A rare sandhill crane lost its leg after being hit by a stray golf ball at a Richmond, B.C., golf course.

The bird is standing up once again, thanks to a peg leg provided by a wildlife rehabilitation centre.

"The crane was brought in because he was hit by a golf ball and his lower leg was shattered, so the vet, Dr. Ken MacQuisten, tried to see if it would work possibly with surgery," Elizabeth Melnick, who runs Elizabeth's Wildlife Centre in Abbotsford, told CBC News.

"It just wasn't a go. So [MacQuisten] decided to amputate the lower leg and now he's getting a prosthesis put in."

The crane was fitted with a temporary limb. Once the stump is fully healed, a permanent prosthesis will be attached.

There are very few sandhill cranes in the Lower Mainland. Melnick told CBC News that in the 27 years she's been running her wildlife centre, this is the first one she has come across.

"This is a very unusual patient," MacQuisten said in a video interview. "He's unusual in the sense that there

James Scoles, Kenneth Wilson and Sandford Watson have a long-standing pact that should one of them win the lottery, they will split the jackpot three ways.

On March 16, they honoured that vow when Wilson won $1 million.

Wilson bought a lottery ticket in Twiggs County, Georgia, on March 15, the same day Scoles cracked upon a fortune cookie in North Pole, Alaska, that read, "You're going to win the lottery."

The fortune cookie was right. Wilson's Quik Pik ticket matched the first five numbers in the Powerball lottery.

Wilson, who lives in Macon, Georgia, is splitting the million three ways with his cousin, Watson, who also lives in Macon, and Alaska-based Scoles.

"I was just as tickled for them as I was for myself," Wilson told NBC News. "We just had a verbal agreement and I felt like that had to be honoured."

Wilson waited about a week, until Scoles flew in from Alaska, before collecting his winnings.

"It was a lot of sleepless nights," said his wife Dorothy Wilson. "I never would have

Having a loved one serve overseas can fray the strongest of nerves and many spouses, partners, parents and children spend years in a constant state of anxiety.

Samantha Ford is all too familiar with this sentiment. As ABC News notes, the 24-year-old Massachusetts woman said goodbye last September to her army specialist boyfriend, Albert DeSimone, when he was deployed to Afghanistan. The couple has known one another since the fifth grade.

While it’s certainly no substitute for the real thing, Ford keeps him close with a bumper sticker on her car that reads: “1/2 my heart is in Afghanistan” and goes about her life.

But as author Chris Abani, quoting his mother, has remarked: “You know, you can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, any kind of horror. But the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you.”

Last week, Ford made a pit stop at an Arlington, Mass. Dunkin Donuts. When she returned to her car, someone had tucked a note under the windshield wiper.

The

Hunter, a 7-year-old professional sandcastle builder and People Water ambassador, wants everyone to have access to clean water.

People Water just released a super-cute ad in honour of World Water Day in which a smart kid waxes poetic about the importance of following your dreams — he even dropped out of preschool to follow his — and how we can do our part to ensure kids everywhere have access to clean drinking water.

"What is life without passion?" he asks.

For every bottle of water they sell, People Water's Drop for Drop program will donate an equal amount of clean water to someone in need.

"Every time you purchase a bottle of People Water, you are providing an equal amount of clean water to a person in need. It means that you are helping build a well for a village in Kenya, fund a mechanic in India, or fix broken well projects all over the world. It means that you are helping to create healthy, sustainable water sources for years to come. We'll even show you precisely what your

Piper the cat lives in a drain pipe on the Atlanta BeltLine's Eastside trail.

A local celebrity, she has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and regularly receives fan mail from local residents who drop notes in a miniature mailbox outside her drain pipe.

Walkers, joggers and cyclists have made Piper the BeltLine's mascot.

"When did you you decide you were going to write a letter to a cat?" 11Alive reporter Jeff Hullinger asked one woman as she delivered her letter to Piper.

"I discovered her two days ago while I was riding my bike and I noticed that people were coming to paying homage," she replied.

"She inspires me to get some exercise, I feed her, bring my cat food and plastic bags," another resident said.

As for Piper, she "writes" the following words of encouragement on Twitter:

"Stay frisky, my friends."

In 2009, when Daisy Morris was just 5 years old, she discovered fossilized bones on Atherfield Beach on the Isle of Wight, England.

"She has a very good eye for tiny little fossils and found these tiny little black bones sticking out of the mud and decided to dig a bit further and scoop them all out," Daisy's mom, Sian Morris, told BBC News. "We are all very proud of her."

The blackened bones turned out to belong to a then-undiscovered species of small pterosaur, a flying reptile of the Lower Cretaceous period.

According to Science World Report, the Isle of Wight's coastline is slowly eroding. Had Daisy not discovered the remains, they would have eventually been washed away.

Now 9 years old, Daisy has just had that species named after her: Vectidraco daisymorrisae.

The species and name was announced in the scientific paper PLOS ONE published on Monday.

"We thank Daisy Morris for discovering the specimen, and all members of the Morris family for their thoughtful co-operation in ensuring

On Monday night, severe storms forced an Atlanta-bound Delta flight to divert to Knoxville, Tennessee, leaving passengers stranded on the tarmac for three hours.

"Normal flight, going down to Atlanta, en route, the pilot came over the PA and said there was some real bad weather in Atlanta and we'll have to circle for a while and then maybe we can land. Well, we circled for a while, the pilot told us we're running a little low on fuel so we need divert so then we went over to Knoxville, Tennessee," said passenger Ryan Wood.

While no delay is a fun one, airport employees made the wait more bearable with an unexpected treat: pizza.

Thirty Pizza Hut pizzas were delivered — one report claims the number was as high was 60 — escorted by a police car, to the passengers in the parked plane.

"Of course we were all upset, but everyone was pretty accepting," passenger Jan Vazmina told TODAY of the delay. "The pilot kept the mood light and the flight attendants busted their butts to keep us

Soccer isn't just the world's most popular sport, it's also set to be the most powerful.

For-profit social enterprise Uncharted Play has developed a soccer ball that can generate electricity. Just 30 minutes of kicking the ball can power an LED light for three hours.

"The Soccket is a portable generator in the form of a size 5 soccer ball. Its internal mechanism takes the kinetic energy from rolling and converts and stores it as electrical energy. After the game is finished, the included single bulb LED lamp can be plugged into the ball to provide hours of light from just minutes of play," the Uncharted Play website explains.

The Soccket soccer ball is just one ounce heavier than a standard soccer ball, is water-resistant and, because of its solid construction, requires no inflation.

Uncharted Play hopes to see the Soccket generate power for families without light in "resource-poor" areas of the world.

"The Soccket is currently being used in rural off-grid areas of Mexico and