A 91-year-old Richfield mailman is retiring with a perfect record after more than 69 years. Jack Lund started in 1949 and has had a career spanning eight decades. During that time, he never failed to deliver the mail despite severe mountain weather, vehicle breakdowns, and other challenges. Richfield-area postal employees who have worked with Lund for years report he's not only reliable, he also conducts himself with the utmost honesty and integrity and has done it all with a smile.

Heather O’Donnell ordered a few tacos and a quesadilla from the drive-thru at the Taco Bell in Fairmount Sunday, and got a welcome surprise in her bag. "I got this message that said ‘when you reach the end of your rope tie a knot around it and hang on- Franklin D. Roosevelt,,'' she said. “It made me stop in my tracks and smile. Knowing someone took time out of their work or life to write this is another example that there are still good people out there.”

One day, as a small child, John Allen Chau was rooting through his father’s study when he found something curious and alluring: an illustrated edition of Robinson Crusoe, the classic story of a sailor shipwrecked on a deserted island. “After struggling my way to read it with early elementary school English,” he later told a website for outdoors enthusiasts, “I started reading easier kid-friendly books,” like The Sign of the Beaver, “which inspired my brother and I to paint our faces with wild blackberry juice and tramp through our backyard with bows and spears we created from sticks”.

A stranger who showed a little girl “kindness and compassion” at the airport is now her superstar. On Saturday, Kevin Armentrout, a public speaker in Las Vegas, wrote a Facebook post about a traveler named Joseph Wright, a field sales manager at Samsung in Oklahoma, who took joy in entertaining his 16-month-old daughter, Carter Jean, at the airport.

He watched medics hop out and surround a thin figure draped in a blanket on a nearby bench. He was not alarmed, nor was he concerned for the person on the bench. The figure is not a person at all, but a statue. The “Homeless Jesus” sculpture has been stationed outside the basilica since 2017. It depicts a man lying on a bench with his face totally shrouded, huddling to keep warm. The only way you can tell it’s Jesus at all is by the twin piercings in its feet.

Arthur Ashkin, the world's oldest Nobel Prize winner, favors comfort over style. When I met him in his New Jersey home, he was sporting a fleece-lined zip-up, corduroy pants, and fuzz-lined Crocs. The outfit makes sense for someone who spends a lot of time tinkering with new inventions in the basement. Ashkin, who's 96 years old, has turned the bottom floor of his house into a kind of laboratory where he's developing a solar-energy-harnessing device. "I'm making cheap electricity," he said.

I feel like a ghost. I’m a 35-year-old woman, and I have nothing to show for it. My 20s and early 30s have been a twisting crisscross of moves all over the West Coast, a couple of brief stints abroad, multiple jobs in a mediocre role with no real upward track. I was also the poster child for serial monogamy. My most hopeful and longest lasting relationship (three and a half years, whoopee) ended two years ago. We moved to a new town (my fourth new city), created a home together, and then nose-dived into a traumatic breakup that launched me to my fifth and current city and who-knows-what-number job.

Just inside the entrance to an Italian restaurant on a recent afternoon in the historic St. George neighborhood on Staten Island, the smell of soy and ponzu masked that of onions and garlic. The source? A Japanese woman had taken over the kitchen to make gyoza and shrimp dumpling soup. “The dumplings are good!” said a customer at a table of seven, sounding surprised.

Cold hard numbers will tell you that 2018 was not the start of the Xbox comeback. There were some good games, certainly. And Xbox One X established itself as a great console. But whether you're looking at Metacritic or the sales charts, the last 12 months has proceeded in much the same as the previous four years -- a generation entirely dominated by PlayStation.

In April of 1962, 18-year-old Keith Richards wrote the following enthusiastic letter to his aunt, "Patty," and described, amongst other things, an encounter some months previous that would ultimately change his life — the moment he met Mick Jagger for the first time since being childhood friends. Three months after the letter was written, "The Rollin' Stones" played their first gig at the Marquee Club in London. The rest is history.

