Good Morning MOTleyville, It's Wednesday June 12th, 2013
MOT is here every morning at 6:30am
Soldier Surprises his kids
U.S. soldier Brandon Williams hid in the back of a pickup truck as his daughter and two sons practiced their welcome home greeting. The three were equipped with handmade signs and big smiles as they practiced, and a woman filmed them on her iPad. The garage door is let down, and then slowly let back up. A pickup truck in the driveway all along had Brandon in the flatbed, and he stands waiting for his kids to notice that he's home. Williams's daughter appears to know something her two brothers do not, as if she's in on the surprise, because she lets her brothers take off running to get hugs from their dad first. Her father had surprised her before, at a dance recital.
A video of the family's reunion was posted to the Welcome Home blog, a website for surprise military homecomings. People love watching the reunion and the look of surprise on the kids' faces. One person wrote, "That was awesome. Man did they run fast!" The boys were not expecting their dad to be back home for another month, so imagine the thrill they must have felt to have him back sooner.
Watch the video
Luftwaffe's "flying pencil" is raised out of the English Channel
A British museum on Monday successfully recovered a German bomber that had been shot down over the English Channel during World War II.
The aircraft, nicknamed the Luftwaffe's "flying pencil" because of its narrow fuselage, came down off the coast of Kent county in southeastern England more than 70 years ago during the Battle of Britain.
The rusty and damaged plane was lifted from depths of the channel with cables and is believed to be the most intact example of the German Dornier Do 17 bomber that has ever been found.
"It has been lifted and is now safely on the barge and in one piece," said RAF Museum spokesman Ajay Srivastava. The bomber will be towed into port Tuesday, he added.
Small fires in the Amazon rain forest
A new satellite imaging technique has allowed scientists to see Amazonian fires burning beneath the jungle canopy, called "understory fires," which were previously difficult to detect. These fires destroy several times more forest than is taken out by deforestation each year, according to a new study, published recently in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Unlike fires in the Amazon's grassy areas, which can spread rapidly and are known to have towering flames, understory fires burn nearly undetected. But between 1999 and 2010, these forest fires burned more than 33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers), an area larger than the state of South Carolina, according to a NASA release.
"Amazon forests are quite vulnerable to fire, given the frequency of ignitions for deforestation and land management at the forest frontier, but we've never known the regional extent or frequency of these understory fires," Doug Morton, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the study's lead author, said in the statement.
Luke and Ryan Novosel quest to find a record
Then, Luke and Ryan Novosel, 11-year-old twins from the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, began counting up all the other twins in their school directory and came to a startling discovery. Highcrest Middle School, it would seem, has the most sets of twins — two dozen of them — in a single grade.
"We were absolutely shocked," said their mother, Nancy Fendley. And it wouldn't just brush past the current record of 16. "It's blowing it away," she said.
With some help from mom and dad, the brothers submitted an application with Guinness earlier this year and after following up with birth certificates, photos and proof that all are enrolled at the school, they expect official recognition in several weeks.
Ian Clarkin has an Oh No moment
After Gonzalez won the 2001 World Series for Arizona, beating the Yankees with a famous (or infamous) RBI single in Game 7, Clarkin described himself like this in a pre-draft video:
"I was actually in tears, because I cannot stand the Yankees."
Off the cuff. Freudian slip. Exuberance of youth. And then the Yankees went and took Clarkin with the 33rd overall pick, last in the first round.
Hey, how you like the Yankees now, Ian?!
Army Dad surprises his duaghter Another Video of a Dad coming home
Fun Video of a father testing his model airplane
Surfer catches two #10 rides on the waves
President Obama sets up a special day for Boston Bombing Survivor