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Statue of Henrietta Lacks to replace toppled Robert E. Lee monument in  Virginia

Her 'immortal' cells are estimated to have saved millions of lives.

henrietta lacks
"Henrietta Lacks" by yooperann is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

A Henrietta Lacks mural in Oak Park, Illinois.

Lee Plaza in Roanoke, Virginia, was named for Robert E. Lee, and up until 2020, it was home to a monument to the famed Confederate general. In the racial justice protests of 2020, however, the monument was toppled and then removed. And in 2021, the city council voted to split the renaming of the plaza, with part becoming Freedom Plaza and the section where Lee's monument stood becoming Henrietta Lacks Plaza.

In a move that reflects the nation's ongoing reckoning with its racial history, a statue of Lacks will soon be erected in the city of her birth, right where the Lee monument stood. At an event at the site this week, artist Bryce Cobbs unveiled a full-sized rendering of Lacks, upon which the new statue will be designed.

Henrietta Lacks was a Black American woman and mother of five who was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer in 1951. While she was being treated at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, a doctor snipped cells from her cervix without her knowledge or consent. Lacks died of the aggressive cancer at age 31, but her cells lived on … and on and on, much to the surprise of Dr. George Gey, the researcher who studied them.


Unlike other patients' cells, which had always quickly died in Gey's lab, Lacks' cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours. These "immortal" cells, nicknamed HeLa cells after Lacks' first and last name, changed modern medicine in huge ways. HeLa cells have been—and still are—used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses on cancer cells, to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to develop vaccines (including the polio and COVID-19 vaccines) and to study the human genome.

The world owes Henrietta Lacks a huge debt of gratitude for the medical breakthroughs her cells have helped humanity accomplish. However, it's also important to acknowledge the injustice that her cells were used without her consent.

In attendance at the art unveiling event were a son and grandson of Henrietta Lacks, both of whom have worked to have her story told and honored. Her grandson Ron Lacks expressed his happiness at the Roanoke event that the plaza project involved the Lacks family and that the organizers of the project had approached them first. The statue design by sculptor Larry Bechtel is set to be unveiled in October 2023.

The replacing of a Confederate monument with a statue of a Black American who contributed to the advancement of humanity feels only fitting. While we can't right historical wrongs, we can at least acknowledge them and make sure the people we choose to celebrate with monuments are deserving of the honor.

A size 21 Nike shoe made for Tacko Fall.

A local reporter at Hometown Life shared a unique and heartfelt story on March 16 about a mother struggling to find shoes that fit her 14-year-old son. The story resonated with parents everywhere; now, her son is getting the help he desperately needs. It's a wonderful example of people helping a family that thought they had nowhere to turn.

When Eric Kilburn Jr. was born, his mother, Rebecca’s OBGYN, told her that he had the “biggest feet I’ve ever seen in my life. Do not go out and buy baby shoes because they’re not gonna fit,’” Rebecca told Today.com. Fourteen years later, it’s almost impossible to find shoes that fit the 6’10” freshman—he needs a size 23.

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Dog does the 'pick a card' challenge and it's adorable.

There are a few kinds of dog parents: ones that only have outside dogs, those who have inside dogs but they're absolutely not allowed on the furniture and dog parents who treat their dog as if they birthed them themselves and give them every luxury invented for four-legged fur children.

Clearly, people are going to have feelings one way or the other about dogs and their place within a household, but I think everyone can agree that seeing a dog be pampered will always be adorable. Opie the Pit Bully is one of those lucky doggos who wound up living in the lap of luxury, and the pooch got to do a "pick a card" day to showcase that his owner loves him the mostest.

In a video uploaded to TikTok by Opie's owner because...ya know, opposable thumbs and all…Opie is faced with two cards that he can't read: 1) because he's a dog, and 2) because the cards are facing toward the camera. That doesn't stop the sweet puppers from playing along, though.

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Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

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Photo by David Cadenas on Unsplash

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The zoo announced on its blog that their oldest resident, Mr. Pickles, a 90-year-old radiated tortoise, and his 53-year-old companion Mrs. Pickles (that’s quite an age gap there sir, but no judgment) recently welcomed three new hatchlings.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better, here are the new baby names: Dill, Gherkin and Jalapeño.

Clearly, Jalepeño is the spicy one of the bunch.

While this news is certainly momentous for Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, it’s also a huge achievement for the entire species, which is currently critically endangered.
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Grace Linn, 100, speaks at a Martin County School Board meeting on March 21, 2023.

Four hundred years ago, copies of William Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible were publicly burned by the bishop of London, with church authorities insisting that the Bible should only be read in Latin (and only by the clergy). In the centuries since, many books we now consider classics such as Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," Jack London's "Call of the Wild," Walt Whitman’s "Leaves of Grass," Victor Hugo’s "Les Misérables, Charles Darwin’s "Origin of Species"—even Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and "Benjamin Bunny"—have been banned or censored in one way or another in various countries.

Battles over books are nothing new, but once in a while, they become particularly ugly or absurd, prompting people to speak out against book bans.

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The Tonight Show/ Youtube

Jennifer Aniston appearing on "The Tonight show"

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That’s what makes a clip of Jennifer Aniston gushing about her decades-long friendship with Adam Sandler so cool to watch. There’s no Harry-Met-Sally-ing here, just one pal talking about another pal.

Aniston sat down with Jimmy Fallon to promote the film “Murder Mystery 2,” starring both Aniston and Sandler, but the conversation quickly veered into several anecdotes about “The Sand Man,” including how the two first met at a deli in their 20s.

As with any healthy friendship, there’s plenty of ragging on each other.

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