11-Year-Old Makes Chess History

Bodhana Sivanandan learned to play chess during the COVID-19 pandemic when she was 5 years old. Six years later, the London schoolgirl has become the youngest woman grandmaster in chess history, securing the final qualifying performance she needed while playing in England’s top position at the 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

Bodhana broke the record at age 11; the previous record was 12. She played all 11 rounds at the Olympiad and scored eight points. Earlier this year, she defeated grandmaster Marc’Andria Maurizzi, becoming the youngest girl known to defeat a player rated above 2,600.

The records have been piling up. Bodhana is already Britain’s youngest women’s chess champion and the youngest person to represent England internationally in any sport. In August 2025, she became the youngest female player to defeat a grandmaster, beating 60-year-old Pete Wells at 10 years, 5 months, and 3 days old.

“I’m happy to do it, but I want to keep going and keep making history as well,” Bodhana told the International Chess Federation, “instead of just stopping here.”

A Little Girl and Her Firehouse Family

Lila Pagan is 6 years old, full of energy, and has a crew of Seminole County, Florida firefighters wrapped around her finger. They call her “baby girl,” show up for her birthdays and Christmases, and have watched her grow from a critically injured toddler into a kid who loves running around.

Three years ago, the Station 22 crew responded to a harrowing call: Lila, then 3, had been accidentally run over by a truck. She was intubated and placed in a coma. Before the ambulance left, Lt. Marcus Gombs stopped to pray with her terrified mother, Pamela. But Lila pulled through, and the firefighters kept showing up.

The bond goes both ways. When firefighter Cross Ferrentino passed his paramedic test, Pamela was one of the first to congratulate him. “That impacted me,” he said. He’s already made one promise for the future: “I will be there at the wedding when she gets married in about 30 years, and I got to make sure I approve of the guy too.”

Baltimore’s Book Trolley Brings Reading to Kids

It started on a stoop. Ms. Maze, a Baltimore librarian, was reading to her nieces on her front steps when neighborhood kids gathered around and didn’t want story time to end.

That moment led her to continue reading to neighborhood kids, eventually become a librarian, and later take to the streets as a self-described “radical street librarian,” handing out free books from her trunk in one of the city’s worst book deserts.

Now she has a trolley. The green and gold vehicle rolls through Baltimore’s neighborhoods like an ice cream truck for readers, ringing a bell as it travels the streets and making stops at parks, football practices, and back-to-school events. Anywhere from 50 to 130 readers can board in a single day to pick out books. The experience is designed to feel magical because Ms. Maze says communities can sometimes associate books with being boring or educational.

“I wanted every child to feel the joy of reading and the thrill of discovering how books help you explore new worlds,” she said.

The following stories are featured exclusively on The Feel Good Flyover Podcast. Clicking the link will take you directly there:

➤ Eight unforgettable ways to spend fall’s fleeting weekends, and not one involves a pumpkin patch. (See List)

➤ Buried for more than 3,000 years, a fragment of an ancient peace treaty has surfaced at a royal palace dig. (Hear Story)

➤ Two extra zeros on a mobile order left an Ohio donut shop staring down a 6,000-donut ticket. (Hear Details)

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➤ One pilot spent more than five hours flying a Cessna over northwest Arkansas until his flight path formed a 28-mile-tall fingerprint with the message “you are loved.” He shared the drawing during National Suicide Prevention Month along with the crisis lifeline number. (See Photo)

➤ After rescue teams couldn’t reach a 75-year-old hang glider pilot who crashed into a tree in Canada, one 24-year-old climber scaled the mountain without gear, cut the pilot from his harness, and kept him stable for three hours until a helicopter arrived. (Full Story)

➤ One 12-year-old in Phoenix collected nearly 30,000 diapers in her fifth annual drive for a local nonprofit, blowing past her goal. She launched the effort at 8 years old after noticing the charity’s diaper shelves sitting empty. (More)

➤ Through a program called Pups in the Pen, inmates at Georgia’s Augusta State Medical Prison are fostering and training rescue dogs that shelters couldn’t place, an effort that has led to more than 120 adoptions. (See Photos)

➤ North America’s largest wildlife overpass has cut animal-vehicle collisions by 91% along Colorado’s I-25 since opening in December. Elk herds, bears, and deer are already using the bridge, and pronghorn have crossed to the west side of the highway for the first time in decades. (Watch Video)

➤ Captain “Sully” Sullenberger was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame last week, 17 years after safely landing US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River and saving all 155 people aboard. (See Details)

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A baby’s infectious laughter and a golden retriever prove the best moments in life are often the simplest.

video via @rudder.the.golden – Instagram

Did you hear about the tree that didn’t know it was October already?

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“This is why we do what we do, it’s why we train… to have a story with a positive outcome like this. It means the most to us.”

— Lt. Marcus Gomes of Seminole County Fire Station 22 on helping save Lila Pagan’s life