History Heartwarming / RealLifeScience

* In a poor Malawian village racked by cholera, famine, and superstition, a young boy gets kicked out of school because he can't afford the tuition. The boy, however, loves science and learning, and is determined to keep learning. So... he fishes out scraps of books from the local dumpster. He finds a book on basic electricity, and sees a picture of a windmill that generates electricity. His imagination sparked, he spends the next year and a half digging through trash cans and other stuff people have either thrown away or are about to throw away; to find the parts necessary to make his windmill. [[TheyCalledMeMad People call him mad]], but his parents tell him to keep working at it. One day, the boy calls his village together (Please keep in mind, the highest technology anybody in the village owns is an AA battery and maybe a Walkman) and holds up a single light bulb attached to a windmill that looks like a reject from a Dr. Seuss book. The villagers laugh at him... UNTIL... the light bulb flickers. As the wind picks up, the rickety windmill spins, and suddenly the light bulb shines, like a single candle in the night. The stunned villagers cheer the boy wildly. Soon word of the boy's genius spreads (remember, he basically just brought his village out of the third world, a feat that whole governments sometimes [[EpicFail fail]] to achieve). The new found hi-tech is used to aid in getting clean water to use for the crops, thus alleviating the devastating famine. And the kicker... the boy gets a scholarship to COLLEGE in South Africa and is called a hero by Al Gore himself. '''Nobody''' has the ''audacity'' to make up a story like this. Just Google William Kamkwamba. Better yet, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba here's a entry on him]] from Wiki/TheOtherWiki.

* [[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-that-tell-a-story-of-compassion.html Archeology can be heartwarming too]]. It is common for Archeologists to find human skeletons with deformities or disabilities that prevented a person from caring for themselves, yet many of these skeletons also indicate that the disabled people lived to old age. The only conclusion is that people as far back as the Paleolithic Era cared for and looked after the disabled members of their community.

* In a poor Malawian village racked by cholera, famine, and superstition, a young boy gets kicked out of school because he can't afford the tuition. The boy, however, loves science and learning, and is determined to keep learning. So... he fishes out scraps of books from the local dumpster. He finds a book on basic electricity, and sees a picture of a windmill that generates electricity. His imagination sparked, he spends the next year and a half digging through trash cans and other stuff people have either thrown away or are about to throw away; to find the parts necessary to make his windmill. [[TheyCalledMeMad People call him mad]], but his parents tell him to keep working at it. One day, the boy calls his village together (Please keep in mind, the highest technology anybody in the village owns is an AA battery and maybe a Walkman) and holds up a single light bulb attached to a windmill that looks like a reject from a Dr. Seuss book. The villagers laugh at him... UNTIL... the light bulb flickers. As the wind picks up, the rickety windmill spins, and suddenly the light bulb shines, like a single candle in the night. The stunned villagers cheer the boy wildly. Soon word of the boy's genius spreads (remember, he basically just brought his village out of the third world, a feat that whole governments sometimes [[EpicFail fail]] to achieve). The new found hi-tech is used to aid in getting clean water to use for the crops, thus alleviating the devastating famine. And the kicker... the boy gets a scholarship to COLLEGE in South Africa and is called a hero by Al Gore himself. '''Nobody''' has the ''audacity'' to make up a story like this. Just Google William Kamkwamba. Better yet, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba here's a entry on him]] from TheOtherWiki.

-->"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifice]]. These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."

* When interviewed shortly before returning to Earth before a total of 340 days on the International Space Station, astronaut Mark Kelly said that he had most missed 'human contact' in space.

-->We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the stars to go and explore places we can’t get to because its name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

-->the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important. and they told us to tell you hello.

* [[https://swanjolras.tumblr.com/post/102498776997/gosh-but-like-we-spent-hundreds-of-years-looking This Tumblr post]] about the drive behind space exploration and the building of the Mars rovers, especilly the last line:

* [[https://swanjolras.tumblr.com/post/102498776997/gosh-but-like-we-spent-hundreds-of-years-looking This Tumblr post]] about the drive behind space exploration and the building of the Mars rovers, esoecilly the last line:

** Now, keep in mind the treaty is from 1959, and took effect in 1961. Despite the Cold War, it compromised free data exchange between Russian and American scientists (both countries signed the treaty from the beginning). It should also not be taken for granted that countries who claimed a certain piece of land for themselves, sometimes overlapping with the claims of another country, signed a treaty that forbade military action and instead researched the continent together. Despite that, the treaty is still valid and has never been broken.

