Couple Starts First Official Rat Sanctuary in U.S.

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  “It’s like the Taj Mahal for rats.”
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  In 2008, Dawn Burke and her husband, Don, decided to start The Rat Retreat—a sanctuary in their home in Boise, Idaho, where they care for mistreated, sick, or unwanted rats.
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  “It grew very quickly, from one rat to 72,” Don said.
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  The intensity of Dawn’s affection for rats might surprise the most passionate of animal lovers—Dawn would let one rat, Annie, clean the food out of her teeth.
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  “People call it their ‘heart rat,’ that one rat that they never forget. Everybody loved her [Annie] so much,” Dawn said.
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   Dawn Burke with Annie, her “heart rat,” in 2009.
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  The two came to StoryCorps to talk about how the project got started.
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 Photo credit: Courtesy of Dawn and Don Burke
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The Couple that Caught Bubonic Plague from Infected Fleas

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  “It was the first case of plague in New York City in over a hundred years.”
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  In 2002, Lucinda Marker and her husband, John Tull, came down with the bubonic plague—the same bacterial infection that killed about one-third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages.
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  Today, the plague is rare in the U.S., only a handful catch it each year and it’s mostly found in Southwest states—where Lucinda and John live.
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  They were bitten by fleas infected with plague near their home in New Mexico, and fell ill while vacationing in New York City.
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  Marker and Tull shared the experience of their rare and unexpected illness with
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  .
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 Photo credit:
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  Katja ZSM/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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The Rocket-Sled Airman Who Helped Pave the Way to Space

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  “It was like driving an automobile at 100 miles per hour and running into a stone wall.”
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  As a teenager, Alton Yates did a job that helped send people into space.
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  In the mid-1950s, before NASA existed, Yates was part of a small group of Air Force volunteers who tested the effects of high speeds on the body. They were strapped to rocket-propelled sleds that hurtled down a track at more 600 miles per hour and stopped in a matter of seconds. These experiments helped prove that space travel was safe for humans.
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<figcaption>Alton Yates participating in experiments on the effects of high-speed space travel on humans.
        
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  At StoryCorps, Yates told his daughter, Toni, that—for him—the story starts in high school, shortly after his mother died.
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 Photo credit: Alton Yates/StoryCorps
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The Iron Workers of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

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  “Who are the high-wire walkers, wearing boots and hardhats, earning their living by risking their lives in places where falls are often fatal?”
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  New York City’s Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964. The graceful span of the Verrazano connects the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island, making it the longest suspension bridge in the country.
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  Gay Talese was a young reporter at the time and wrote a book documenting the construction called
  <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-bridge-9781620406663/">
   “The Bridge”
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  . “The Bridge” was republished in 2014 to mark the 50
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  anniversary the bridge’s opening.
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  Last year, Talese interviewed Bob Walsh, whose family boasts five generations of ironworkers. Walsh’s father died on the job when he was 11 years old. The construction of the Verrazano was Bob Walsh’s first job in the trade.
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   An ironworker on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the early 1960s
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  In this
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  anniversary in November 2014, Talese reads from his book and speaks with Bob about building one of New York City’s iconic bridges.
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 Photo credit: © Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos
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The U.S. Soldier Who Witnessed More Than 20 Nuclear Tests on American Soil

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 “During one of the explosions, I could see the bones in my hand.”
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 Joel Healy was 17 years old when he joined the Army in order to pay for college. He never imagined that he would witness the detonation of more than 20 nuclear bombs.
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 Healy was a Private First Class when he was assigned to Camp Desert Rock, north of Las Vegas, in 1957. That’s where he took part in Operation Plumbbob, one of the largest nuclear tests series ever conducted on U.S. soil. The U.S. Military conducted 29 nuclear tests between May 28 and October 7, 1957.
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 It’s hard to determine just how many veterans became ill because they were present at these tests. But Healy, and thousands of others, have received compensation from the U.S. Government as part of the
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  Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990.
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 The Priscilla event, conducted as part of Operation Plumbbob at the Nevada Test Site, June 24, 1957, was a 37-kiloton device exploded from a balloon.
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 At StoryCorps, Healy told his daughter, Kelli Healy Salazar, about his time at the Nevada test site.
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 Photo credit:
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  Federal government of the United States / Wikimedia Commons
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<p>Private First Class Joel Healy was 17 years old when he took part in Operation Plumbbob, one of the largest nuclear test series conducted in the United States.</p>

Life Returns to the Blast Zone

In this audio slide show, ecologist Charlie Crisafulli marvels at nature's recovery after St. Helens's 1980 eruption.

Kristine Allington