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upworthy

He spent 5 hours shooting the supermoon eclipse. When he finally posted, the Internet went wild.

Stunning composite photograph of supermoon eclipse garners massive social sharing.

Dallas-based photographer Mike Mezeul II has captured a lot of phenomenal images in the sky in his career.

He's photographed the stars...


All images by Mike Mezeul II, used with permission.

...and some more stars. (He's trying to collect them all.)


He's spotted tornadoes...

...and supercell thunderstorms.

He's even captured the fabled double rainbow!

So naturally, his gear was at the ready for the recent lunar double-whammy — the 33-year return of the supermoon total lunar eclipse.

In an interview with Upworthy, Mezeul (who's also a friend of mine) explained that he was actually a little anxious as he tracked the night sky for those five hours:

"I was honestly very hesitant that the image would even happen. I was really worried that the clouds would obscure the moon right when I needed to shoot it. I was also really worried that people would be over the lunar eclipse shots and that I was wasting my time trying to share this moment."

Time wasted? No way, said the Internet.

Mezeul's photograph took just a little longer to share because he was creating a composite image that shows all of the eclipse phases at once.

Within hours of posting it to Facebook, hundreds of thousands of people had liked the photo, and at the time I'm writing this, it's been shared well over half a million times.

Take a look and you'll see why:

"This is my third lunar eclipse to shoot and it was by far my favorite. It was an earlier transition and I was able to incorporate a beautiful city skyline into the shot. Also, being able to shoot from the roof of a hotel and chow down on room service was a bonus." — Mike Mezeul II

Mezeul's photo was worth the wait. But what's perhaps more phenomenal than the sight itself is seeing so many people from across world excited about it.

As Upworthy's Lori White wrote, "We're all hemisphere neighbors, billions of us, standing underneath the same skyroof, seeing our nearest celestial neighbor change color."

Think about that any time you're at a loss of hope for humanity. Humans too often struggle to agree on matters of this world. But events like the supermoon eclipse remind us that we are capable of finding common ground.


Time travel back to 1905.

Back in 1905, a book called "The Apples of New York" was published by the New York State Department of Agriculture. It featured hundreds of apple varieties of all shapes, colors, and sizes, including Thomas Jefferson's personal favorite, the Esopus Spitzenburg.






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Family

Exhausted mom posted a letter begging her husband for help. And then it went viral.

An open letter by Celeste Yvonne shows overwhelmed mothers how to ask for support.

Photo via Celeste Yvonne, used with permission.

Celeste Yvonne wrote a letter to her husband asking for help.

Taking care of a newborn baby is mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausting. For the first four months (at least!), new parents have to dedicate every part of themselves to caring for this young life.

There's little time for self-care during this chaotic period, let alone a moment to be fully present with a partner.

A blogger who goes by the name Celeste Yvonne is the mother of a toddler and a newborn and wrote a revealing open letter to her husband asking for more help with their children. It's going viral because it paints a very real picture of what it feels like to be a mother who feels stuck doing everything.

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Here’s a paycheck for a McDonald’s worker. And here's my jaw dropping to the floor.

So we've all heard the numbers, but what does that mean in reality? Here's one year's wages — yes, *full-time* wages. Woo.

Making a little over 10,000 for a yearly salary.


I've written tons of things about minimum wage, backed up by fact-checkers and economists and scholarly studies. All of them point to raising the minimum wage as a solution to lifting people out of poverty and getting folks off of public assistance. It's slowly happening, and there's much more to be done.

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These before-and-afters will make you question everything about how our economy works

You'd think it was some sort of natural disaster. Nope. Totally man-made.




Images via GooBingDetroit.

Yup. These images were taken only two years apart. And what you're seeing was not an accident.

When the economy crashed in 2008, it was because of shady financial practices like predatory lending and speculative investing, which is basically gambling, only the entire economy was at stake.

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Instacart delivery person followed her instincts and ended up saving the life of a customer

"You're supposed to take a picture and leave, and I could not just leave."

Jessica Higgs had a sense that something wasn't right at a customer's house and her action saved his life.

One the more mysterious aspects of being human is our sense of intuition. This "sixth sense" isn't something we can see or measure, but many people have experienced it in some form or fashion. Maybe it comes as a strong feeling that something isn't right, or that we or someone else should or shouldn't do something. It can be hard to read—not every feeling we get is truly our intuition—but there are plenty of examples of people trusting their instincts and being glad they did.

One such story has gone viral on TikTok. Jessica Higgs, a mom who works as an Instacart grocery delivery person, shared a story in an emotional video that illustrates the importance of listening to that inner voice when it prompts you to make sure someone is OK.

"I just want to start this off by saying if you see something, say something," Higgs said.

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Some friends enjoying a polite conversation at a party.



Many people don’t like small talk because it forces them to have conversations about trivial topics such as the weather, what they saw on TV the night before, or their weekend plans. Other people don’t like it because it causes them anxiety to talk with someone they may not know well.

Either way, research shows that small talk actually is a big deal. Julia Korn at Forbes says that small talk enables us to find common ground and shared interests, build muscles to overcome social discomfort, and lays the groundwork for transitioning into more serious, deeper topics.

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