“I almost died, but I was given a second chance at life,” Aponte told the Hartford Courant. “And it was because of Peter and all the authorities, everyone who came to help that day.”

In the summer of 1998, Officer Peter Getz had just arrived at a burning apartment building in Hartford, Connecticut, when a firefighter handed him a 5-year-old girl who was unresponsive and covered in ash, the Courant reported.

With no time to wait for an ambulance, Getz placed Aponte in the back seat of his patrol car. He immediately began CPR while his partner drove the car to the hospital.

Aponte, who had been in cardiac arrest, was breathing on her own by the time they reached the emergency room.

“I’m told that if he would have just waited a few more seconds for the ambulance to come in, I could have died,” Aponte told NBC Connecticut.

Getz continued to visit Aponte while she recovered in the hospital. He brought her a teddy bear the day after her uncle, who also was inside the burning apartment, succumbed to his injuries.

“It’s one of those things that touches your heart and stays with you,” Getz told the Courant. “The firemen did their job, I did my job, the hospital staff did their job. As a result, we still have a beautiful young woman still on the face of the earth.”

Getz told CNN that he “followed her progress for years” while Aponte was in school. They eventually lost touch when she and her family moved away.

Aponte reconnected with Getz two years ago, after finding an online photo of him carrying her away from the fire. She sent him a message and they’ve kept in touch ever since.

“He saved me and he’s just walking out with me in his arms,” Aponte told WFSB. “I’m so grateful for him because we always call him my guardian angel.”

When it was time for Aponte’s graduation, it was only natural for Getz to stand with her family and cheer her on.

“I kind of choked up after getting her graduation invitation,” Getz told “Inside Edition.” “She did really good.”

source: huffingtonpost.com

A hospital patient risked his health and braved sub-zero temperatures after he woke up from surgery – all to grab a BEER. The unnamed patient was in hospital in Sayanogorsk in Khakassia, Russia when he decided to brave temperatures of -16°C.

Although he requested a beer from the nurses, they refused, so he unplugged his drips, evaded security, and walked out of hospital wearing only a sheet to go in search of an off licence. But the unnamed patient got no more joy at the shops. Staff refused his demand for beer, and instead called the police, who arrived minutes later. Officers escorted him, still wearing the sheet, to a van which drove him back to hospital.

The hospital is reviewing its security which was supposed to be on high alert because of a flu epidemic in the region.

source: mirror.co.uk

They’re one of the most commercially successful music groups in history, with hits that have survived five decades. But ABBA haven’t been glimpsed as a group together for over seven years.

That all changed last night, when the Swedish pop foursome got together for the opening of a new restaurant in Stockholm – where people can eat while watching a show based on the group’s songs.

Agnetha Fältskog, now 65, Björn Ulvaeus, 70, Benny Andersson, 69, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 70, were last pictured together in 2008, when they walked the red carpet at the film premiere of Mamma Mia!, based on the musical of the same name. The hit musical which features the disco group’s songs between 1972-1982 was premiered in London in 1999 and saw the album ABBA GOLD top the charts once more.

The band were initially reluctant for a musical to be based on their greatest hits including Mamma Mia!, Dancing Queen, Take a Chance on Me, Money Money Money, Knowing Me Knowing You and The Winner Takes It All.

But the show was so successful it spawned a worldwide tour and ran on Broadway for 14 years, making it one of the longest-running productions ever staged there.

A film adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Julie Walters was released in July 2008, also garnering rave reviews and huge commercial success. Now the group are hoping for their live restaurant experience, called Mamma Mia! The Party, will replicate the reception.

ABBA formed in Sweden in 1972 and topped the charts worldwide from 1975 to 1982. They won the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 at the Dome in Brighton, UK, giving Sweden its first triumph in the contest, and were the most successful group ever to take part in the competition.

The Mamma Mia! restaurant experience will be at the Nikos Taverna at Tyrol, with the experience designed to emulate an evening in a Greek taverna on the island of Skopelos, where the film was made. Guests can expect a three-course Mediterranean buffet – accompanied by entertainment from several acts singing and dancing to ABBA songs. The experience promises ‘daredevil stunts, Greek Gods, flirty waiters, and perhaps a Zorba and an Ouzo or two.’