* In a poor Malawian village racked by cholera, famine, and superstition, a young boy gets kicked out of school because he can't afford the tuition. The boy, however, loves science and learning, and is determined to keep learning. So... he fishes out scraps of books from the local dumpster. He finds a book on basic electricity, and sees a picture of a windmill that generates electricity. His imagination sparked, he spends the next year and a half digging through trash cans and other stuff people have either thrown away or are about to throw away; to find the parts necessary to make his windmill. [[TheyCalledMeMad People call him mad]], but his parents tell him to keep working at it. One day, the boy calls his village together (Please keep in mind, the highest technology anybody in the village owns is an AA battery and maybe a walkman) and holds up a single light bulb attached to a windmill that looks like a reject from a Dr. Seuss book. The villagers laugh at him... UNTIL... the light bulb flickers. As the wind picks up, the rickety windmill spins, and suddenly the light bulb shines, like a single candle in the night. The stunned villagers cheer the boy wildly. Soon word of the boy's genius spreads (remember, he basically just brought his village out of the third world, a feat that whole governments sometimes [[EpicFail fail]] to achieve). The new found hi-tech is used to aid in getting clean water to use for the crops, thus alleviating the devastating famine. And the kicker... the boy gets a scholarship to COLLEGE in South Africa and is called a hero by Al Gore himself. '''Nobody''' has the ''audacity'' to make up a story like this. Just Google William Kamkwamba. Better yet, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba here's a entry on him]] from TheOtherWiki.

* The Antarctic Treaty, being the first international treaty after World War II that followed the policy of peaceful coexistence. Its goals are to protect the ecological balance in antarctica, to enable scientists to do research about the continent, and also exchange their data, to encourage international cooperation, and also to use antarctica for peaceful purposes. Mining of mineral resources was forbidden, and so were nuclear tests or any activities from the military.
** Now, keep in mind the treaty is from 1959, and took effect in 1961. Despite the Cold War, it compromised free data exchange between russian and american scientists (both countries signed the treaty from the beginning). It should also not be taken for granted that countries who claimed a certain piece of land for themselves, sometimes overlapping with the claims of another country, signed a treaty that forbade military action and instead researched the continent together. Despite that, the treaty is still valid and has never been broken.

* The fact that the entire world managed to set aside their differences, during the ColdWar no less, to ensure the smallpox virus would never harm another person again. Best of all, in 1980, [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome they succeeded.]]

* [[http://youtu.be/HTzTt1VnHRM This video]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOo3jzkhYA this video]], featuring a baby boy and a 29 year old woman respectively, both born deaf, hearing for the first time. Medical science gave them their hearing, and in this editor's experience, no one who has seen these videos has failed to choke up in the good way.

* In a poor Malawian village racked by cholera, famine, and superstition, a young boy gets kicked out of school because he can't afford the tuition. The boy, however, loves science and learning, and is determined to keep learning. So....he fishes out scraps of books from the local dumpster. He finds a book on basic electricity, and sees a picture of a windmill that generates electricity. His imagination sparked, he spends the next year and a half digging through trash cans and other stuff people have either thrown away or are about to throw away; to find the parts necessary to make his windmill. [[TheyCalledMeMad People call him mad]], but his parents tell him to keep working at it. One day, the boy calls his village together (Please keep in mind, the highest technology anybody in the village owns is an AA battery and maybe a walkman) and holds up a single light bulb attached to a windmill that looks like a reject from a Dr. Seuss book. The villagers laugh at him....UNTIL....the light bulb flickers. As the wind picks up, the rickety windmill spins, and suddenly the light bulb shines, like a single candle in the night. The stunned villagers cheer the boy wildly. Soon word of the boy's genius spreads (remember, he basically just brought his village out of the third world, a feat that whole governments sometimes [[EpicFail fail]] to achieve). The new found hi-tech is used to aid in getting clean water to use for the crops, thus alleviating the devastating famine. And the kicker... the boy gets a scholarship to COLLEGE in South Africa and is called a hero by Al Gore himself. '''Nobody''' has the ''audacity'' to make up a story like this. Just Google William Kamkwamba. Better yet, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba here's a entry on him]] from TheOtherWiki.

* Jonas Salk's greatest achievement was developing the vaccine for Polio, a disease so widespread and crippling in parts of the world that China had 80 million people vaccinated in 1993, and is still a big problem in third world countries. A man who could have become one of the richest Scientists in the history of humanity said these words when regarding a patent "Could you patent the sun?". Because of this work, Polio went from hundreds of thousands of case per year to about a thousand... Tens of millions of children, able to walk, because a man would rather do the right thing rather than get rich...

