GoneTrending

Freddie Teer is a normal boy. He loves Legos, skateboarding, and horsing around with his older brother Ollie. But in March 2017, his mother faced every parent’s worst nightmare.

Photo via iStock.

Freddie was doing tricks down the stairs of his front porch when he fell off his bike — and his bike fell on him.

“[He was] just crying, wouldn’t let us touch his leg, couldn’t put any weight on his leg. We knew,” mom Ashley says.

Ashley rushed Freddie to the emergency room, where an X-ray confirmed the bones in his left shin were broken in half. He needed to be sedated, his bones set and put in a cast. It was an agonizing day for the Teers. But it’s what happened next that was truly inspiring.

---

We’ve all seen heartwarming stories of communities coming together to raise money online to help people cover medical care for themselves and loved ones.

There was the Kentucky mom with stage 4 cancer whose family collected over $1 million. The New Orleans police officer whose unit banked thousands for her chemotherapy. The Colorado man who lost his legs and whose friends crowdfunded his recovery.

While Freddie’s injury required major treatment, none of Ashley’s friends raised any money for him.

No one from their town took up a collection or held a bake sale.

No GoFundMe page was started to help cover his bills.

Instead, Ashley and Freddie walked out of the hospital owing nothing. Because they live in Canada.

“You just leave,” Ashley says. “You don’t pay anything.”

Incredible.

Under Canada’s health care system, people like the Teers can see their doctors and go to the hospital when they’re hurt or sick, and they don’t get charged.

So heartwarming.

It almost wasn’t this way.

Ashley was born and raised in St. Louis in the U.S. where health care is expensive and complicated. Twelve years ago, she fell in love with a Canadian man and moved with him to Abbotsford, British Columbia, where they and their five children will enjoy heavily subsidized, affordable health care coverage at a low premium for the remainder of their natural lives.

“We’re able to go when we need help and we get help,” Ashley says.

Just amazing.

As Freddie recovered, no one showed up at the Teer home with a large check or collection plate full of cash.

Instead, Ashley and her family were “supported through meals and just that kind of care” — meals they were able to enjoy without having to decide between enduring the shame of hitting up their friends for money or facing the prospect of sliding into bankruptcy.

The most uplifting part? Middle-income Canadians like the Teers pay taxes at roughly the same rates as Americans and still get their bones fixed for free at hospitals.

Not everything about Freddie’s recovery process was smooth.

The first night, Freddie tossed and turned in severe pain, unable to sleep. Ashley, however, was able to call her family doctor — who she never has to pay since he is compensated by a public system that continues to have overwhelming public support to this day — to get her son a codeine prescription. Miraculous!

Canada’s public health care plan doesn’t cover drugs. But, inspiringly, because of price controls, medicine is way cheaper there.

The Teers did lean on their friends and family for help while Freddie got better.

“We were kind of just asking people to pray,” she explains — primarily to lift her son’s spirits, and not, thankfully, to ask God to provide sufficient funds to cover basic medical care that every human living in a fair and prosperous society should have access to.

Even though he wasn’t able to move around, friends and relatives eagerly invited Freddie to hang out during his recovery instead avoiding him out of guilt for not pledging enough to his GoFundMe campaign.

Just. Wow.

With support from his community — support that didn’t include a single dollar — Freddie’s cast came off six weeks later, right on schedule.

Healthy once more, Freddie went right back to enjoying extreme sports like BMX biking, skateboarding, and snowboarding, and Ashley is free to let him enjoy them without worrying about one fall wiping out their entire life savings and leaving her family destitute.

“Where we live, we’re not stressful when things happen to our kids,” Ashley says. “It’s not a stressful time financially, so the whole family is not anxious.”

It’s peace of mind that she — and the residents of virtually every other rational, wealthy, industrialized country in the world — share.

“I feel safe, and I feel like my voice is heard,” she says. “I can’t imagine living in a place that I didn’t feel that way.”

Inspiring.

This article originally appeared on 03.27.17

Around 1 a.m. on April 24, semi-truck drivers in the Oak Park area of Michigan received a distress call from area police: An unidentified man was standing on the edge of a local bridge, apparently ready to jump onto the freeway below.

Those drivers then did something amazing. They raced to the scene to help — and lined up their trucks under the bridge, providing a relatively safe landing space should the man jump.

---

Fortunately, he didn’t.

