16-year-old lifeguard leads heroic rescue

Happy Tuesday. Today's lead story is about Ryder Williams, a 16-year-old on his first summer as a lifeguard at a California beach. A sneaker wave took a 10-year-old boy. What happened next is on video.

We also have a Wisconsin man who handed his truck keys to three stranded strangers in a heavy metal band, a chihuahua who kept pawing at his owner's arm until she finally went to the doctor, and Mars just sent back something nobody expected.

Dive in.

—Stephanie S

Ryder Williams was scanning the shore at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz, California, on a summer afternoon when a sneaker wave surged up without warning and knocked a 10-year-old boy into the surf. The waves were 8 to 10 feet, generated by tropical cyclones in the eastern Pacific, and the boy was limp almost immediately. Ryder arrived in seconds.

"After the first wave, I was unable to pull him out because he was limp and the waves were pushing so hard," Ryder said. So he ducked underneath it. The second wave came. He ducked again and tightened his grip. Other adults ran to help but were scattered by the surf. Ryder held. A photographer on the beach, Scott Vander Dussen, turned his camera on and kept filming. "I've seen lots of rescues," he told the LA Times. "I have never seen something like this."

Eventually a second lifeguard arrived and together they pulled the boy to safety. No serious injuries. The crowd on the beach applauded. Ryder's father Shane watched the video later and said he almost started crying. "How determined he was to save that boy's life makes me so proud."

Ryder stayed humble. "This is my job and I love what I do. I'm thankful to my fellow lifeguards who perform rescues just like this every day." The video is worth watching. See it here.

The Autumn Kings had just finished playing Rock Fest Wisconsin when their van died on a rural highway. The engine needed two days to fix. They had ten hours to make it 500 miles to the Upheaval Festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Every mechanic in the area was booked. Their options were running out.

Then Ernie stopped.

The Wisconsin man in his 60s pulled over, listened to their situation, and handed the Detroit-based heavy metal trio the keys to his Ford Explorer. Not a loan with conditions. Not a ride to the next town. He gave them the vehicle for several days to drive over a thousand miles round trip so they could finish their tour. When they asked him why, he said: "I've never met a live band before, but I just did it to help three strangers on the side of the road."

The band had what guitarist Jake Diab called the greatest show of their career at Upheaval. When they returned Ernie's truck to his house, they posted the story. It went everywhere. "With all the things you hear about how the world is always going to hell," Diab said, "there are truly generous human beings, beyond comprehension." A fan summed it up simply: "This is the best and most Midwest story I've ever heard." Watch the band tell it.

Flag started doing it years ago. The small chihuahua would find Kristine Richards, a 61-year-old retiree from Wellington in Somerset, England, and paw repeatedly at her armpit. Not once. Not occasionally. Persistently, over time, in a way that seemed deliberate. Kristine found it annoying. She dismissed it. Dogs do strange things.

Then she noticed a small lump under her breast and something shifted. She went to an oncologist. The diagnosis was aggressive hormone-sensitive lobular breast cancer, already spread to her lymph nodes. Her doctor told her it is quite common for dogs to detect these things. There had been no other symptoms. Without Flag, she would not have known.

Kristine underwent surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and drug therapy. After a year of treatment, she was told the cancer was in remission. It has not come back since. Flag stopped pawing at her arm after her very first round of chemotherapy — and has not done it again. He is now her trained assistance dog, a local celebrity, and the former honorary town mayor of St Marychurch in Torquay. "He saved my life," Kristine said. "I owe my dog everything." Read the full story.

In June, as NASA's Curiosity rover climbed a Martian valley called Valle Grande, it sent back a panorama that stopped the science team cold. The landscape was covered in honeycomb-like geometric shapes, polygonal fractures spreading in every direction as far as the rover's cameras could see. They wrapped around the sides of a nearby 20-foot butte. They covered the ground in all directions. Small patches of these shapes had been spotted before, but nothing at this scale.

"We've seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity's eyes," said Ashwin Vasavada, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "but this sea of polygons took our breath away." Scientists have several theories about how they formed: dried mud cracks, cycles of temperature expansion and contraction, or water being compressed out of ancient sediment as the surface was buried. None has been confirmed yet. "We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data."

