Your test starts ... now

They say you don't know how you'll react until it happens. Also, 7 other things worth knowing today.

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Test starts now

Lewis Medina was driving home one evening last October, after taking his daughter and his 5-year-old grandson to visit a pumpkin patch. They reached the train tracks near his house in Aurora, Illinois, when something caught his attention; something that just seemed wrong.

Then, he realized: a green SUV was stuck on the tracks. The driver was trying to get the car out—the wheels were spinning—but he couldn't make any headway.

Medina called 911 and described the location. And then:

"There's a car stuck on the railroad tracks. He's trying to get out, and he can't. Oh my gosh! There's a train coming!"

"Hold on one second," the 911 operator said.

"Hold on, ma'am! Hold on, ma'am!"

Medina leapt into action. Fascinatingly, from our vantage point, he never hung up the 911 call, and so the audio of everything that happened next was recorded for posterity.

It took less than two minutes, and it went something like this:

"Get out! Get out! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Sir! Get out, there's a train coming! C'mon! Get out of the car! Please! Right now, jump out! Come on! Come on! Jump out! Jump out! There's a train! C'mon, c'mon. Please get out! Please get out, c'mon! Get the seatbelt! C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! Do it now! C'mon, sir! Please, get out! C'mon, please!

"Sir?"

"More! More!"

"Sir, are they out?"

"No! Give me your hand! Give me your hands!"

"Sir, are they out of the car?"

"Get out of the way!"

"Sir, are they out of the car?"

"Roll down! Roll down the hill!"

"Sir, are they out of the car?"

"Stay right there! Don't move! I don't know what's going to happen! [TRAIN HORN] Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh!"

"Sir, is he out of the car?"

"Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! "

"Sir, is he out of the car?"

"Oh Lord! Oh Lord!" [TRAIN BRAKES SQUEALING]

"Sir, is he out of the car? Sir? Sir?"

"Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Ma'am? Hello? Hello?

"Sir, are you there?"

"OK. They stopped the train. Was there anybody with you?"

["No."]

"Oh good."

"Sir, is he off the tracks?"

"Oh my gosh. Hello?"

"Sir? Is he off the tracks?"

"I pulled him out of the car! The train hit the car! I need an ambulance!"

Medina was out of breath but unhurt; the man, who reportedly had some kind of medical condition or attack, was rushed to a hospital.

I first learned about this story after Medina was one of 16 people announced last month as the newest recipients of the Carnegie Medal, touted as, "North America’s highest honor for civilian heroism."

Established with a $5 million trust from Andrew Carnegie in 1904, a total of 10,307 people in the U.S. and Canada have been given the award over the years, for having braved “extreme danger while saving or attempting to save the lives of others."

Among the others receiving the award this time:

• Adam Layman Thomas, of Louisville, Kentucky (posthumous), who died while trying to save a drowning woman in the Ohio River.

• Anthony Stephen Capuano, of Jersey City, N.J., who had to remove his prosthetic leg before plunging into the 50-degree waters of Newark Bay to save the driver of a car that had crashed into the water.

• Darnell J. Wilson, a 32-year-old fast food clerk in Rochester, N.Y., who came to the rescue of a 53-year-old woman who was being robbed at gunpoint. The gunman shot at Wilson twice before Wilson pushed him through a plate glass window and chased him off.

• Brandon Bair, 36, of St. Anthony, Idaho, who pulled the driver of a burning semi-truck that had been hit by a train. Bair, a former NFL player, was uninjured; the driver of the truck survived. (Beware of those railroad crossings, folks!)

As for why I happened upon the Carnegie awards to begin with: A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article here about what the police did, and didn't do, during the Uvalde, Texas school shooting.

Most people had a certain reaction, a few readers asked whether it was fair to judge, because until you're actually in that situation, you don't know how you'll react.

I think that's fair. You never know how you'll do on the test until you've actually been tested.

But sometimes, without any warning at all, you get the call: The test starts now.

(Note: the full 911 recording of Lewis Medina’s rescue can be found on the Carnegie website. Scroll down here, about halfway.)

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Special thanks to Ramona Grigg for letting us run her essay about Joni Mitchell yesterday. I’m glad so many readers liked it as much as I did.

7 other things worth knowing today

• For the first time, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, revealed that its revenue dropped: 36 percent compared to a year ago. (Yahoo Finance)

• Only kidding? Russia, which announced earlier this week it would pull out of the International Space Station, now says it would like to continue in the program until whenever its own space station might be ready. (Reuters)

• Scientists report that they've successfully sequenced the DNA of a person who passed away in Pompeii, Italy, after Mount Vesuvius’ explosion in the year 79 CE. (SciTechDaily)

• American Airlines flight attendants want their airline to impose a 2-alcoholic drink maximum in economy class, which would apparently be the first such limitation on a U.S. airline. (CN Traveler)

• Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa is cutting almost its entire flight schedule in Frankfurt and Munich due to a mass walkout July 27. The air giant has already axed 678 flights at Frankfurt Airport (FRA) and 345 flights at Munich Airport (MUC), according to Reuters, affecting 92,000 flyers and 42,000 flyers, respectively. (The Points Guy)

• Goodbye to grass? More Americans are embracing ‘eco-friendly’ lawns and gardens. (PBS)

• Lowe’s is instituting a major change—a four-day workweek—as an antidote to what workers said were ever-shifting schedules that left them burnt out. (Fatherly)

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Thanks for reading. Photo credit: Pixabay. Want to see all my mistakes? Click here.