From the humble house cat to the pointy-eared lynx.

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Most people don't think much about fire departments until you need one. You know they exist and the purpose they serve but many people take their existence for granted. One fire department in Calhoun, Missouri was barely a department in 2021 when the new fire chief, Mark Hardin took over. When you think of a department you think of multiple people, especially for something as important as a fire department. It takes a lot of training, muscle and skill to do the things firefighters do when they need to battle a blazing building, sometimes rescuing people inside. But the Calhoun fire department was a one man show.It took Hardin and his passion for helping people to drum up more firefighters in the tiny town of 500. He took the town from just one firefighter to 28 and he trained them all. The biggest problem was that their equipment was from the 1980s and none of the firetrucks were in working order. Can't put out a fire if you can't get the trucks to run. That's where 91-year-old Sam Sloan comes in.“I'm making a donation to the fire department. I've been planning to for several years," Sloan tells KMBC 9. “It's half a million dollars and a half a million dollars is a pretty good donation."Hardin and the rest of the fire department think it's a fantastic donation for the rural department who are all volunteers struggling to keep the bank account above zero. The chief already has big plans for some of the money. Watch the video: "The first thing that we're going to replace is our tanker pumper. Our tanker pumper has been patched together about 17 times in the last year I think I welded on that thing. Every one of our firefighters, from head to toe, we're going to be fitted next Monday for new gear," Hardin says.Sloan doesn't see the big deal in donating a half million dollars to the fire department because he knows "how to make a dollar," he doesn't know how to fix the equipment. Overall Sloan and Hardin think of the massive donation as simply helping their community and that's all they care about.

At Upworthy, we’ve frequently covered stories of unlikely friendships that have developed between humans and members of the animal kingdom, such as the crow that befriended a family and the man with the emotional support alligator. However, unfortunately, this attempted friendship between humans and a seagull is for the birds. It all started when a seagull known as Steven began visiting YouTuber BrasherN and his wife, who laid out food for him daily. The couple decided to take things up a notch and make a classy dinner table for Steven, but his reaction was more like a rock star trashing a hotel room than a grateful guest at their table. “I thought it would be funny to set up a table for him. Steven turned out to be an unhinged maniac and destroys everything,” BrasherN wrote.Steven’s inappropriate behavior is contrasted by the classy music that BrasherN plays during the video “Minuet” by Luigi Baccherini.Steven Seagull comes to dinnerThe video begins with Steven perched at a table adorned with a fine cloth. He begins to snap at his dish of peanuts, scattering them about in the most inconsiderate way. After picking the nuts up off the lawn, he goes into a rage, trashing the cardboard table and floral decor. He then makes his way for the camera as if to demand that the couple bring him more food."Steven just came, ate the food and wasn't content without wrecking the table," JesusDiazllam.1126 wrote in the comments.Finally, Steven flew off without paying the check or leaving any gratuity.

If you’re having trouble catching those elusive zzz’s, you are not alone. Roughly 1 in 3 adults worldwide have insomnia, which we know can lead to a whole slew of things that negatively impact our health. Which is probably why social media is full of various hacks the promise a better night’s sleep. Recently Denver-based board-certified dermatologist Dr. Scott Walter made a video touting the efficacy and benefits of “cognitive shuffling,” which he said was an “absolute game changer” for his own sleep schedule. In the clip, Dr. Walter described cognitive shuffling as “a way to rearrange or reorganize your thoughts similar to shuffling a deck of cards — basically, distracting your mind from conscious thought patterns that may keep you awake.” The “simple mental exercise” can be done in a number of ways. “One is just thinking of random words or objects that have nothing to do with each other,” Walter said. “For example, cow, leaf, sandwich, butter, liver, things like that — just random words that make no sense.” Apparently there’s even an app out there called MySleepButton that will feed you random words to form a picture in your mind. Alternatively, if you “don’t like random,” you could also pick a letter of the alphabet, and start counting your heartbeat. After every eight beats, you’ll think of a word that begins with that letter. @denverskindoc Stitch w/ @sidneyraz say goodbye to the Sunday Scaries and fall asleep quickly with this doctor approved sleep hack! #sleephack #todayilearned #wishiknew #howtofallasleepfaster #cognitiveshuffling #cognitiveshuffle #sleephelp #doctor #medicine #sleep #sundayscaries #doctorhack #fallingasleep #anxiety ♬ original sound - Dr. Scott Walter | Derm Walter went on to explain that cognitive shuffling is so effective because in addition to distracting your brain, it ““mimics what are called microdreams, which occur during the transition to sleep, [letting] your brain know, hey, it’s safe to fall asleep.”Pasha Marlowe, MFT, who also improved her sleep routine with cognitive shuffling, posted her own TikTok claiming that it “interrupts the processes of memory, scheduling and problem solving.She also explained a slightly different process, saying you could take a word and think of as many words as you can that also begin with the same letters in your chosen word. Her example was the word “PUMPKIN,” and beings listing out “prince, pie, peanut butter, product,” and so on. Then she might go onto the letter “U” and start naming things that start with that letter…you get the idea. Multiple resources recommend following this particular strategy. Luc Beaudoin, cognitive scientists and creator of MySleepButton, told The Guardian that the hack is superior to the traditional insomnia-busting tactics like counting sleep because the former are so “boring” that virtually any other thought, including worries, will be perceived by the brain as “more compelling.” But with cognitive shuffling, there’s enough gameplay and “nonsense” involved to distract our hypervigilant cortex from perceiving potential threats just long enough for us to drift off. Cognitive shuffling isn’t without its limitations. The MySleepButton site says that this method is not effective under the follow conditions: You are too tired to conjure up words, but not drowsy enough to fall asleep. (For example, when you wake up in the middle of the night.)You don’t like to think deliberately when you are trying to fall asleep.You find it difficult to come up with words that start with a given letter, despite practice.You find spelling tedious. For these instances, the site says you can lay back while MySleepButton does the work for you. Or, you could try a few other proven hacks, found here and here.