Tickets start from around £109 per person for an evening at the venue.

source: The Daily Mail

Recently, a long-lost photo depicting the comedic duo, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Rome has delighted film buffs after coming to light and getting thousands of shares online. The picture shows Stan Laurel, played by British actor Arthur Stanley Jefferson and his American sidekick Oliver Hardy, played by Norvell Hardy, being mobbed by fans at Rome’s Termini station in July 1950.

Stan Laurel was hoisted up onto the shoulders of his fans who are carrying him along the platform in a ‘king’s chair’, as his comedy sidekick walks ahead of the group grinning broadly, while an amused Italian police officer looks on.

The snap was found by 65-year-old book seller Giuseppe Casetti, who collects old photos as a hobby and discovered the picture among negatives that once belonged to a defunct Roman newspaper. “I managed to get hold of the picture archives of an old Rome-based paper,” Casetti told Corriere della Sera. “I’ve been developing some negatives and there are incredible stories from 50 or even 70 years ago, I try to upload some of them online when I get the chance.”

Casetti admits that he didn’t expect the old snap to be seen by so many people after being put online. “Then it became viral? I don’t know what that means,” he joked. “But if it makes people feel good I’m happy!”

source: www.thelocal.it

Match the words and the definitions.
 

key: 1-e, 2-f, 3-a, 4-b, 5-c, 6-d

Michael J. Fox

The Canadian-American actor, author and producer is famous for his role in the Back to the Future trilogy and several other movies and series. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 and has since become an advocate for research toward finding a cure.

Michael Andrew Fox was born June 9, 1961 in Edmonton, Canada. His father was an army officer, his mother an actress and payroll clerk. After lots of moves in his childhood, the family finally settled in Vancouver. He started acting at the age of 15 in a Canadian TV series (Leo and Me), then moved to Los Angeles at the age of 18 to further his acting career. After being discovered, he debuted in the TV film Letters from Frank. He changed his screen name to Michael J. Fox as a homage to actor Michael J. Pollard.

His first two feature films were Midnight Madness (1980) and Class of 1984 (1982). The highly successful show Family Ties was his next project; the series ran for seven seasons. Fox won three Emmy awards and a Golden Globe for his role as Alex P. Keaton. In 1985 Fox was cast as Marty McFly, a teenager sent back in time to 1955, in Back to the Future. A huge success, the film was followed by two sequels, Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Part III in 1990. After the trilogy, Fox starred in Teen Wolf (1985), Light of Day (1987), The Secret of My Success (1987), Bright Lights, Big City (1988) and Casualties of War (1989).

Doc Hollywood, a romantic comedy came out in 1991. In this movie Fox plays a young doctor who causes a traffic accident in a small southern town and is sentenced to work for a time at the town hospital – instead of going to Hollywood to become a plastic surgeon. The nineties brought a number of movies for him, such as For Love or Money, Life with Mikey (both 1993), Greedy (1994) and Mars Attacks! (1996). His last major film role at that time was in The Frighteners (1996) directed by Peter Jackson as an architect who developed psychic abilities.

Fox lent his voice to animated characters in Atlantis and the Stuart Little movies, among others. Michael J. Fox appeared mainly in TV series in his later career. Spin City ran from 1996-2002, in which he played the role of the Deputy Mayor of New York. After announcing his illness and leaving the show to spend more time with his family, he guest-starred in Scrubs, Boston Legal and earned an Emmy for being a guest actor on Rescue Me. He also had a recurring role in The Good Wife opposite Julianna Margulies. In the series he played crafty and cold-hearted attorney Louis Canning magnificently and earned Emmy nominations in three consecutive years. The Michael J. Fox Show, a series loosely based on his life premiered in 2013 and lasted for one season.

Fox married actress Tracy Pollan in 1988. They have four children, Sam, Aquinnah and Schuyler (twin girls), and Esmé. He started showing symptoms of early-onset Parkinson’s in 1991 while shooting Doc Hollywood. He went public with his condition in 1998 and created The Michael J. Fox Foundation to help research. He wrote two books on his life and condition, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. In a 2014 interview he shared the life lesson he learned: “Look at the choices you have, not at the choices that have been taken away from you. In them, there are whole worlds of strength and new ways to look at things.”