The impressive line-up wasn’t a coincidence — the drivers were prepared for exactly this sort of situation.Sgt. Jason Brockdorff of the Huntington Woods Police Department told The Detroit News that the response was something local police and truck drivers had actually trained for. But what was unusual was the sheer number of drivers who responded to the call.

“That’s a practice we use if we have a jumper,” Brockdorff said. “We try to do it every time, to lessen the distance someone would travel if they were to jump. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.”

The incident lasted nearly four hours, into the early morning. However, once the trucks were in place, the police were able to more comfortably negotiate with the unidentified man.

Eventually, the man walked off the bridge on his own and is currently receiving medical help.

In a pair of tweets, the local police department called attention to the incident to remind people in similar situations of the importance of seeking mental health services (emphasis mine):

This photo does show the work troopers and local officers do to serve the public. But also in that photo is a man struggling with the decision to take his own life. Please remember help is available through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

You can also call a loved one, member of the clergy or 911. There are so many people that can help you make the choice to get help and live! It is our hope to never see another photo like this again.

Working together, the police and everyday strangers saved a life.

Ordinary people heeded the call of service to help a fellow person who was struggling. It’s a powerful image that’s impossible to ignore, and a reminder of humanity at its best.

This article originally appeared on 04.24.18

In recent years, a trend on the roads has frustrated many drivers: the increasing brightness of car headlights. While driving at night, drivers often forced to squint or are momentarily blinded by these ultra-bright lights, especially on high beams.

It’s annoying, and it’s also a safety hazard. But it doesn’t seem like anyone is doing anything about it.

New cars have brighter headlights because of the shift in manufacturing from halogen headlamps with a softer, orange color to blue-colored LED lights. “Imagine a car with two headlights: one halogen, one LED. They’d both meet the requirements. The light meter would say they’re the same, but the LED would look 40% brighter,” Mark Rea, professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, said, according to The Hill.

---

​What makes things worse is that many Americans drive trucks and SUVs with lights that are higher on the vehicle than a typical sedan. So drivers in the smaller cars often get intense beams of light shot directly at their eyes.

The problem is so bad that the Soft Lights Foundation calls for a ban on “blinding headlights.”

“I’ve got a small car. This truck is so much higher than me. Those headlights are going straight into my eye,” Mark Baker, President of the Soft Lights Foundation, told ABC News. “How is that going to be safe? So there’s a mismatch between small cars and super large cars that NHTSA should be having standards for.”

In the video below, Vicky Nguyen from NBC News explains the problem with new headlights and the solution, adaptive headlight technology.

Blinding headlights are growing problem on US roads

There’s something innately heartwarming about two unlikely animals becoming best friends. Whether it’s a cat and a dog (which happens fairly often) or its a duck and a hamster, people can’t get enough of these unusual animal pairings. But this particular animal pairing is almost beyond the imagination with how ridiculously cute it is.

A baby camel named Sir Camelot was rescued by Speranza Animal Rescue and he quickly found out that the other animals didn’t want to be his friend. His humans tried hard to pair him up with some of the other animals but even the horses wanted nothing to do with the camel, running away every time he came near. It clearly hurt the baby’s feelings because he would stand and scream when the other animals would run away from him.

Enter Benjamin Button, a baby cow that was just two weeks younger than Camelot. When Benjamin arrived at the animal rescue neither him or Camelot knew what to make of each other, but it only took one night before the pair was bonded.

---

“Ben was very shy. When we introduced them, at first they kind of looked startled, like, ‘what are you?’,” Janine Guido explains to The Dodo. “And then we put them in the barn for the night. They just kind of bonded through that gate. And then they started going out together during the day and it was just instantly like two children at play.”

The pair were instantly inseparable. They play what looks like tag with each other and have tantrums over sharing just like human siblings. Their relationship is so sweet that it’s warming the hearts of people on the internet.

“That was beautiful to watch, thank you you are a very special person doing what you do.thank you,” one person writes.

“I love this true story of true friendship. It’s beautiful to see what companionship to do to make two unlikely animals best friends,” someone says.

“Awww … I absolutely loved watching this! Kudos to you for coming up with your “crazy idea” of finding Camelot a friend! They are so cute & funny. I love how their personalities came through. I got such a chuckle over Camelot not sharing,” another commenter writes.

