Students jumped with joy, hugged one another and squealed with delight as teachers at their South Carolina elementary school revealed hundreds of custom-made bicycles beneath parachutes normally used for P.E. class. The new set of wheels Thursday came courtesy of first-grade teacher Katie Blomquist. "I made a really conscious effort to watch their faces and let it soak in and imprint in my brain when those tarps went up," she told TODAY. "It was that moment I've been waiting for seven months."

A Wisconsin boy gave away his prized Nintendo Wii console and all his favorite games to his local police department, his way of standing by them as they cope with a tragic loss. When Brady Duke, 7, heard about the fatal shooting of Wausau Police Department Detective Jason Weiland, he wanted to do something special for his local officers to support them through their difficult time. “He just has a really big heart,” mom Jessica Duke said of her son.

When Chang Benfu and his wife Zhao Xuefang married back in 1976, the wedding was a simple affair. They didn’t have the money for a grand ceremony, or even for a photographer to capture the big day. But now, four decades later, a group of university students have given them the greatest wedding gift of all and given the couple their own photo-shoot.

Armani Crews was turning 6. But what she was asking her parents for was far from a typical birthday party. The Chicago kindergartener said she didn't want a celebration with her friends. She wanted, instead, to feed the homeless. When her mom said they could hand out sandwiches, she insisted on serving exactly what she'd have had at her party.

Melissa Dohme was all smiles on her wedding day as she married the man who kept her alive after she was stabbed and left for dead by her ex-boyfriend, but regaining her happy grin was a massive undertaking. Cameron Hill created international headlines when he proposed to Dohme in May 2015 as she prepared to toss the first pitch in a baseball game in Florida, in the US.

Mélanie Ségard is 21 years old, with a bright smile, a love of parties and restaurants, and a job at a packaging company. And, oh yes: She also happens to have Down syndrome. “I’m different,” the French woman states on her official Facebook page, “but I want to show everyone that I can do a lot of things.” But there was one thing she had always wanted to do that had eluded her: to present the weather on television.

A four-year-old girl who walked miles through the freezing Siberian wilderness to get help for her sick grandmother has been hailed as a hero in Russia’s Tuva republic, while a criminal case has been opened against her mother. Saglana Salchak had been living with her grandparents at their remote farm deep in the taiga forest near the Mongolian border, more than 12 miles from the nearest village and five miles from their closest neighbour.

Sometimes it’s the small things in life that can dramatically lift one’s spirits, even a simple hair cut. A “deeply depressed” woman walked into a hair salon one day after being unable to get out of bed for six months. She began picking up a variety of hair softening products before a hairdresser noticed her and asked if she needed help. The woman broke down and told the hairstylist her story. Since she couldn’t get out of bed for months, she didn’t wash her hair or brush it — it was a matted mess.

Rob Scheer wants to make sure no other child in the foster care system has an experience like the ones he and his children had. Warning: descriptions of abuse.

Two young women who were rescued from their submerged SUV say they owe their lives to a man whom they now call their personal hero. Haley Morris was driving her friend, Kate Henry, home from the gym after midnight Wednesday. The usual route was blocked, so Morris took a different road. The women said it was dark and foggy and nearly impossible to see, and their SUV suddenly plunged into the Waccamaw River.

A little Chicago girl decided that for her birthday what she wanted more than anything was to help other people. So Armani Crew, 6, spent her birthday Sunday giving away food to the homeless. Even though she is barely tall enough to see over the table, Armani spent the lunch hour serving food to strangers.

School officials say an anonymous donor has paid off the lunch debts of more than 150 students in an Ohio city in honor of a retired cafeteria worker who died in January. The Port Clinton News-Herald reports (http://ohne.ws/2lo9NUi ) the more than $500 donation helped pay off the lunch debts of every Port Clinton City Schools student, from kindergarten to 12th grade. The donation was made during the school's "Random Acts of Kindness Week" in February. The newspaper reports the gesture was made in memory of the person's favorite "lunch lady," Ruth Vogt.

A little boy from Louisville, Kentucky, is warming everyone's heart with his "haircut prank." The boy's mom, Lydia Rosebush, posted on Facebook that her almost 5-year-old son Jax wanted to get his head shaved really close so he could look identical to his best friend, Reddy Weldon. Jax thought his new 'do would trick his teacher and she wouldn't be able to tell the boys apart, although Jax is white and Reddy is black.

A SAINSBURY’S worker who invited a lonely widower to dinner after hearing he had no close friends or family said their ‘date’ reduced her to tears. Edwin Holmes wore his best suit to have dinner with Sainsbury’s worker Ellie Walker, 22, after she heard the 86-year-old spends most days alone.

An excited Wiphawadee Thisorn waited at Hat Yai bus terminal on Wednesday night, overjoyed at the thought of again seeing her long-lost son - reunited after 33 years by the magic of social media. Prinya Thisorn, 36, had travelled 1,700 kilometres by bus from Chiang Rai to see her - about two days and two nights on the road.

A woman in New Jersey is using couponing in a big way to feed people in her community who are in need. Lauren Puryear, 29, is a mental health clinician and has been spending years helping to feed the hungry. Her ultimate goal? Deliver 30,000 meals to people in need by her 30th birthday. It all began four years ago after the death of her grandmother, who had strongly instilled the importance of helping others.

A dog that was found abandoned in the streets of Detroit with its nose, ears and tail cut off has been cleared to go to his forever home, the Michigan Humane Society announced Friday. Baron underwent 2 1/2 hours of successful reconstructive surgery on Feb. 8 to protect his nasal passage and shorten and suture his tail. The veterinary team said he "came through with flying colors." The reward for information on who abandoned and mutilated Baron has increased to $40,000.

A newborn puppy can be a full-time job, that's why beer maker BrewDog — a Scottish brewery set to open up an Ohio location later this year — now offers a week of paid leave for employees with new puppies or rescued dogs. The company said it's the first company in the United States, and the first brewery in the United Kingdom, to offer the "paw-ternity" benefit. BrewDog, in an announcement made earlier this week, said the benefit will be offered to all of its nearly 1,000 employees across the world, including those at its soon-to-be brewery near Columbus, Ohio, which is set to open in the spring.

The receptionist, as always, had opened the mail before Kathleen Chafin came in to work that morning. And everyone in the office seemed to be staring at Chafin as she picked up a stack of envelopes and walked off toward her desk. Somewhere along the way, a letter fell out of the pile. And as Chafin stopped to pick it up, she couldn’t help noticing that everyone else in the room stopped too, watching for her reaction. The letter was from somebody named Tom in Omaha, Nebraska.

A Vancouver Police officer is being commended by people on social media for rescuing a dog that had fallen through the ice at Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, Joinfo.com reports with reference to CBC News.