In June six Tongan teenagers sailed from their island home in search of adventure But when a storm broke their mast and rudder the first night they drifted for days without food or water before reaching the uninhabited island of lsquo Ata It would be fifteen months before they were found The boys worked together on lsquo Ata to survive setting up a small food garden hollowing out tree trunks to store rainwater even building a makeshift gym When one boy broke his leg from a cliff fall the others set it using sticks and leaves Arguments were managed with [... more]

Cateura is a small slum in Paraguay South America Desperately poor its villagers survive by recycling items from its rubbish dump But from these unpromising conditions something beautiful has emerged mdash an orchestra With a violin costing more than a house in Cateura the orchestra had to get creative crafting its own instruments from their garbage supply Violins are made from oil cans with bent forks as tailpieces Saxophones have come from drainpipes with bottle tops for keys Cellos are made from tin drums with gnocchi rollers for tuning pegs Hearing Mozart played on these contraptions is a beautiful thing [... more]

Warren moved to a small town to pastor a church After his ministry had some initial success one of the locals took a dislike to him Concocting a story accusing Warren of horrendous acts the man took the story to the local newspaper and even printed his accusations on pamphlets to distribute to local residents by mail Warren and his wife started praying hard If the lie was believed their lives would be upended King David once experienced something similar He faced an attack of slander by an enemy ldquo All day long they twist my words rdquo he said [... more]

The ball drops in New York rsquo s Times Square The crowd counts down to Big Ben chiming Sydney Harbor erupts in fireworks However your city marks it there rsquo s something exciting about welcoming in a new year and the fresh start it brings On New Year rsquo s Day we push out into new waters What friendships and opportunities might we find For all its excitement though a new year can be unsettling None of us knows the future or what storms it may hold Many New Year rsquo s traditions reflect this Fireworks were invented in China [... more]

Lucy Worsley is a British historian and TV presenter Like most people in the public eye she sometimes receives nasty mail mdash in her case over a mild speech impediment that makes her R rsquo s sound like W rsquo s One person wrote this ldquo Lucy I rsquo ll be blunt Please try harder to correct your lazy speech or remove R rsquo s from your scripts mdash I couldn rsquo t sit through your TV series because it made me so annoyed Regards Darren rdquo For some people an insensitive comment like this might trigger an equally rude [... more]

I recently discovered the wonder of anamorphic art Appearing at first as an assortment of random parts an anamorphic sculpture only makes sense when viewed from the correct angle In one piece a series of vertical poles align to reveal a famous leader rsquo s face In another a mass of cable becomes the outline of an elephant Another artwork made of hundreds of black dots suspended by wire becomes a woman rsquo s eye when seen correctly The key to anamorphic art is viewing it from different angles until its meaning is revealed With thousands of verses of history [... more]

Sarah has a rare condition that causes her joints to dislocate making her reliant on an electric wheelchair to get around On her way to a meeting recently Sarah rode her wheelchair to the train station but found the elevator broken Again With no way of getting to the platform she was told to take a taxi to another station forty minutes away The taxi was called but never arrived Sarah gave up and went home Unfortunately this is a regular occurrence for Sarah Broken elevators stop her boarding trains forgotten ramps leave her unable to get off them Sometimes [... more]

Malcolm appeared confident as a teenager But this confidence was a mask In truth a turbulent home left him fearful desperate for approval and feeling falsely responsible for his family rsquo s problems ldquo For as far back as I remember rdquo he says ldquo every morning I would go into the bathroom look in the mirror and say out loud to myself lsquo You are stupid you are ugly and it rsquo s your fault rsquo rdquo Malcolm rsquo s self-loathing continued until he was twenty-one when he had a divine revelation of his Christian identity ldquo I realized [... more]