Before "The Rock," There Was "Rocky Maivia"

Magic Johnson turned down a deal with Nike in 1979 that offered him 100,000 shares of stock and $1 for every pair of shoes sold. Instead, he chose Converse, which offered him $100,000 per year. Johnson lost about $5 billion by declining the Nike deal.

In 2008 Quaker parrot Willie alerted his owner Megan Howard when the little girl she was babysitting began to choke. Howard was in the bathroom when the parrot repeatedly yelled "Mama! Baby!" flapping his wings. Megan rushed and performed the Heimlich maneuver, saving her life. Willie received the Red Cross Animal Lifesaver Award.

A father was denied access to see his premature twins in the NICU when Beyonce and Jay-Z had their daughter at the same time.

Adidas has sold over 1 million eco-friendly shoes made from ocean plastic. Each pair reuses the equivalent of 11 plastic bottles

Australian blood donor James Harrison has been one of our most impressive and valued donors, having donated for 60 years. Know his story, how he was a pioneer of our Anti-D program, and why this matters.

In 2023, a Kenyan inventor Roy Allela invented smart gloves that can convert sign language movements into audio speech, for his six years old niece who was born deaf.

Even though that his mother passed away in 2016, a young man had a clever idea to make a life-size cutout of her and bring it to the event so that she could attend his graduation ceremony.

Stefano Mariottini was snorkeling off the coast of Monasterace near Riace in 1972 when he noticed a human hand sticking out of the sand and called the police, thinking it was a corpse. It was actually two statues of "Warriors from Riace" - 5th century BC Greek bronze statues.

Nicholas Bostic a 25-year-old pizza delivery man from Lafayette, Indiana, ran into a burning house to rescue four children, who told him there is one more inside. He ran back inside, he found the six-year-old girl, jumped out of a window, carried her to a cop who captured the moment on his bodycam.

Inspired by fast food convenience, Las Vegas offers drive-thru weddings where couples can legally marry in under 5 minutes—without leaving their car. Some chapels even offer curbside Elvis impersonators and 24/7 ceremonies, complete with “to-go” marriage licenses.

A woman who had been lost since she was a newborn for 51 years was reported to have been sighted.

With their bottle caps that said, "Help me, I'm trapped in SoBe factory," SoBe Beverage discovered the hard way that forced labor is serious business. This is an example of when humor can be overdone.

There is a 300-year-old mummified mermaid with 30 centimetres tall and features a human-like head, two hands with what appear to be fingernails, and its lower body that look like a fish tail. The “mermaid mummy” is being probed by Japanese scientists in an attempt to unravel the mystery of its existence.

In 2009, Gergely Barki, an art historian, was watching the film Stuart Little (1999) when he spotted an original long-lost painting used as a prop. Called Sleeping Lady with Black Vase, this painting was the work of Hungarian avant-garde painter Róbert Berény. The painting had been considered lost after World War II.

An Apple watch saved the life of a 78-year-old man from North Carolina. When the man was unconscious and collapsed on his driveway, his Apple watch quickly sent an alert to emergency services.

One thing is certain: when it comes to ensuring nice weather for the world's largest party, the Chinese cannot be accused of being subtle. The Chinese government authorized the use of 1,104 cloud seeding missile launches from 4:00-11:39 p.m. on Friday night to reduce the possibility of rain ahead of the 29th Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as "The Berlin Patient," was the first person to be HIV-free. He was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006 and had a bone marrow transplant in 2007 as part of his treatment. The transplant helped him overcome the otherwise incurable disease thanks to the rare, HIV-resistant donor.

Hyperinflation of the Zimbabwe dollar made it one of the lowest valued currencies in the world. So the country abandoned it in 2009, and switched to using foreign money. In 2015, to complete the process of phasing out their local money, the government offered to exchange it at a rate of one US dollar for 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars.

In 2013, a homeless man named Billy Ray Harris discovered a $4,000 engagement ring in this cup. A woman had dropped while giving him some change. He returned the ring to her two days later. To thank him for his honesty, she set up a fund with the goal of raising $4,000 for him. It earned more than $185,000.

In 1990, the captain of flight 5390 Timothy Lancaster got sucked out of his own plane when the window of the plane fell off. The crew held the captain’s leg for 30 minutes while the plane performed emergency landing. Everyone survived.

Bill Morgan, an Australian, is a man who has beat the odds. He escaped death by surviving a horrific automobile accident and heart attack before collapsing into a coma and going on to win the lotto twice. He went from losing virtually everything to winning far more than he could have imagined.

go Braille Bricks were launched in 2020 to help visually impaired children learn Braille through play. Each brick features the Braille alphabet and is fully compatible with standard Lego sets, allowing sighted peers to join in, fostering inclusivity and collaboration in learning environments.

When Anais Bordier saw a YouTube video of Samantha Futerman, who looked exactly like her, she messaged her on Facebook and discovered they were both adopted and born on the same day. They were identical twins who had been separated at birth and had found each other by chance and on social media.

This is Whang-od Oggay, a 106-year-old tattoo artist from the Philippines. She is often described as the last and oldest Kalinga tattoo artist, and has been performing the traditional art of hand-tapped tattoos since the age of 15

Neeja Bhanot, a 22 year old Indian flight attendant who helped hides 41 American passports aboard a hijacked plane. She died shielding three children from gunfire and was posthumously awarded bravery medals from India, Pakistan, and the United States.