For half a second I saw her disappear under another big wave. I'm a strong swimmer, but I could feel the wave pulling me hard. I swam to her and seized her, her little body shaking, trembling. But where is the other girl? I saw a waving arm. A head broke the surface, not far away. The arms of the girl I'd rescued were wrapped desperately around my neck. She was breathing with sobs. “Let go of my neck. I need you on my back. Hold my shoulders so I can swim to your friend. ”

She loosed her hands and I shifted her to my back. “She's my sister, Sarah, and I am Lillian,” she said. For a moment I thought of my boys. How much they loved each other. How much I loved them.

I looked across the water and saw a small head after a big wave. I quickened my swimming，fighting for each breath. Tiny arms pressed against my shoulder. I reached out and held the second little girl. She was in total tiredness，taking deep breaths，crying quietly.

I swam hard with the two girls and looked toward shore，but I couldn’t see anyone.

“Mommy!” The loud cry wakened my consciousness,

Alexis, 17, sat quietly in the passenger seat of her dad’s car. She let her eyes lazily scan the landscape for wildlife. Then a deer came into view about 200 yards in front of them. “ Dad, there’s a deer there!”   Alexis said, rolling down the window for a better look. It was a male deer with sharp antlers （鹿角） on each side of its head.

As the car moved closer, Alexis saw that the deer’s head was bent toward the ground. Then she heard a scream and saw an arm fly up near the deer’s head. Alexis realized the deer was attacking a woman. Sue, a 44-year-olcI mother, had been out for her morning run. The deer followed her and edged （缓慢移动） closer. “ I knew I was in trouble,”   says Sue. She went to pick up a stick for self-defense, and the deer attacked her. It lifted her with its antlers and threw her into the air. Sue felt blood flow down her leg. Within seconds, the deer had pushed her off the road.

When Alexis and her father pulled up, the deer was throwing Sue like a doll. Alexis looked into the woman’s terrified eyes, and before her father had even stopped the car, the teenager jumped quickly out of the car and ran toward the deer. She was kicking and hitting it to get its attention. Then Michael, her father, who had followed his daughter, pushed the deer away from the woman.

Alexis immediately helped Sue into the car. ______

Then she heard her father shout loudly. ______