Like clockwork, 93-year old Ted Richardson arrives at the Veterans' Cemetery at Punchbowl in Honolulu, Hawaii to visit his wife Florence's grave.

I’m writing to you because I was struck by a photo you published a few years back of my mother! I thought you might like to know that the person on the left is Massuma Kazemi. She is not only alive but also still a practicing physician (a pediatrician) in Dallas, Texas. I think she’s likely to retire soon, but she’s 75 now and in great shape. (The woman on the far right is actually her sister, Feroza Bittner, a retired ob-gyn who practiced in Munich, Germany.)

“Give us any chance we'll take it, read us any rule we’ll break it, we’re gonna make our dreams come true -- doin’ it our way.” So went the opening lines of the “Laverne & Shirley” theme song, replaying this week in many of our minds following the death of Penny Marshall, who played Laverne. Sitcom theme songs are a thing of the past on television, and so are gung-ho physical comediennes like Penny Marshall.

IN 1994, SOON after Jeff Bezos incorporated what would become Amazon, the entrepreneur briefly contemplated changing the company’s name. The nascent firm had been dubbed “Cadabra,” but Bezos wanted a less playful, more accurate alternative: “Relentless.” (Relentless.com redirects to Amazon.com to this day.) Twenty-four years later, perhaps no adjective better describes Bezos’ empire than the name he once wanted to give it.

Just what is it about the aloof and indifferent nature of Kimi Raikkonen's character that sports fans find so engaging? The private area of Singapore's main airport often caters for celebrities and the wealthy, preparing for security checks - just one more easy step before boarding their private jets. It is usually light work for the security staff. But not during one particular evening in 2008.

Elon Musk has become infamous for his extreme work schedule. When he was ramping up production of the Model 3 Tesla, he put in as many as 120 hours in a week. He slept at the factory because he had no time to go home. He called 2018 "the most difficult and painful year of my career." "[I]t was excruciating," he told The New York Times. In late October Musk finally said he was working a much more manageable schedule of 80 to 90 hours a week.

Alan Naiman was known for an unabashed thriftiness that veered into comical, but even those closest to him had no inkling of the fortune that he quietly amassed and the last act that he had long planned. The Washington state social worker died of cancer this year at age 63, leaving most of a surprising $11 million estate to children's charities that help the poor, sick, disabled and abandoned. The amount baffled the beneficiaries and his best friends, who are lauding Naiman as the anniversary of his death approaches in January.

The Capitol Hill bistro didn’t boast the trappings of Scott Pruitt’s former office. No 19th-century paintings on loan from the Smithsonian. No captain’s desk or stately fireplaces. No biometric locks. But Radici, near Eastern Market, offered President Trump’s former Cabinet member something he needed after he was forced out of the Environmental Protection Agency in July: a friendly landing spot.

Kevin Spacey’s surreal downward spiral has been, I believe, the most “2018” event of 2018. His fall from grace has an element of everything that has defined this past 12 months: #MeToo, Netflix, an insane YouTube video, a court date, and an astonishing absence of self-awareness. What the hell happened? Spacey used to be so cool, genuinely cool, back when he was doing killer impressions and playing charismatic anti-heroes. I’d go and watch a movie purely based on the fact that Spacey was starring, back when he was Frank Underwood.

French Resistance hero Georges Loinger, who used his ingenuity and athletic prowess to save the lives of hundreds of Jewish children during World War II, has died at the age of 108. A talented athlete and cousin of the famous mime artist and fellow Resistance member Marcel Marceau, the Jewish Loinger would smuggle the children in small groups across the Franco-Swiss border. One ruse involved dressing children up as mourners and taking them to a cemetery whose wall abutted the French side of the border.

In 1917 Yamei Kin, a Chinese-born doctor then living in New York, visited her homeland to study a crop that was virtually unknown to Americans: the soybean. By that point she had become something of a celebrity dietitian. For years before the mission to China she had been telling women’s clubs that tofu and other soy products were nutritious alternatives to meat, and that they required fewer resources to produce. She liked to say that they tasted “a little like brains and a little like sweetbreads.”

