The day when the jobs were handed out was one of the most exciting moments for all the children in the class. It took place during the first week of the term. Every kid was given a job for which they would be responsible for the rest of that school year.

Some jobs were more interesting than others, and the children were eager to be given one of the best ones. When giving them out, the teacher took into account which pupils had been most responsible during the previous year. During the previous year Rita had carried out the teacher’s instructions perfectly. All the children knew Rita would be given the best job.

But there was a big surprise. Each child received a normal job. But Rita’s job was very different. She was given a little box containing some sand and one ant. Though the teacher insisted that this ant was very special, Rita felt disappointed. Most of her classmates felt sorry for her. Even her father became very angry with the teacher and he encouraged Rita to pay no attention to this insignificant pet. However, Rita preferred to show the teacher her error by doing something special with that job of little interest. Rita started investigating all about her little ant and gave the ant the best food, and it grew quite a bit bigger.

One day, a man, who looked very important, came into their classroom and declared, “Your class has been chosen to accompany me, this summer, on a journey to the tropical rain forest, where we will investigate all kinds of insects. Among all the schools of this region, your class has best cared for the little ant.”

That day the school was filled with joy and celebration. Everyone thanked Rita for having been so patient and responsible. And many children learnt that to be given the most important task, you have to know how to be responsible even in what are the smallest tasks.

A few inspiring clues kept the rescuers going: the remains of fruit with bitemarks made by small human teeth, a pair of scissors and nappies (尿布) in the rainforest mud. All offered hope that four children, who come from the Huitoto Indigenous tribe, had miraculously survived a plane crash on May I in southern Colombia. The oldest of them was 13 and the youngest was only 11 months old. They were alive with tigers, poisonous snakes, storms and other threats under the dense green canopy of trees and vegetation.

The remains of the Cessna light aircraft were found two weeks later, with the bodies of three adults still inside. But there was no sign of the children. A long search through the forest began. Helicopters hovered over the area around the crash, broadcasting message s from the children’s grandmother, telling them they hadn’t been forgotten, urging them to stay in one place, and dropping packets of food that may have helped them survive.

“This isn’t a search for a needle in a haystack (干草堆), but a tiny flea (跳蚤) in a vast carpet, as they keep moving,” the captain of the search team told Colombian journalists. “Their bodies haven’t appeared, and I’m sure that we would have already found them if they were dead.”

Then on a Friday in June, army radios sounded. “Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle”. It was the army code for a child found alive; repeated four times meant all four had survived.

Although malnourished, and covered in insect bites, none were in a serious condition. The military posted pictures of a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in blankets. The education of survival skills the children got from their grandmother, a respected elder in the Araracuara indigenous territory, was almost certainly vital to their survival.

“They’ve given us an example of total survival that will go down in history,” said Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, calling it “a joy for the whole country”.

Mary Wilkins Ellis was a volunteer pilot for Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary(ATA) during World War II.

Mary Wilkins was born on Feb. 2, 1917. When she was 8, her father bought her a ride in a plane. From there, she was hooked. As a teenager, she persuaded her father to pay for flying lessons, and she earned her pilot’s license at 22 in 1939.

In 1940, she heard an ad for volunteer pilots to help the war effort. She up and joined the ATA, whose task was to deliver planes from factory to base or from base to factory for repairs.

At the height of World War II, 26-year-old Mary Wilkins climbed down a ladder from the cockpit(驾驶舱) of a bomber(轰炸机) at a Royal Air Force base in England.

“Where’s the pilot?” someone on the ground asked.

“I am the pilot!"” she responded. She had delivered the bomber alone, although built for a five-man crew from its factory. People on the ground looked at her in surprise. One of them even decided to climb up the ladder to check the plane for the “missing” pilot.

She was one of the “ATA girls”, as they were nicknamed, who almost always flew without other crew members, compass or radio assistance. They guided themselves by using maps and following rives or railway lines. While they did not fly in comber, they faced the daily danger of attack by enemy planes. Mrs. Ellis was ones. Shot at over Bournemouth, in southern England, by “friendly fire” from the ground. Another time, she had a near-miss when landing in thick fog at the same time a combat Spitfire landed on the same runway from the opposite direction. That experience won her the nickname “the fog flyer”.

In all, Mrs. Ellis flew more than 1,000 warplanes of 76 types, including 400 Spitfires, among more than 200 British airfields from 1942 to the end of the war in 1945.