Scott Hubbard and I weren’t too sure why we had been called out that night when we met at the Bowling Alley on Washington Street at two o’clock in the morning in Stillwater Oklahoma to drive out to the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma. Something about a fire on the top of the precipitator.
I was glad that Scott was driving instead of me when I climbed into his pickup and he began the 20 mile journey up Highway 177. I wasn’t quite awake yet from the phone call at 1:45 am telling me that there was a fire on the Unit 1 precipitator roof and they were calling Scott and I out to put it out. I figured if there was a fire it should be put out long before the 45 minutes it takes me and Scott to arrive at the plant.
Serena Williams slugged her way to a sixth Wimbledon singles title Saturday morning, completing her second so-called “Serena Slam” and positioning herself for tennis history.
The 33-year-old American defeated Garbine Muguruza of Spain, 6-4, 6-4, to win her fourth consecutive Grand Slam tournament, beginning with last year’s U.S. Open and including this year’s Australian and French open titles. She accomplished a similar sweep in 2002-2003.
The Wimbledon win is also Williams’ 21st Grand Slam title.
.
Serena Williams celebrates after winning the women’s singles final at Wimbledon,in London on July 11. Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
The U.S. women’s soccer team rolled up New York City’s “Canyon of Heroes” on Friday in the first ticker tape parade honoring a women’s sports team.
.
The U.S. women’s national soccer team celebrate with the World Cup trophy as fans cheer during the ticker tape parade in New York. Lucas Jackson / Reuters
.
.
Click link belowfor article and 15 photos (scroll down to next NBC News article for 17 more photos):
RealView, an Israeli high-tech company, thrilled the medical world when it presented 3D holographic images of inner body organs that can be manipulated by the physician in real-time.
Chinese authorities have evacuated tens of thousands of people, canceled scores of trains and flights and shuttered seaside resorts as a super-typhoon with wind gusts up to 200 kilometers per hour (125 mph) heads toward the southeastern coast.
China’s national weather service said super Typhoon Chan-hom is expected to make landfall by early Saturday at Fujian or Zhejiang province, and has issued its highest-level alert.
Zhejiang’s Civil Affairs Bureau said nearly 60,000 people were evacuated from coastal areas. The country’s railway service said more than 100 trains between the region’s cities are canceled through Sunday.
In May, waters around Dallas rose above normal levels. The Trinity River, which runs through the city, had retained so much rainfall that its depth more than doubled to 40 feet by the end of the month. Among the destroyed homes and human lives lost, wildlife were also affected by the rising waters.
Andrés Ruzo, a geoscientist and National Geographic explorer, captured this image of a recently deceased fish who’d gotten carried away by the floodwater — and, sadly, lodged in a fence.
The fish is part of a 100-million-year-old species. And even though he has a bit of a monstrous appearance, he’s of course not a river monster at all. He’s a juvenile longnose gar, a freshwater fish with a sizable population of over 100,000 adults in North America. Though other subspecies of gar can reach up to 10 feet long, this particular fish is 2 feet, which is about the subspecies’s average size.
Part of the excitement of seeing a meteor is the dumb luck involved in being in the right place at the right time.
Outside of known meteor showers, these celestial wonders don’t exactly appear when you expect them to. But a Japanese company is hoping to change that, taking luck out of the equation and making meteors appear right on time, exactly where expected.
The company, called ALE, is raising funds to launch a small satellite filled with pellets that would orbit at about 250 to 300 miles above Earth. The satellite would release pellets on cue, which — like natural meteoroids — would burn up as they fall.
.
Lena Okajima of space startup ALE shows the pellets she says can be used to create artificial meteor showers. | YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images
More than 50 years after South Carolina raised a Confederate flag at its Statehouse to protest the civil rights movement, the state is getting ready to remove the rebel banner.
A bill pulling down the flag from the Capitol’s front lawn and the flagpole it flies on passed the South Carolina House early Thursday morning. It should get to Gov. Nikki Haley’s desk before the end of the day.
The governor promised to sign it quickly, but didn’t say exactly when. That’s important, because the bill requires the flag be taken down within 24 hours of her pen hitting the paper and shipped to the Confederate Relic Room.
Where is the hate in America? A new analysis purports to pinpoint it.
South Carolina may be the most directly involved in the debate over the confederate battle flag, but racial tensions and racism are big issues around the country. And data from the Southern Poverty Law Center suggests the nation’s racial and ethnic hate groups are heavily concentrated in areas with two key factors: lower incomes and greater diversity.
Analyzing the SPLC hate group list with the demographic county types identified by the American Communities Project reveals counties that hold those common traits are the most likely to be home to those extremist groups.
The places with the highest number of SPLC hate groups per person in the American Communities Project are the counties called Evangelical Hubs, with 208,000 people per hate group, and the African American South, with 223,000 per hate group.
The last time the Burmese slave made the same request, he was beaten almost to death. But after being gone eight years and forced to work on a boat in faraway Indonesia, Myint Naing was willing to risk everything to see his mother again.
So he threw himself on the ground and begged for freedom. Instead, the captain vowed to kill him for trying to jump ship, and chained him for three days without food or water.
He was afraid he would disappear. And that his mother would have no idea where to look.
.
In this May 16, 2015, photo, former slave fisherman Myint Naing, left, is embraced by his mother Khin Than, second left, as his sister Mawli Than, right, is overcome with emotion after they were reunited after 22 years in their village in Mon State, Myanmar. Myint, 40, is among hundreds of former slave fishermen who returned to Myanmar following an Associated Press investigation into the use of forced labor in Southeast Asiaâs seafood industry. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) | ASSOCIATED PRESS
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
The U.S. women’s national soccer team celebrate with the World Cup trophy as fans cheer during the ticker tape parade in New York. 
Down it comes
James' World 2 