He's still not James Bond, but for now this honor will do. British actor Idris Elba has been named People's 2018 "Sexiest Man Alive." He is the 33rd man to hold the title and appears this week on the magazine's cover. Elba told the publication, "I was like, 'Come on, no way. Really?' " when he first learned he had been selected. "Looked in the mirror, I checked myself out. I was like, 'Yeah, you are kind of sexy today,' " the "Thor" star joked. "But to be honest, it was just a nice feeling. It was a nice surprise -- an ego boost for sure."

The entire fortune of the late Swedish DJ Avicii will go to his parents, who stand to inherit $25 million, according to financial records from the Swedish Tax Agency. The Grammy nominated superstar was found dead while vacationing in Oman in April 2018, at the age of 28. Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, did not leave a will, was unmarried and did not have any children. That makes his parents the legal heirs of his financial estate by Swedish law. The two are set to inherit the remains of his fortune after national and international debts are paid.

Like most single parents, Bill Hader feels he could be doing more. The 40-year-old Barry actor, who graces the cover of Variety's annual Golden Globes issue, admits the demands of his career often put a strain on his 12-year marriage to filmmaker Maggie Carey. "When I was on SNL, I was a bit of a basket case," Hader tells the magazine. "It could not have been easy on my wife at the time. I was so consumed with work and anxiety."

Judith Rich Harris once had a job writing psychology textbooks. She’d been kicked out of Harvard before earning a Ph.D. and suffered from chronic health issues, and this was something she could do from home. Then she quit that job, having decided to upend the field rather than “teaching the received gospel to a bunch of credulous college students.”

I got a chance to catch up with the man behind FoeHammer Custom Joysticks. Doug Johnson is an incredible builder, and with the help of his son, Sheppard, He’s an even better designer. I had to interview Doug because of his incredible attention to detail, and fascinating luxe design aesthetic. Doug is a vet in the game and probably makes some of the best looking fightsticks to date— he’s even offering to teach young people how to make their own.

To say that Mike Posner's career is unpredictable is an understatement. In 2010, his debut song, "Cooler Than Me," hit the charts worldwide, and to date has sold more than two million copies in the United States. But not long after the success of that hit, Mike Posner's career stalled, so he decided to take that time to co-write with other artists like Justin Bieber, the producer Avicii and Maroon 5.

Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson has been stripped of his honorary titles after repeating comments about race and intelligence. In a TV programme, the pioneer in DNA studies made a reference to a view that genes cause a difference on average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said the 90-year-old scientist's remarks were "unsubstantiated and reckless".

Betty White is one of the most beloved and talented entertainers in America, with a career spanning more than 80s years. Most of us love her work on shows like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Golden Girls" and "Hot and Cleveland," but White is also a show biz pioneer and an avid animal welfare activist. As she celebrates her 97th birthday, we celebrate Betty White with a look at her life in photos.

We're not superior to extroverts, we're just differently irritating.

I once had dinner in San Francisco with a group of independent bookshop owners. How, I asked them, do people end up running their own bookshops? Oh, they said, there was a set route, pretty much the equivalent of taking holy orders. It went like

It’s not just 2013. Decades from now, we’ll still be looking at an entire age of Internet freedom as two separate eras: Before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on U.S. government surveillance in June, and after. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, leaked a trove of agency documents, proving it tracks practically everyone with a phone and that it can nearly anything on the Internet.

Illinois professor of psychology Emily Grijalva and her research team analyzed past research studies on narcissism and its relationship to leadership to find that the most effective leaders have moderate levels of narcissism.

You probably think you’re aone (hyphenated), tackling your Sunday Times cross­word with a ballpoint. But you’re not a crossword obsessive until you’ve competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Every spring, more than 500 speed solvers gather at the Will Shortz–marshaled event in Brooklyn, New York, for seven rounds of high-stakes word crossing, culminating in a final face-off among the top three finalists.

In one minute, 255 babies will be born, 83,000 people will make love, and our hearts will beat more than 500 billion times.