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,

3 . Surfer Dudes to the Rescue!

About 50 feet from shore of the Northern California’s Trinidad State Beach, two brothers were fighting for their lives. They had been swept out to sea in a rip current (激流), their mouths barely able to stay above the water. Thick fog made it difficult for beachgoers to see the guys, but the screams were unmistakable. And every second counted. The brothers, ages 15 and 20, were wearing shorts and T-shirts, unsuitable for a November day, let alone the freezing water. Keven Harder, a supervising ranger (巡查员), told the North Coast Journal in nearby Eureka that swimming in such a temperature “takes the fight right out of you.”

Luckily, four surfers in wet suits were nearby. Narayan Weibel, Spenser Stratton, and Adrian York, all 16, along with Taj Ortiz-Beck, 15, were on their surfboards riding up and down the coast on five-foot waves when they heard the cries. They turned and saw two bobbing heads and four struggling arms. “We looked at each other and knew these guys were about to drown,” Weibel told the Washington Post.

Weibel, Stratton, and Ortiz-Beck paddled toward the distressed swimmers while York headed to shore to warn someone to call 911. He then dived back in to help his friends.

As the surfers drew close, the brothers were still fighting hard for their lives. “It was pretty stressful, but there wasn’t any time to think about it, and that helped me keep my cool,” Ortiz-Beck says.

Ortiz-Beck pulled up alongside the younger brother. Grabbing him under his arms, he raised him up onto his board. Stratton and Weibel, meanwhile, hurried to help the older brother. He was large, 250 to 300 pounds, and he was panicked.

“I told them, ‘Calm down—we got you!’” says Weibel. “They thought they were going to die.”

York arrived in time to help get the older brother atop the second board. The surfers then paddled several minutes through choppy water to the medical help waiting onshore. The brothers were scared but fine.

“When we get a call like this one, it’s usually too late by the time we get there,” says Dillon Cleavenger, a first responder. “I can’t say enough about what these boys did. They were willing and prepared to risk their lives.”

4 . The sound that woke Damian Languell at 8:15 in the morning was so loud he assumed it came from inside his house in Wade, Maine. As he got up to investigate, he heard another sound, this one coming most definitely from outside. Looking out of his bedroom window, he noticed a tree enveloped in smoke about 500 yards away. A car wrapped around the tree's base, its engine on fire.

Grabbing buckets of water, he and his wife ran to the crash site. Up close, the accident looked worse. The car was split nearly in two, and the tree was where the driver's seat ought to have been, as if planted there. No one should have survived this crash, and yet there was 20- year-old Quintin Thompson, his terrified face pressed against the driver's side window, in visible pain.

Languell tried putting out the fire with his buckets of water but failed. When the flames got into the front seats, he knew he had to get the young man out. So Languell opened the car's back door and climbed in. Using a pocket knife he'd brought with him, he cut through Thompson's seat belt. Now that Thompson was free, Languell pulled him out, and dragged him to safety before the entire car was in flames.

It is empathy that drove Languell to help, just as he said, "My heart goes out to Thompson. When you are that close to that level of hurt, you feel it so directly." For his heroic action, Languell was added to the list of real-life heroes changing the world.

It was a very hot afternoon. My friend Leah and I were waiting for the rush hour train. We were tired and couldn’t wait to get back to the place where we were living.

When the train arrived, we got into the second carriage from the front. The air-conditioning wasn’t working at the rear (后部), so the front was particularly crowded that day. I sat by the window admiring the changing landscape.

Suddenly we felt enormous pressure pushing us backwards into our seats. The windows broke into tiny pieces and dust flew around violently. I could barely open my eyes.

The train was suffering from a crash, and it didn’t feel as if it were going to stop. I thought I would be dead. I thought about my husband Guy, who was supposed to receive the news first. I thought of my dear father and other family members, wondering how each would deal with my death.

Voices began to break through my thoughts. People were anxious. Strangely, I was totally calm. I wasn’t panicking; my heart wasn’t even beating fast. When the train finally stopped, we slowly stood up, pushing off the table that had fallen onto us; others stayed in their seats and many were injured and covered in blood. I could hear screaming. A soldier pushed the damaged door open for us to escape.

Our carriage had run out of rails and we were halfway home. We had a lot of blood on us and I searched my body for wounds, but I didn’t find any. My knees felt painful and my hips were black and blue, and Leah had her hand cut when jumping off the train, but that wasn’t serious.

Helicopters landed and we saw soldiers running in and out. All around us were ambulances (救护车) and people lying on the ground. Everyone was shouting for help. I rang Guy, who was very calm and said he would come and get us. Seeing all these brought me great emotional hurt.

8 . Notre-Dame, the cathedral (大教堂) that serves as one of Paris’s most beloved monuments, is on fire. According to The New York Times, the fire began around 6: 30 p.m. local time, when tourists urgently rushed out of the building. While Andre Finot, a spokesman for the cathedral, told The Times, that the cause of the fire is still unknown and that no one has been hurt while damage to the building appears catastrophic(灾难性的).

CNN reports that over 400 firefighters have been sent to fight the fire, but that they may be unable to save the cathedral. Built in the 12^th century, Notre-Dame houses several relics important to Catholics (天主教徒). NBC News reports that relics from Saint Genevieve and Saint Denis may been lost, together with a relic believed to be from Jesus Christ’s crown of thorns, but it states that authorities now believe that the cathedral has been saved from “total destruction”.

Notre-Dame is visited by a reported 30, 000 people a day and 13 million people per year. Its destruction represents a global cultural loss. “This is just horrible”, Mohamed Megdoul, 33, a film producer and witness to the fire told The Times, speaking through tears. “A thousand years of history is being wiped away. This belonged to the whole world, and now it’s disappearing.”

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his sadness on Twitter. “Notre-Dame of Paris in flames,” reads an English translation of his statement. “Emotion for a whole nation. Thoughts for all Catholics and for all the French. Like all our countrymen, I’m sad together to see this part of us burn.” Other politicians, including Melanis Trump, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, U. K. Prime Minister Theresa May also shared their sadness on Twitter.

9 . “Fire! Fire! ” What terrible words to hear when I _______ in a strange house in the middle of the night! It was a large, _______ house — the sort that burns easily — and my room was on the top floor. I jumped out of bed, opened the door and stepped out into the passage. It was full of _______.

I began to _______, but as I was still only half awake, instead of going towards the stairs I went in the opposite direction. The smoke grew thicker and I found it hard to _______. The floor became _______ under my feet. I ran into another room and tried to reach the window for fresh air. Suddenly, one of my feet got caught in something _______ and I fell down. The thing I had fallen over felt like a package of clothes, and I picked it up to protect my _______ from the smoke and heat. Just then the floor broke under me and I fell through to the floor below with pieces of _______ wood all around me.

__________, there was a doorway in front, so I put the package over my face and ran. My feet were terribly burned, but I __________. As I reached the cold air outside, my package of clothes gave a __________. I nearly dropped it in my surprise. Then I saw there were many people in the street. A woman screamed (尖叫) as she saw me and came running __________.

“My baby! My baby! ”she cried. Those people cheered loudly __________ she took the smoke­blackened package out of my arms. I almost failed to see who she was — my boss's wife. I had __________ her baby, and I became a hero!