** One manufacturer of these robots has gone on to say that one of the oddest, yet [[TearJerker hardest]] things he has ever seen was when he saw big, tough soldiers come to him on the verge of tears, giving him a throughly bomb-blast destroyed robot and begging him to fix it.

* [[http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865564022/Study-finds-that-looking-at-cute-furry-kittens-increases-productivity.html An article]] about how cuteness increases productivity.

* In a poor Malawian village racked by cholera, famine, and superstition, a young boy gets kicked out of school because he can't afford the tuition. The boy, however, loves science and learning, and is determined to keep learning. So....he fishes out scraps of books from the local dumpster. He finds a book on basic electricity, and sees a picture of a windmill that generates electricity. His imagination sparked, he spends the next year and a half digging through trash cans and other stuff people have either thrown away or are about to throw away; to find the parts necessary to make his windmill. [[TheyCalledMeMad People call him mad]], but his parents tell him to keep working at it. The boy one day calls his village together (Please keep in mind, the highest technology anybody in the village owns is an AA battery and maybe a walkman) and holds up a single light bulb attached to a windmill that looks like a reject from a Dr. Seuss book. The villagers laugh at him....UNTIL....the light bulb flickers. As the wind picks up, the rickety windmill spins, and suddenly the light bulb shines, like a single candle in the night. The stunned villagers cheer the boy wildly. Soon word of the boy's genius spreads (remember, he basically just brought his village out of the third world, a feat that whole governments sometimes [[EpicFail fail]] to achieve). The new found hi-tech is used to aid in getting clean water to use for the crops, thus alleviating the devastating famine. And the kicker... the boy gets a scholarship to COLLEGE in South Africa and is called a hero by Al Gore himself. '''Nobody''' has the ''audacity'' to make up a story like this. Just Google William Kamkwamba. Better yet, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba here's a entry on him]] from TheOtherWiki.

* [[http://youtu.be/HTzTt1VnHRM This video]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOo3jzkhYA this video]], featuring a baby boy, and a 29 year old woman respectively, both born deaf, hearing for the first time. Medical science gave them their hearing, and in this editor's experience, no one who has seen these videos has failed to choke up in the good way.

* In a poor Malawian village racked by cholera, famine, and superstition, a young boy gets kicked out of school because he can't afford the tuition. The boy, however, loves science and learning, and is determined to keep learning. So....he fishes out scraps of books from the local dumpster. He finds a book on basic electricity, and sees a picture of a windmill that generates electricity. His imagination sparked, he spends the next year and a half digging through trash cans and other stuff people have either thrown away or are about to throw away; to find the parts necessary to make his windmill. People call him mad, but his parents tell him to keep working at it. The boy one day calls his village together (Please keep in mind, the highest technology anybody in the village owns is an AA battery and maybe a walkman) and holds up a single light bulb attached to a windmill that looks like a reject from a Dr. Seuss book. The villagers laugh at him....UNTIL....the light bulb flickers. As the wind picks up, the rickety windmill spins, and suddenly the light bulb shines, like a single candle in the night. The stunned villagers cheer the boy wildly. Soon word of the boy's genius spreads (remember, he basically just brought his village out of the third world, a feat that whole governments sometimes [[EpicFail fail]] to achieve). The new found hi-tech is used to aid in getting clean water to use for the crops, thus alleviating the devastating famine. And the kicker... the boy gets a scholarship to COLLEGE in South Africa and is called a hero by Al Gore himself. '''Nobody''' has the ''audacity'' to make up a story like this. Just Google William Kamkwamba. Better yet, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba here's a entry on him]] from TheOtherWiki.

** This is ''so'' heartwarming, that Jonas Salk being the original "Good Guy Greg" (a reddit macro series) is [[http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/205378-good-guy-greg practically a meme.]]

* Jonas Salk's greatest achievement was developing the vaccine for Polio, a disease so widespread and crippling in parts of the world that China had 80 million people vaccinated in 1993, and is still a big problem in third world countries. A man who could have become one of the richest Scientists in the history of humanity said these words when regarding a patent "Could you patent the sun?". Because of this work, Polio went from hundreds of thousands of case per year to about a thousand... Tens of millions of children, able to walk, because a man would rather do the right thing rather than get rich...