Wholesome Facts

Dale Schroeder worked as a carpenter at the same Iowa company for 67 years. He never married. He drove a rusty old Chevrolet. When he died in 2005, nobody could believe he had secretly saved $3 million. He left it all to send 33 complete strangers to college. They call themselves "Dale's kids."

In 1996, a 3-year-old boy climbed a barrier at Brookfield Zoo and fell 24 feet into the gorilla enclosure. He was unconscious. An 8-year-old gorilla named Binti Jua picked him up, cradled him against her body, and carried him to the enclosure door where keepers could reach him. Her own 17-month-old baby, Koola, clung to her back the entire time. The boy spent four days in hospital and made a full recovery. Binti Jua is still alive at Brookfield Zoo — now a grandmother.

Alan Naiman was a Washington state social worker who earned $67,200 a year. He wore shoes held together with duct tape, bought his clothes at the grocery store, and bragged about going entire days without spending a cent. When he died at 63, his coworkers discovered he had quietly amassed nearly $11 million and left most of it to children's charities.

While filming Matilda, Mara Wilson's mother was dying of cancer. Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman quietly cared for Mara like their own daughter. DeVito secretly took an unfinished cut of the film to the hospital and screened it for her dying mother. He kept it quiet for years.

A 13-year-old Boy Scout got lost near Yellowstone. He spent 18 hours alone in rain and sleet. When a helicopter appeared, he used his belt buckle to flash sunlight at the pilot. The pilot was Harrison Ford. He'd volunteered for the search. Ford landed and said: "Boy, you sure must have earned a merit badge for this one." The kid: "I already earned this badge last summer."

After 40+ years in New York, Willem Dafoe now lives on a small farm outside Rome where he raises 14 alpacas. He bottle-feeds the ones rejected by their mothers and names them all. One is called Hermes.

When a family in Newton, Massachusetts had a daughter born deaf, about 40 of their neighbours signed up for ASL classes. Two weekly classes. Dozens of adults learning a new language so a toddler named Samantha would have people to talk to outside her own home. One neighbour said: "Since she couldn't learn our language, we thought we wanted to learn hers."

Two boys were caught in a riptide off Panama City Beach, Florida. Nine family members swam out to help and got trapped too. A couple on the beach remembered how ants link their bodies to rescue their young. They started grabbing strangers' hands. 80 people formed a human chain into the Gulf of Mexico and held it for over an hour. Everyone survived.

Billy Joel never sells front row tickets. He sends his crew to find real fans in the cheapest seats and moves them to the front row. He was tired of "bored, rich people" staring up at him.

The village of Piplantri in Rajasthan, India plants 111 trees every time a girl is born. In a region where daughters were once seen as a burden, the birth of a girl now triggers a celebration — the entire community comes together to plant. They also start a savings fund for each girl's education that she collects at 20. Piplantri now has over 350,000 trees. What was once semi-arid land is now a forest. Every tree is named after a girl.

Hospitals across the US have volunteer "baby cuddler" programs where grandparents come in to hold and cuddle premature babies in the NICU when parents can't be there. Skin-to-skin contact helps the babies gain weight faster, sleep better, and leave the hospital sooner. Some hospitals have waitlists of over 500 people wanting to volunteer.

Argentine farmer Pedro Martin Ureta spent over 20 years planting thousands of cypress and eucalyptus trees across his Pampas farmland in the shape of a guitar — a tribute to his wife Graciela, who dreamed of seeing one from the air before she passed in 1977. The guitar spans roughly one kilometer and is visible on Google Earth. Ureta, who is afraid of flying, has never seen his finished creation from above.

In 2014, Morgan Freeman converted his 124-acre Mississippi ranch into a bee sanctuary. He imported 26 hives from Arkansas, planted acres of clover and lavender, and became a beekeeper himself — all to fight Colony Collapse Disorder. He never wears a protective suit. The bees have never stung him.

During an Easter egg hunt in Surrey in 2016, about 30 kids spotted two men sprinting across a field with a police helicopter circling overhead. Without being told, the children lay down in the dirt and formed a giant human arrow pointing the helicopter straight at the fleeing suspects. Both men were caught. The crew landed to thank the kids — and the children shared their own Easter chocolate with them.

A recycling worker opened an old TV and found over $100,000—then the money was returned to the man who hid it decades earlier.

During a war between France and England in 1697, Louis XIV ordered the release of a captured English engineer who had been building a lighthouse. His reasoning: "France is at war with England, not with humanity."

A group of kids learned sign language just so they could wish their deaf janitor a happy birthday.

While filming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides at Greenwich's Old Naval College in 2010, Johnny Depp received a letter from a 9-year-old girl at a nearby school asking Captain Jack Sparrow for help with a "mutiny" against her teachers. With just ten minutes' notice, Depp arrived at the school in full pirate costume — but advised against the idea of mutiny.

French street artist Le CyKlop has been transforming ordinary anti-parking bollards into bright yellow LEGO-like characters across France since 2014. His 'Angry L'éGO' series started as guerrilla art — painting the posts at night in just two minutes using custom stencils — and has since grown into both unauthorized installations and official city commissions.

Rupert Grint became an ice cream man after Harry Potter — not for publicity, but because it had been his childhood dream all along.

A TV reporter in the Philippines brought her puppy to the studio because no one was home to watch him. During the live broadcast, she kept the sleeping puppy hidden at her feet — only her upper half visible on camera. Behind-the-scenes photos went viral, showing the little golden pup curled up on the studio floor.

In 2012, Walmart ran a Facebook contest to send Pitbull to the store with the most votes. The internet hijacked it and voted for a tiny Walmart in Kodiak, Alaska — a remote island only reachable by plane or boat. Everyone expected him to back out. He didn’t. He flew to Alaska, performed for the whole town, took photos with fans, and called it "the greatest thing ever."

During the Gobi Desert ultramarathon, a stray dog ran over 77 miles alongside British runner Dion Leonard. After the race, she went missing, but with 20 volunteers and a two-week search, Dion found her and now happily lives with him in Edinburgh.

The inventor of the lithium-ion battery gave away his patent for free, refusing to profit from a technology that could help the planet.