True, sourced stories for sermons and lessons. Search by keyword, theme, or Bible book.
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Albert Lexie Gave His Tips Away
Twice a week for more than 30 years, Albert Lexie rose before dawn and rode buses for an hour and a half from Monessen to Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
Amy Carmichael Had to Do Something
In 1901, a seven-year-old Indian girl named Preena escaped from a Hindu temple and ran to Amy Carmichael, a young missionary from Ireland. Preena's widowed mother had dedicated her to be "married to the gods," which meant a life of abuse.
Banting Read One Article
In the early 1920s, doctors knew diabetes was linked to a missing substance from the pancreas, but every attempt to extract it had failed. Frederick Banting, a young Canadian doctor, read a medical article by Moses Baron about what happens when the pancreatic duct is tied off.
Clemente’s Last Flight
Roberto Clemente was one of baseball's greatest stars: 3,000 hits, four batting titles, two World Series championships with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Could You Patent the Sun?
In the early 1950s polio terrified American parents. In the last years before a vaccine, it paralyzed somewhere between 13,000 and 20,000 children every year.
DART Hit Its Target Hard
In 2022 NASA did something no one had done before. It crashed a spacecraft called DART into a small asteroid named Dimorphos on purpose, to see if people could change an asteroid's path if one ever threatened Earth.
Desmond Doss: One More Man
Desmond Doss joined the Army in World War II as a combat medic, but as a Seventh-day Adventist he had vowed he would never kill, so he refused to carry a gun.
Does Anyone Here Owe Their Life to Nicholas Winton?
In 1939 a London stockbroker named Nicholas Winton worked his day job and then spent his evenings arranging permits, foster homes, and money so that eight trains could carry 669 children, most of them Jewish, out of Prague to safety in Britain before the war closed the borders.
Dr. Tom Stayed in the Nuba Mountains
Dr. Tom Catena is a Catholic missionary from Amsterdam, New York. In Sudan's war-torn Nuba Mountains, where bombing has been part of life and aid has been restricted, he became the only doctor permanently based there.
Eighty Strangers Form a Human Chain
On a Saturday evening in July 2017 at Panama City Beach, Florida, two young boys got caught in a powerful rip current. Before long their mother, their grandmother, and others were caught too, until nine people were struggling to stay afloat and gulping seawater.
Emily Roebling Finished the Bridge
As the Brooklyn Bridge project got underway in 1869, designer John Roebling died, and his son Washington became chief engineer. Then Washington was struck down by caisson disease, what we now call the bends.
Everyone Off the Plane on the Hudson
On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York. About two minutes later it flew into a flock of birds, and both engines lost almost all their power.
Fire Ants Hold On to Each Other
When floods hit, fire ants do something amazing. They link together and build a living raft that floats.
Firefighters Save the Dinosaur Trees
The Wollemi pine is so rare that it was thought to be extinct, known only from fossils, until 1994, when a park officer named David Noble rappelled into a narrow canyon in Australia and found trees he didn't recognize.
Fleming Noticed the Mold
In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming was working in his London lab when he noticed something odd. A mold had accidentally grown on one of his culture plates of staphylococcus bacteria, and around the mold there was a clear circle where the bacteria had died.
Gander Opens Its Doors
When American airspace closed on September 11, 2001, 38 airliners were sent to the little town of Gander, Newfoundland. Almost overnight a town of about 10,000 people, with only around 500 hotel rooms, was hosting roughly 6,700 stranded travelers.
Handel Gave Messiah to the Orphans
When Handel's Messiah first played in London, it was not a hit. Some people thought a sacred work did not belong in a theater.
Irena Sendler’s Children
When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker in Warsaw. After the Nazis sealed some 400,000 Jews inside the ghetto, she got a permit to go in and inspect sanitary conditions, and she used it to help.
James Harrison Never Missed an Appointment
When James Harrison was 14, he had lung surgery in Australia and needed many blood transfusions. He woke up in intensive care determined to give back.
John Snow Took the Handle Off the Pump
In 1854 most people believed cholera spread through bad air. Dr. John Snow held the unpopular view that it spread through water.