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Today’s storyMemphis, TN

The Bellman Who Taught Memphis Ducks to Walk the Red Carpet

The funny thing about the lobby ducks at The Peabody Memphis wasn’t that they were in the fountain. It was that, for a while, they were famous hotel guests with absolutely no sense of ceremony.

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Tulsa, OK

The Tulsa Woman Who Got Tapped by Space

The sky over Tulsa flared like someone had dragged a match across the dark. Then, a little later, space followed up with the politest possible knock.

3 min read

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Las Cruces, NM

Pluto’s New Mexico Punster Gets One More Ride

A tiny moving dot once changed Clyde Tombaugh’s life. Decades later, a tiny portion of him went chasing after it, tucked aboard a spacecraft headed into the deep, cold dark. Clyde W.

3 min read

New Haven, CT

The New Haven Toymaker Who Made the Case for Christmas

The little metal pieces must have looked almost funny in such a serious room: tiny girders, nuts, bolts, pulleys, and motors, the sort of things that could turn a living-room floor into a small…

3 min read

Henderson, KY

The Henderson Teacher Who Gave Mothers a Day in Class

Before Mother’s Day meant cards on a rack or flowers wrapped in crackly paper, it could look as simple as children standing in a schoolroom, trying very hard not to giggle while honoring the women…

3 min read

Savannah, GA

Flannery O’Connor’s First Brush with Fame Had Feathers

Before the famous stories, before the peafowl, before anyone knew Mary Flannery O’Connor as one of Georgia’s sharpest observers, there was a chicken in Savannah doing the wrong thing very well.

3 min read

Blue Earth, MN

The Radio Man Who Gave Travelers Their Giant

In Blue Earth, Minnesota, travelers kept pulling off the highway to meet a giant who didn’t exist. They had cameras ready, questions ready, and then—nothing but a very polite letdown.

2 min read

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