You can watch their adorable friendship develop below:

Who among us hasn’t come into full adulthood wishing they had known certain things that could have made life so so so much easier in the long run? Choices that, if made, ultimately would have been much better for our well-being…not to mention our wallets.

But then again that is all part of growing older and (hopefully) wiser. However there is something to be said about getting advice from those who’ve been there, rather than learning the hard way every single time.

Thankfully, a man who goes by @johnfluenzer on TikTok has a great list of things young people should start doing once they become adults. Are any of his suggestions fun, cool or trendy? Not at all. But they are most definitely accurate. Just ask any 30+-year-olds who wished they had done at least four of these things.

---

John started off by saying, “welcome to being an adult. Maybe you weren’t told this by your parents, but this is through my trial and error.”

Listed below are the eight vital things to maintaining a healthy adulthood, that most of us have no idea about until well into adulthood.

1. Getting an annual doctor visit.

This is the bare minimum amount of visits one should be making, according to John. He recommended more if you “have more medical concerns.”

2. Dental visits. For a yearly cleaning at the very least.

“Keep in mind that a $300 cavity can turn into a $1,500 root canal, which can then turn into a $2,000 crown on top of the $1,500 you just paid, so it’s better to just pay the $300 or whatever it is for a cavity, and just get it sorted,” he explained.

As someone with this exact experience (ignored a cavity because she didn’t want to pay $300, only to pay $1500 years later, even with insurance) I can ruefully confirm.

…as can others, judging by the comments sections to John’s video.

“I didn’t go to the dentist for 8 years and now I need a root canal. Learn from my mistakes people,” one person wrote.

Seriously, no amount of flossing and avoiding sugar can make up for a professional cleaning and checkup, folks.

Last note on this subject—John mentioned that if you couldn’t afford to go to a dentist, to check for nearby dental schools that can often perform necessary procedures at a fraction of the cost.

Though he specifically mentioned dental schools in Canada, that is also an option in America. Things I wish I had known as a 20-year-old…

3. Next up, John suggested that if you are sexually active, to get checked for STDs/STIs.

“If you’re uncomfortable with your GP, or you don’t have a GP, go to a sexual health clinic…. Just go get tested — it’s better to know,” he said.

4. Get vaccines. “Be up on your vaccines, not just your flu shot.”

“We’re talking Hep A/Hep B, and also if you’re under 25, get your Gardasil 9. It’s three shots. It prevents the cancer-causing HPV,” he explained.

And while he mostly discussed the free health care options found in Canada, HPV vaccines are covered by most insurances in the US. Plus there are other potentially free/low cost resources, such as the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program for those under 19.

5. Then get a PEP, aka Post-exposure prophylaxis, if you had a “risky sexual encounter” and are worried about having contracted HIV.

For this one, time really is of the essence. The sooner a PEP is taken, the more effective it is at preventing HIV, and must be taken within 72 hours of possible exposure to HIV.

Gotta say…list time 3-5 seem particularly important, as many young people are not given thorough sex education.

6. Rent. Everyone’s favorite.

John explains that especially in a housing crisis, “your rent should be the first thing you take care of every month.”

“It comes before everything. Now maybe if you have kids and they need to eat, of course, that’s important,” he added. “But a roof over their head is way more important and you do not want to give landlords any excuse to have you evicted. Pay your rent and pay it on time.”

7. Hold onto that cellphone as long as possible.

“I know we all want the new cell phones.Keep your phone as long as possible, OK?” he said. “I don’t care if it’s any iPhone 10, iPhone 8, keep it for as long as possible. Especially if you’re under no contract—you have so much freedom.”

Instead of getting a new phone, John suggested switching providers every month to get special deals and save “$40–50 bucks a month,” which, as we all know, really adds up.

8. Only have one streaming subscription a month.

This one was admittedly “controversial,” John shared, but in his point of view, it’s a no brainer.

“You don’t need Netflix, Disney, Hulu, whatever… you don’t need them all the same month. January do Netflix, cancel. February do Hulu… All of these different apps, they let you save watchlists, right, like ‘My List.’ And if you cancel your subscription and you restart it two months later, your list is still there. So just save stuff, only pay for it once a month, and try to save some money,” he suggested.

What a wake up call, right? But other hardened adults couldn’t help but agree with John.

“This is very good advice, can confirm (unfortunately) as a fellow adult lol,” one person wrote.

Others appreciated how he took the time to share this list to help younger people avoid some pretty disheartening setbacks.

