As the saying goes, “One good turn deserves another.” Liz’s life was changed forever over the course of that year. It all started with a single act of kindness towards two strangers who walked into the diner where she works early one morning.

After they fought a horrible fire for 12 hours, Tim and Paul stepped into the 130Diner for breakfast. When the time came to pay the bill though, they were in for a surprise. The young waitress who had served them had overheard their conversations and paid their bill, leaving a sweet message on their check instead, “Your meal is on me today. Thank you for serving others and running into the places everyone runs away from.”

Touched, the two firefighters shared her kind deed on social media where it quickly went viral. And that was when they found out the true story of the beautiful waitress who had paid for them. Liz Woodward had been struggling to make ends meet for the last few years after her father suffered a brain disease that left him paraplegic (瘫痪的). Determined to help the woman who had shown such kindness even if she was suffering, they set up a campaign to raise $10,000 for a wheelchair-accessible car for her father. The donations, however, did not stop pouring in when the campaign ended. Having heard of her kind deed, Mobility Ventures, which made the wheelchair-accessible car, refused to take the money and gave the family one for free as a Christmas gift.

Liz couldn’t be too grateful to the two firefighters and many strangers who have reached out to help her, saying, “The kindness and generosity the campaign supporters and Mobility Ventures have shown is really incredible, and I hope this brings hope to others in similar situations, and inspires people to help those in need in any way possible.”

On a Friday evening in December, two weeks before Christmas, I lost my job. I hadn’t seen it coming. I was excited for the weekend, when my daughter, Kristil, then 12, and I planned to get our Christmas tree. Then I listened to my voicemail: “We’re sorry but your work assignment has ended as of today.”My heart sank. I wasn’t just a single mother; I was the only parent. My paycheck was survival.

Over the next week, as my bank account grew smaller, I crazily applied for jobs, but I was defeated.

It had been snowing on and off all morning. I noticed a woman with short white hair struggling to open her car door against the wind. As she got out, I realized it was my old professor, Mrs. Heffernan. I hadn’t seen her since we’d met for lunch three months ago.

I’d first met Mrs. Heffernan 10 years earlier when I was her student at Edge wood College. Kristil was 3 at the time, and I sometimes took her to class. Mrs. Heffernan was understanding and would bring coloring books to occupy Kristil.

Even after I graduated, Mrs. Heffernan kept in touch. I had grown to love her like family.

I rushed to the front of my building. “What are you doing out in this weather?” I asked as we hugged.

“Well, I tried to call last week but couldn’t get through. Then I called your job and they said you weren’t working there anymore, so I thought I would come by,” she said. “I have gifts for you and Kristil. ”

I made her a cup of tea and we talked. Just being in Mrs. Heffernan’s presence gave me hope that things would be all right.

As she got up to leave she handed me a Christmas card and kissed me on the cheek. I walked her to her car and waved as she pulled away.

When I opened her card I was in shock. Hundred dollar bills fell onto the table. Tears of gratitude filled my eyes as I counted. Mrs. Heffernan had given me $1,000.

Nike’s “Just do it” slogan is undoubtedly a killer line-and now it's been revealed that the inspiration for it came from an actual killer. The phrase, first used in a Nike advertisement in 1988 was brought to the firm by advertising executive Dan Wieden, who admitted that it was borrowed from something a Utah murderer spoke as he faced a firing squad. The murderer in question was Gary Gilmore, who was sentenced to death in 1977 for robbing and killing two men in Utah the previous year.

Mr Wieden, speaking at an advertising conference in February, said that he recalled this line in 1988 just before he had a marketing campaign meeting with Nike bosses, and decided to suggest a slightly changed version as a slogan. His company had been sent in by Nike to help them fight back rivals Reebok, who had just announced bigger profits. Mr Wieden said: “We came up with five different 30 second spots. The night before a meeting with Nike, I got concerned because there wasn’t a strong connection to them all. Some were funny, some were serious. So I thought we need a slogan to pull them together. I wrote about four or five ideas. I narrowed it down to the last one, which was ‘Just do it’. The reason I did that one was funny because I was recalling a man in Portland. He murdered a man and a woman, and was put before a firing squad. And they asked him if he had any final thoughts and he said: “Let’s do it. And for some reason I didn’t like ‘Let’s do it’ so I just changed it to ‘Just do it’.”

At first, he recalled, Nike hated the idea, but he won them round and the slogan appeared at the end of an advert featuring 80-year-old runner Walt Stack. It is now one of the most famous slogans in the world, described by Campaign magazine as “arguably the best tagline of the 20th century”.