Person Facts About Kindness

Acts of kindness make us happier and healthier.

Jack White's mother couldn't find work, so Detroit's Masonic Temple hired her as an usher. Years later, the massive concert hall she once worked in faced foreclosure over unpaid taxes. White quietly paid off the entire debt himself, telling no one. The Temple's president later revealed who had saved it, renaming the theater in his honor. It still carries his name today.

Jesse Eisenberg gave one of his kidneys to a stranger. He had wanted to donate for ten years. A doctor friend told him strangers could receive it too. He finally did it in December 2025, at a hospital in New York. He chose never to learn the stranger's name. "It just seemed like an obvious thing to do," he said.

Patrick Moriarty was 22 when he told his 9th-grade earth science students to circle one date on their worksheets: a solar eclipse. He gave the same assignment to every class he taught for the next 16 years. More than 100 former students showed up 46 years later. Rochester was cloudy. Nobody cared.

In 2013 Christian Bucks, a second-grader at Roundtown Elementary in York, Pennsylvania, saw a picture of a bench at a school in Germany. A child who felt lonely at recess could sit on it, and another kid would come ask them to play. He asked his principal for one, and the school put it in. Today kids in all 50 states sit on buddy benches when they need a friend.

Ajay Haridasse collapsed 1,000 feet from the Boston Marathon finish line with severe cramps. Two strangers - Aaron Beggs of Northern Ireland and Robson De Oliveira of Brazil - stopped their own races, slid under his arms, and walked him across. The man they carried finished in 2:44:32. Beggs crossed 4 seconds later.

Kristina Ulmer's sister died hours after her final waitress shift, leaving $80 in tips behind. Kristina kept it untouched for four years, then added her own savings, broke it into $20 bills, and handed one to each of her 26 students: use it for kindness. It is now a nonprofit, 350+ acts strong.

When the 2012 New York City Marathon was cancelled, more than 1,000 runners took the ferry to Staten Island with backpacks of blankets, batteries and food. Superstorm Sandy had wrecked the island, where the race starts, and the mayor called it off two days before. Sports doctor Jordan Metzl rallied them on Facebook, and his group ran 15 miles, then helped clear out a family's home.

Paul Brittain runs a tree service in North Carolina. When an 85-year-old widow called for firewood and said she could not pay until her Social Security check came, he delivered it himself and told her at the door, "I ain't coming back for no money." Then he kept coming back anyway, with new tires for her car, a patched roof and a fixed heater, all free.

Muhammad Ali got a call: Joe was on a 9th-floor fire escape in Los Angeles. He would not come down. Police, a psychologist, and a chaplain had all tried and failed. Ali drove over, leaned out a window, and said: "You're my brother. I love you and I couldn't lie to you." Twenty minutes later he had his arm around Joe and walked him inside. Ali drove him to the hospital himself.

Eight-year-old Olivia Heid and her 4-year-old brother RJ sled off a ridge and vanish into a frozen New Jersey pond. Kieran Foley, 14, loses a boot in the mud and keeps going barefoot. His four friends link arms behind him on the ice. One by one, he hands both kids down the chain to shore.

Those little boxes of books on posts across America started as one man's tribute. Todd Bol built the first in 2009, from wood off his old garage door. He shaped it like a tiny schoolhouse, for his mother, June. She was a schoolteacher who tutored neighborhood kids at her dining table. He filled it with books and staked it in his yard. Neighbors wanted their own. There are now over 200,000, in 128 countries. There's probably one on your street.

In 2011 a tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, and a few competition barbecue cooks towed their giant smokers over, figuring on four days and 5,000 meals. More cooks kept arriving, and they stayed nearly two weeks and served 120,000 meals to families and first responders. That crew became Operation BBQ Relief, now past 12 million meals, and the smokers still roll out to wrecked towns.

Ryan Seacrest started in radio as a high school intern at an Atlanta station. Since 2010 he and his family have built real radio and TV studios inside children's hospitals, and the kids are the hosts. They run their own shows and interview the stars who visit, while other kids join in from their rooms. Kids in 14 hospitals still go on air.

Bill Gross's parents couldn't afford to pass down their North Dakota farm, so he became a 747 captain. Over the Pacific, he told a copilot his retirement plan: buy a tractor and help farmers in crisis. A friend said not to wait, so in 2005, still flying, he started Farm Rescue. It has helped more than 1,300 families and is looking for the next one this harvest.

A Maryland hunter pulled over to help a woman load a deer into her trunk. A car had hit it, and she was taking it home because her kids were hungry. In 1997, he got two butchers to process deer donated by hunters for food banks. His program has since handed out more than 24 million servings of meat. Every deer season, hunters still drop off deer at its butchers.

A construction foreman in South Bend, Indiana, was building a new wing for a children's hospital. Patients on the sixth floor looked down on his site. So he cut a giant Where's Waldo out of plywood, his daughter helped paint it, and he hid it among the scaffolding. Every time a child spotted Waldo, the foreman moved him somewhere new.

In the mid-2000s, a Wisconsin dentist began paying kids a dollar a pound for their leftover Halloween candy. His own children told him it was a terrible idea. He sent the candy to troops overseas, and thousands of dentists across the country joined in. One military charity alone has shipped nearly 600,000 pounds of donated candy. Dental offices still collect it every November.

Rodney Smith Jr. was driving home in Huntsville, Alabama, when he pulled over to help an elderly stranger struggling to mow his lawn. That night he decided to mow free lawns for seniors, veterans and single moms. Then he asked kids to do the same: 50 free lawns each. More than 6,000 kids across the country have signed up. Those who finish all 50 get a new mower, trimmer and blower.

Patrick Stewart stepped off the stage at the 2013 Comicpalooza in Houston and held a fan who said she had survived abuse. He had just told the room he supports the charity Refuge in his mother's name, because he couldn't help her when his father abused her. "You never have to go through that again, you're safe now," he told her. Stewart died on Wednesday at 86. The charity he named still shelters survivors.