“I love people like you so much, just her to help others in life. People like you are so important because you didn’t have to make this video but you did.”

You can’t always trust what you hear on TikTok, but John’s advice is sound. What most life hacks seem to have in common, other than a healthy blend of common sense and 20/20 hindsight, is that it puts some form of security at the forefront—not necessarily instant gratification. Fun is so important, but as anyone with experience will tell you, peace of mind is priceless.

Watch the full video below:

@johnfluenzer #greenscreen Here is my list if things you jeed to start doing once you’re an adult! I know its not fun bit I wish someone had told me when I was younger. #genz #genalpha #adultingishard ♬ original sound – John

For most dog owners, their pooch is a member of the family, best friend, confidante, and loyal protector. They would never dream of giving their dog away to anyone, let alone selling their pet. However, what if the offer was $200,000?

A TikTokker named Alexis Elliott says she received a “legit” offer of $200,000 for her Doberman pinscher puppy, but refused because she wouldn’t dream of selling her dog.

“Someone offered us $200K for our puppy, and I told my husband ‘absolutely f*cking not,’” the TikToker said. “Would you guys sell your dogs for $200k?” she asks later in the video. “Like, that is my baby! That is my baby. I birthed her. That is my child. Like there is no money, I would not sell her. But it just got me thinking, like, I wonder if people would have taken that 200K?”

---

After posing the question, Alexis received a lot of responses. Surprisingly, many of them would entertain the $200,000 offer.

Warning: Video contains strong language.

​“In this economy? Yes.” one user wrote, and people agreed with them, giving the comment over 8,000 likes. “I would absolutely, without even thinking about it, LMAO,” Maee G added. Others thought that it was morally right to take the money. “It’s a crime to not accept 200k,” Lana said.

One woman tried to alter the deal. “Not my dog but the husband, absolutely,” a user wrote.

About the same number of commenters said they would never sell their dogs, even for $200,000. “A lot of you in these comments don’t deserve a dog,” Adero_77 wrote. “Omg never. The thought of my dog being confused and feeling abandoned breaks my heart,” Julie added.

“One time, someone asked my brother if he would sell his puppy. My brother answered, ‘No, I’d rather have an empty wallet than an empty house,’” Tracy Laguna wrote.

One person responded to the video with a funny clip of their dog waiting on the curb with a suitcase. “For 200k, damn!” I am Yelitzii captioned the video.

@iamyelitzii

#stitch with @Alexis For 200k damn 😂

Some believe that if their dog went to live with someone with $200k to spend on them, it would probably be living in a better place. “If they’re offering $200k they can clearly provide him a better life than I can! This is best for both of us,” Clutch Grabs wrote. “Listen, with that type of money, me & my dog would live our best lives… separately,” Jasmine added.

Those who said would never sell their dogs because it would cause them distress are correct. “Yes, your dog will miss you when you give them away,” Preventive Vet wrote on its blog. However, dogs can adapt to a new family situation. “It is normal for a dog to grieve the loss of their previous family and go through an acclimation period in their new home,” the blog continues. “While they may miss you, if they are in a caring environment and their needs are being met, they will do well.”

The first thing you need to know about Charlie the golden retriever is that he loves Mr. Quackers.

Mr. Quackers is Charlie’s stuffed yellow duck. Charlie carries him around everywhere, he loves him so.

@charliethegolden18

I always so happ to see my lil bro 😋 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

---

Anyone who’s had a dog with a favorite stuffy knows that it’s a bit like a child with a favorite stuffy. As long as the stuffy is there, all is well. If stuffy goes missing, all hell breaks loose. Nobody take the stuffy away. Nobody lose the stuffy. Nobody mess with the stuffy.

Where they go, their stuffy goes.

Where Charlie goes, Mr. Quackers goes.

That’s just the way it is.

@charliethegolden18 Happens every..single..time 😂🙈 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever ♬ Quirky – Oleg Kirilkov

The attachment is real. Watch what happens when Charlie’s buddy Buddy tries to mess with Mr. Quackers.

@charliethegolden18

Ain’t nobody touching my Mr. Quackers 😋 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

“There, see it!” Oh, Charlie. His love for Mr. Quackers is unrivaled, which is why his owner decided to pull an incredible pet prank and dress up as Mr. Quackers himself.

@charliethegolden18

When your husband finds a costume that looks identical to your dogs favorite duck toy 😂 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

The things we do for our dogs, indeed.