In the U.S., it's normal in women's restrooms to see signs that say "Do not flush feminine products," so if you're traveling internationally and you see a sign that says not to flush paper down the toilet, you might assume it means the same thing.It doesn't. If you're traveling abroad and you see a "no paper in the toilet" sign, it usually means all paper—including the toilet paper you use to wipe with. My first time experiencing this reality was in Indonesia. The friend I was visiting lived in a large luxury home, modern in every way—except you had to toss your toilet paper into a bin instead of flushing it. Even rustic campsite pit toilets in the U.S. allow you to put toilet paper in them, so it went against every instinct I had not to toss the TP in the toilet after using it and put it in the little bin next to the toilet instead.Then I encountered the same thing in Thailand, then in Greece, then in Patagonia in South America. These were all places with American-style flushing toilets, so it was unexpected that TP flushing was a no-no. If this is the norm in such vastly different regions, how common is "no TP flushing" around the world? Surprisingly common for the 21st century, actually. As many advancements as we've made in engineering and technology, there are still lots of established plumbing systems underground that don't handle anything other than onesies and twosies very well.For people from always-flush-the-TP countries, the inability to flush toilet paper can come as a shock, especially when the toilets seem no different than the ones at home. It's confusing that the toilet paper will physically flush down at the source, it just shouldn't be flushed because of what can happen on down the line. In Greece, for example, the plumbing pipes are only two inches in diameter, compared to four inches in the U.S., which means paper clogs the pipes much more easily. Our Airbnb host in Athens told us if we smell a terrible sewage smell and hear a big motor running somewhere in the neighborhood, it's because people had flushed toilet paper and the sewage system had to be pumped. Brazil apparently has plumbing similar to Greece, and there are plenty of other countries in the same boat.So where are all of these countries? Well, hard to say exactly, as the most recent map I've seen (from mindofahitchiker.com above) is from 2017 based on information from 2012, and things may have changed in some of those countries by now. On this map, the green countries are safe to flush, the orange are "it depends" and the red are generally no-flushers. Most places where you can't flush paper have signs saying so, but sometimes they're in another language and sometimes there just aren't signs because the assumption is that you know. Thankfully, mindofahitchhiker.com also offers a handy "Flush or not to flush?" flowchart to help you figure it out:Find out more at mindofahitchhiker.comSurprisingly, putting TP in a bin isn't as disgusting as I imagined it would be, nor is it stinky like I assumed it would be. In Indonesia and Thailand, nearly all toilets had a "bum gun"—a handheld water sprayer attached to a hose that hung on the side of the toilet—which helped everything feel a bit cleaner on that front. (I loved it so much I bought one to install at home after my trip.) But even without the hoses, the TP bins have plastic liners and usually fliptop lids you open with your foot, so it doesn't really feel as unsanitary as it sounds. And those bins appeared to be emptied frequently almost everywhere I was, so it wasn't any grosser of an experience than using a public restroom in the U.S. (There's also a generally expected level of courtesy, it seems, to make sure your used TP is folded or wadded in such a way as to not gross out other people.) It may not be ideal and it may fly in the face of our normal habits, but I'm sure we'd all agree that plumbing working properly is important. So if you're traveling to country you've never been to before, do a little research, follow the toilet signs, and when in doubt, toss instead of flush. The locals will thank you.