Friendship Facts

Owen was a one-year-old hippo swept out to sea by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Villagers in Malindi, Kenya spent hours dragging him to shore with ropes and nets. At Haller Park he refused to leave the side of Mzee, a 130-year-old giant tortoise. The two ate, swam, and slept side by side for years.

Baks the blind boxer had a seeing-eye goose named Buttons; a four-year-old goose who lead the pup around everywhere either by hanging onto him with her neck, or by honking to tell him which way to go.

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.

Diamond Dallas Page was a professional wrestler. In 2012, he found his friend Jake "The Snake" Roberts in terrible shape. Roberts weighed over 300 pounds and could barely walk. Page moved him into his own house and called it the Accountability Crib. He put Roberts through yoga and workouts every day. Two years later, Page inducted him into the WWE Hall of Fame. Roberts is still sober today.

Sylvester Stallone arrived in Los Angeles with his wife, a bullmastiff and little money left, and the one friend he could call was Henry Winkler, the Fonz. Winkler showed up and steered them to a motel they could afford for maybe two nights. Stallone went on to write Rocky. In his new memoir, he says Winkler came like a god-send.