Blog Posts by Nadine Kalinauskas

On February 16th, a commuter on the New York City subway fired back against the homophobic rantings of a subway "preacher."

"Michael Jackson died because he was gay," the preacher shouted, pacing in the car madly and spewing anti-gay sentiments.

And while most passengers choose to ignore strangers' rants on public transit, one man stood up to him, matching the man in volume and passion.

"I'm a man," the bold passenger shouted. "And I'm a good man. And I'm a gay man and Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me!"

Just then, his fellow passengers burst into applause.

"His fellow commuters couldn't help but applaud. Because he's the hero Gotham deserves and the one it needs right now," Gawker's Neetzan Zimmerman writes.

Tyler Morris of Montague, Michigan, was in Biloxi, Mississippi, for a friend's funeral when he decided to play his late friend's favourite penny-slot game at Palace Casino Resort.

According to the casino's website, "Tyler, who typically plays craps, felt compelled to try his luck on the penny slot machine in memory of a friend whose funeral he attended earlier in the day. Tyler stated his friend enjoyed playing penny slots at the Palace, so he chose to visit the casino and play penny slots."

Morris won $7,217,175.15 playing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship progressive penny slot machine.

"When asked what his first thought was after realizing he had won over $7 million dollars, Tyler said he felt his friend was watching over him and had blessed him with the big win. Tyler’s wife, Mary, commented they would pay off the new car they had just purchased earlier this week in order to be able to make the trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast," the casino's site reported.

Tyler and Mary

On Valentine's Day, a Houston woman beat one-in-70-million odds and gave birth to two sets of identical twins.

Tressa Montalvo, 36, delivered four boys — Ace, Blaine, Cash and Dylan — via caesarean section early Thursday morning at The Woman's Hospital of Texas in Houston.

"We tried to stick to the A-B-C-D theme when naming them," Tressa said. "We didn't expect it, we were trying for just one and we were blessed with four."

According to a news release from the hospital, Tressa and her husband, Manuel, had not been using fertility drugs, "and had just hoped for a little brother or sister for their 2-year-old son, Memphis."

At her 10-week ultrasound, Tressa's doctor told her she has having twins. At the following visit, a doctor heard a third heartbeat.

Not long after, the

Rocco DiNobile, manager of a West Hollywood apartment building, recently discovered a box of WWII medals and other mementos hidden in a laundry-room locker.

"The fifth one I opened, had all these letters in it. And staring me in the face was a Purple Heart," DiNobile told CBS Los Angeles.

DiNobile contacted Purple Hearts Reunited founder Zachariah Fike, who helped track down the medal recipient's family.

"I try to honour the veterans," Fike told KABC. "I go through a local congress man and get all the other awards that he would have been entitled to and I get them framed professionally for the families. In this case, he'll get a professionally framed set of medals that he was entitled to for his service in the war."

The eight medals, including a Purple Heart and Silver Star, were delivered to Hyla Merin, the daughter of Second Lieutenant Hyman Markel, in a short ceremony at her home in Westlake Village.

Markel was killed in battle in May, 1945. His wife was seven months pregnant with

In 2005, 17-year-old Connor Rabinowitz, from Edina, Minnesota, was in need of a new heart. The promising young baseball star had just been diagnosed with a life-threatening genetic disease that enlarged and weakened his organs.

"I had been such a strong, healthy young man who’d never been sick, on the verge of a baseball scholarship to the Division 1 school of my choice and one week later doctors were telling me I could die if I don’t receive a life saving heart transplant," Connor told the West Seattle Herald.

"I would lie in bed at night and pray for a heart to come quickly or I wouldn’t make it. I would think every day and night about the person who would have to die for me to live. I prayed for that family who would be receiving such a different call from that of mine," he said.

That person who would have to die for him was Kellen Roberts, a young man from West Seattle who passed away at the age of 22 when he hit his head during a freak accident.

Roberts' family immediately decided

'Tis the season to dream of warmer weather.

Nothing beats a leisurely boat ride under the sun. One sloth experienced that simple joy — and his boating adventure was captured on camera.

Watch a sloth enjoy a low-key day on the water below.

"Nothing unusual here."

Huffington Post remixed the sloth video with The Lonely Island's "I'm On a Boat" tune. (Lyrics not safe for work.) Watch here.

Surprisingly, sloths can swim quite well and are able to hold their breath for up to 40 minutes.

So while offering a sloth a boat ride seems like a great idea, the little guy can actually get around better in the water than on land.

In conclusion, sloths are awesome.

Baby, a 10-year-old pit bull terrier, is being hailed a hero after saving her family from their burning home.

Early Tuesday morning, Baby started barking at her sleeping owners, sisters Rhonda and Evelyn Westenberger, in their Lincoln County, Oklahoma, home.

Then she pounced on them.

"There were flames shooting down the hallway," Rhonda told KOCO. "If Baby hadn't woken Evelyn up, I don't think either one of us would have come out of it."

The women escaped unharmed, but their five other dogs remained trapped inside.

Baby, once again, came to the rescue and led each pup to safety.

"There was one hiding underneath the bed," said family member Charles Land. "Baby actually went in there grabbed it by the neck and drug it outside."

The home was destroyed in the fire — fire officials believe the fire started and spread from the home's dryer — but, thanks to Baby, everyone made it out alive.

"It brings my spirit up a lot to see the dogs," Rhonda told KOCO. "I'm so proud of her. She is my

Ben Pike, a defensive end at the University of Toledo, is choosing the love for a woman over the love of the game.

Pike is hanging up his spikes a year early — the 22-year-old player still had one final season of eligibility — to help his fiancée, Ashlee Barrett, battle leukaemia.

"When I meet the love of my life, ask her to marry me and a couple months later, she gets diagnosed with cancer, you see how little and insignificant your other problems were," Pike told the News-Herald. "When you see a person that you love lying on a bed fighting for her life, school, football, all that doesn't matter. All that matters is making sure she gets better."

Pike proposed to Barrett, a former Toledo basketball player, on the White House driveway during his team's 2011 trip to the Military Bowl. They are planning a June 2013 wedding.

"I know in some people's terms, he's giving up things," Pike's mother, Becky, told the Plain Dealer. "But he's really not giving up. He's not giving up anything. He's