Did the winning lottery ticket catch fire? and more

Did the winning lottery ticket catch fire?

A Kentucky woman whose house was destroyed by fire last month won $80,000 in the lottery—but she feared the winning ticket had gone up in flames. “I immediately thought, ‘Oh, my God, the tickets burned up in the fire,’” said Sandra Ramirez, 44, of Cadiz, Ky. But Ramirez recalled having bought the ticket online when she was at her parents’ house; she found the ticket there. She plans to use the money to recover from the fire and buy a computer for her daughter. “I did my happy dance,” Ramirez said.

Goose smashes windshield of double-decker Megabus

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Pilots have their “Sully,” now bus drivers have a “Sweeney.” Andre Sweeney was driving his double-decker Megabus on the New Jersey Turnpike when a goose smashed head-on into his windshield, sending shards of glass into Sweeney’s eyes. Sweeney never lost control, staying in the driver’s seat until he reached a rest stop, where paramedics treated him. Passenger Laetitia-Laure Brock compared Sweeney’s cool under pressure to that of Chesley Sullenberger, the U.S. Airways pilot who safely landed his plane in the Hudson River after his own collision with geese. “He did a great job,” Brock said.

Siblings reunite after 26 years

Genea Scott and her brother Dwayne had a tearful reunion in Los Angeles last week with their sister after 26 years. Their little sister, Love, was adopted at age 6, and her name was changed to Nicole Love Bradford. Her siblings tried for years to find “Love,” to no avail. Then Nicole found Genea on MySpace, but got no reply—Genea had stopped using it. After sending notes to Genea’s MySpace friends, Nicole’s message was delivered. Nicole had never stopped thinking of her family. “There was still that void,” she said, “that hole in my life.”