'Father says the earth got too hot underneath, like you do in bed sometimes, so it just hunched up its shoulders, and the sea had to slip off, like the blankets do off us, and the shoulder was left sticking out, and turned into dry land.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Five Children and It'

My father spent his last months on earth bedridden and straining for every breath.

FORBES: Passing It On

That is the actress Prunella Scales answering a question of comic (and class) motivation that had troubled my father for twenty years: why on earth did they marry each other?

NEWYORKER: Dead Man Laughing

Even the father of theme parks proved no match for the earth's self-appointed guardians.

ECONOMIST: The ski business

"This is an intriguing and a unique event combining the unusual practice of venerating relics with a down-to-earth experience of an optimistic spirituality for all, " said Father Martin Coyle, the provincial leader of the Salesians in Great Britain, the religious order founded by the saint.

BBC: Saint John Bosco relics on display in Liverpool

That dream is why someone who began by sweeping the floors of his father's Cincinnati bar can preside as speaker of the House in the greatest nation on Earth.

CNN: Transcript: Obama's State of the Union speech

Miss Gowing was described by Father Francis Doyle as a good friend and colleague to so many, who was down to earth, with a great commitment to help her clients and their animals.

BBC: Catherine Gowing memorial service for murdered vet