Curiosity has been on Mars for 14 years, since its 2012 landing. In that time it has found sulfur crystals, shiny meteorites, and evidence of ancient water chemistry. It has found carbon-based molecules believed to be precursors to RNA and DNA. Each discovery narrows the question scientists are really asking about Mars. This one opens it back up. Read the full story.

🐱 UK: Millie, a British shorthair from Southport, has been confirmed as the world's oldest living cat at 31 years old, surpassing the Guinness World Record and living her remarkably long life primarily on spring water.

🥩 USA: A University of Wisconsin-Madison review of more than 350 studies found that eating less protein may slow the aging process, reduce inflammation, and activate longevity pathways in the body, suggesting most sedentary adults consume more protein than they need, published in Cell Press Blue.

🚀 USA: NASA astronaut Chris Williams safely returned to Earth after 241 days aboard the International Space Station, completing 3,856 orbits and traveling 102 million miles alongside two Roscosmos cosmonauts, while contributing to cancer treatment research and advanced in-space manufacturing.

🥑 USA: A Penn State study of 786 adults found that eating one avocado per day for six months reduced LDL particle concentrations by an amount corresponding to a 4% lower heart disease risk, with benefits consistent across all age groups, sexes, and body types, published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology.

⚡ Global: Astronomers led by Hiroshima University have confirmed the first proton PeVatron within the Milky Way, an object that accelerates protons to energies more than 1,000 times what the Large Hadron Collider can produce, potentially revealing where the galaxy's most energetic cosmic rays originate. Published in The Astrophysical Journal.

On August 4, 1790, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton authorized the construction of a fleet of ten cutters to enforce the first tariff laws passed under the new US Constitution. He called it the Revenue Marine. What he built became the United States Coast Guard, the oldest continuous seagoing service in American history, trained from the beginning in both war and sea rescue. Hamilton's original ten vessels were already responding to ships in distress within their first year of operation.

In the 236 years since, Coasties have served in every American conflict and responded to thousands of emergencies at sea, from the waters of the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. Their founding mission has never changed: safety, security, and stewardship of the nation's waters. Every summer, they work alongside lifeguards like the one in today's lead story, pulling people out of situations the water chose for them.

Other notable August 4 events:

1919: The Rodin Museum opened in Paris, 107 years ago today, in the Hotel Biron, housing the works Auguste Rodin bequeathed to the French state, including The Thinker, The Kiss, and the Burghers of Calais. Rodin had maintained his closest friendship with Claude Monet, who once said Rodin upon first seeing the ocean reportedly exclaimed: "It's a Monet!"

1984: Prince began a 24-week run at number one on the US album charts with Purple Rain, 42 years ago today, a soundtrack LP that sold over 20 million copies worldwide and became the seventh best-selling soundtrack album of all time.

1958: Billboard magazine launched its Hot 100 chart, 68 years ago today, the premier singles ranking in America. The first number one was Poor Little Fool by Ricky Nelson. The Beatles hold the all-time record with 20 number one hits.

1901: Louis Armstrong, one of the most influential figures in jazz, was born in New Orleans 125 years ago today. Duke Ellington said of him: "He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone along the way."

— Cesare Pavese

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🧬 A Clock That Reads Your Biology: Blood tests can now measure your biological age, which is distinct from how many years you've been alive, with enough precision to predict disease risk and remaining lifespan more accurately than any single health marker previously available.

🌍 Concrete That Absorbs Carbon: Researchers have developed concrete formulations that absorb more CO2 over their lifetime than was emitted during their production, embedding mineral carbonation chemistry directly into the cement mix and turning one of the world's most carbon-intensive materials into a net carbon sink.

🔭 Seeing the Invisible: Astronomers are using the precise bending of starlight around massive objects to detect rogue planets, isolated black holes, and other dark objects that emit no light at all, building a census of invisible matter in the galaxy that no conventional telescope can photograph.

🌱 Turning Waste Into Living Soil: Burning agricultural waste at low oxygen levels produces biochar, a carbon-rich charcoal that when worked into degraded soils dramatically improves water retention, nutrient availability, and crop yields, while locking carbon into the ground for centuries.

🔬 Solar Panels You Can Print: Ultra-thin photovoltaic films can now be printed onto almost any surface, including fabric, glass, and curved structures, achieving efficiencies competitive with rigid silicon panels at a fraction of the manufacturing cost.

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