And when Charlie got to meet the life-sized Mr. Quackers? So. Much. Joy.

@charliethegolden18

Dressed up as our dogs favorite duck toy. Full video on FB & YouTube. Link in bio. #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

Charlie practically wagged his tail right off his body. And he never let go of the original Mr. Quackers the whole time—at least on TikTok.

The extended video on YouTube shows Charlie dropping Mr. Quackers and trying to get a hold of Huge Mr. Quackers by the neck. Not in an aggressive way—more like in a “Hey, lemme carry you around like I do Mr. Quackers!” kind of way.

And then the slow discovery that Huge Mr. Quackers smells an awful lot like his hooman … just too precious.

Animals can bring such joy to our lives, especially when we take the time to play with them. Thanks, Charlie’s parents, for sharing this moment of adorable delight with us all.

Follow more of Charlie and Mr. Quackers’ adventures on TikTok and YouTube.

This article originally appeared on 03.30.22

Samuel J. Seymour was one of the approximately 1,700 people at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. He was also the last to live long enough to talk about that historic night on television.

Seymour was 5 years old when he went to see the play “Our American Cousin” with his nurse, Sarah Cook, and Mrs. Goldsboro, the wife of his father’s employer.

When Booth shot Lincoln, he pulled the trigger during the biggest laugh of the night so that it wouldn’t be heard. What caught Seymour’s attention was when Booth fell from the balcony after a scuffle with Henry Reed Rathbone.

---

Chaos erupted in the theater and Seymour was ushered out by his nurse. While they fled he overheard people screaming, “Lincoln’s shot! The President is dead!”

“I saw Lincoln slumped forward in his seat,” the old man later recalled. “That night I was shot 50 times, at least, in my dreams—and I sometimes relive the horror of Lincoln’s assassination, dozing in my rocker as an old codger like me is bound to do.”

Two months before Seymour’s death at the age of 95, he appeared on the game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” where panelists tried to guess his secret: “I saw John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln (April 14, 1865).”

Seymour didn’t speak much during the show but he did make a historic understatement when panelist Jayne Meadows asked if his secret was “a pleasant thing,” to which Seymour replied, “Not very pleasant I don’t think. I was scared to death.”

This article originally appeared on 2.3.23

On Friday Netflix dropped a new original film on their coffers. It’s called Leave the World Behind, and it finds Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail offering his vision of a very possible apocalypse. It’s not computers enslaving humans that’s the problem. It’s technology — phones, computers, wifi, everything we’ve come to rely on to get by — stops working. (There are also killer Teslas, which is definitely not far-fetched.) The movie’s inciting incident is a getaway house rented by one family (led by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) but owned by another (led by Mahershala Ali). But where is this home, and where was it filmed?

The answer to both questions is: Long Island. The majority of Leave the World Behind was filmed on location, in Old Westbury, one of the wealthiest parts of what is truly a long, long island, which is saying something. Old Westbury isn’t too deep into Long Island; it’s about an hour drive from Brooklyn, though it takes over twice as long by public transportation. For some perspective it takes nearly three hours to drive from Brooklyn, at the western-most part of Long Island, to Montauk, the easternmost place (and made even more famous by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). By public transportation, it’s three hours. They weren’t kidding about that name!

Not all of Leave the World Behind was filmed on Long Island. Some scenes were filmed in Katonah, New York, about an hour’s drive north of Manhattan.

Leave the World Behind now streams on Netflix.

Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” may be No. 1 song in America, but Mariah Carey is still the Queen of Christmas. With just a few weeks before Carey’s holiday, Carey has to pack as much holiday cheer into her live shows as possible. On Saturday, December 9, she took her Merry Christmas One And All Tour to Madison Square Garden in New York City.

So far, the setlist for the tour is filled with fans’ favorite holiday tracks, including Carey’s record-setting song “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” However, yesterday’s show offered a little surprise. As Carey prepared to sing “Oh Santa!” she was joined onstage by EGOT holder Jennifer Hudson and Ariana Grande. The powerhouse trio spiced things up, delivering the remix version of a song initially released in 2020.

Following the performance, Carey took to Instagram to thank her collaborators for making a cheerful cameo during the show, writing, “Grateful to have the gorgeous and talented Christmas angels Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson join me on stage tonight at Madison Square Garden for our song ‘Oh Santa! (Remix)’ .”