A stranger's kindness, hidden in a crane for ten years

Happy Monday, and happy Indigenous Peoples Day! October is in full swing. A secret message folded inside an origami crane for ten years. A daughter flying a commercial jet with her pilot dad in the seat beside her and her mom working the cabin just steps away. A bear named by Julia Roberts living his absolute best life.

And a marble statue worth thousands, plucked from a salvage yard for $400. Good news has a way of showing up in the most unexpected places, and today is proof.

—Stephanie S

When Rika Matsuda was seven years old, she crashed her new bike into a wall at a park in Japan. The brakes were faulty, her foot was hurt, and she was alone. A tall man in a suit appeared out of nowhere. He washed her cut at a water fountain, let her call her grandfather, and then, without a word, handed her a folded origami crane before walking away.

She kept it for ten years without ever opening it. Then a high school English assignment, inspired by NPR affiliate KUOW's "My Unsung Hero" series, asked students to reflect on someone who had quietly changed their life. Rika thought of the man in the suit. And she finally unfolded the crane.

Inside were two Japanese characters forming a well-known idiom. The message was about cherishing every encounter, because some crossings of paths may never come again. The stranger had tucked that thought inside for her a decade before she was ready to receive it.

See the words Rika used to describe what that moment of kindness from a stranger ultimately meant for how she moves through the world.

Zoë de Bruijn had watched her father Michel fly for her entire childhood. He had been a KLM pilot for 35 years, and somewhere along the way, his passion became hers. She applied to the KLM Flight Academy at 17, graduated after two years, and earned her place in the cockpit. But nothing could have prepared her for what happened on one flight out of Amsterdam this past August.

Zoë was the co-pilot. Her father Michel was the captain beside her. And her mother Marjan, who works as a KLM cabin crew member, was just a few steps away in the cabin. None of the three had planned it. Their schedules simply aligned, and suddenly the de Bruijn family was running a commercial flight together.

Zoë described the moment as "amazing." Her parents had actually met while working on a flight together decades earlier, making this reunion in the air feel like something close to destiny. Since graduating, she has flown with her father five times and with her mother once, but never all three together until now.

Find out what Zoë said about what it felt like to share that cockpit with the two people who raised her.

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In 2009, Julia Roberts was in India filming Eat, Pray, Love when she visited the Bannerghatta Bear Rescue Centre and met a sloth bear who had spent his life being forced to dance for tourists and kept in a cage the rest of the time. She named him Odum, believed to be an old family name, and left knowing he was finally somewhere safe.

Odum is now 26 years old. Today, October 12, happens to be World Sloth Bear Day, and the sanctuary has shared new photos of him living exactly the life he deserved all along. His days are spent eating muskmelon, swimming in his own pool, and dozing in a hammock made specially for him.

The Bannerghatta Bear Rescue Centre is run by Wildlife SOS, and International Animal Rescue, which released the new images, says the work does not stop once an animal reaches safety. As their president Alan Knight put it, "Our responsibility does not cease when an animal has reached safety."

See the new photos of Odum in his hammock and learn how you can support his care.

A builder with a sharp eye for quality was browsing a salvage yard in Wiltshire, England, sorting through hundreds of architectural castoffs, when he spotted a marble figure that didn't look like it belonged there. He took a chance and paid around £300, roughly $400, to take it home. It turned out to be a 27-inch marble model made by Pietro Bracci, the very sculptor behind Rome's iconic Trevi Fountain.

The piece, created around 1736, was a proposal model for a full-sized bronze statue of Pope Clement XII. The Roman Senate had commissioned the bronze to honor the pope's donation to the Capitoline Museums. The full-sized statue was eventually melted down for scrap, but the original marble model survived, made its way to an English country estate, fell out of fashion, and ended up outdoors as a garden ornament.

When the auction house Woolley and Wallis assessed it, they estimated it could fetch between $6,600 and $13,300 at sale, a remarkable return on a $400 gamble. Furniture specialist Mark Yuan Richards called it "an exceptionally exciting discovery." Find out what the marble model ultimately sold for and what experts say makes it so rare.

🦀 USA: A new survey of the Chesapeake Bay found blue crab populations have jumped 46% in a single year, reaching 349 million, the highest count since 2019.

🏔️ Norway: Scientists surveying melting glaciers in the Jotunheimen mountains recovered 48 remarkably preserved arrowheads and shafts, some dating back 6,000 years to the Stone Age.

🐯 Global: The new WWF Living Planet Report found that tigers, green sea turtles, and bluefin tuna have all bounced back in significant numbers, with wild tiger populations up more than 70% since 2010.

🪲 New Zealand: The wētāpunga, the world's heaviest insect, has officially moved from Endangered to Recovering after a captive breeding program released 11,000 insects onto predator-free islands last year.

🇬🇭 Ghana: The country has earned a Tier 1 ranking in the US State Department's human trafficking report, the top rating, after prosecuting 212 suspected traffickers and helping repatriate 756 victims in 2025.

Desmond Doss became the only conscientious objector in American history to receive the Medal of Honor. A devout Seventh-day Adventist who refused to carry a weapon, Doss served as a medic during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II at Hacksaw Ridge in Okinawa, Japan. While soldiers around him were being killed and wounded, he stayed on the battlefield alone, lowering injured men to safety over the edge of a 400-foot cliff using a rope and a series of knots he had taught himself. By the end of that night, he had saved an estimated 75 men.

President Harry S. Truman presented Doss with the Medal of Honor personally, telling him he was prouder to meet him than to meet the President of the United States. Doss's story was later brought to the screen in Mel Gibson's 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge, introducing his extraordinary courage to a new generation.

Other Notable Events on October 12:

1492: Christopher Columbus and his crew became the first Europeans to sight the Bahamian island of Guanahani, marking the beginning of sustained contact between Europe and the Americas.

1810: The first Oktoberfest was held in Munich to celebrate a royal wedding, and citizens enjoyed it so much it became an annual tradition that continues more than 200 years later.

1979: Douglas Adams published The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the beloved comic science fiction novel that went on to become a global classic.

2019: Eliud Kipchoge completed the first sub-2-hour marathon in Vienna, finishing in 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 40 seconds, a feat many had thought humanly impossible.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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:

🔬 Multi-Cancer Blood Test: A new blood test that screens for multiple types of cancer before symptoms appear may be available to patients soon, marking a potential turning point in early detection.

👁️ Vision Restored: Using a single gene therapy injection and light-converting goggles, researchers restored partial vision in blind patients with a condition once considered untreatable.

🧠 Alzheimer's Prevention: A common transplant drug called rapamycin improved blood flow to the brain in healthy adults carrying an Alzheimer's risk gene, opening a promising new path toward prevention.

☀️ Clean Energy Breakthrough: Scientists created a light-driven crystal that converts water into clean hydrogen fuel using only sunlight, no electricity required.

👴 Aging Reimagined: A new study finds the aging brain isn't declining so much as shifting toward different strengths, optimizing for wisdom and experience over speed.

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