A woman accidentally flushed her ring down the toilet. How she got it back 13 years later.
The ring was an anniversary present for 33 years of marriage.
![lost ring; reunited with ring; metropolitan council; 13 years](https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8zMzc0NjU2Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTc0MjMyNjc3MX0.28UEhtNtqWqVPZ1oYphfvCa2tHpJ-koa0PQGUiDWS0g/img.jpg?width=1200&height=800&quality=85&coordinates=100%2C0%2C100%2C0)
Woman reunited with ring she lost 13 years ago
Losing a ring is not an uncommon occurrence. People lose rings all the time, but there's a particular fear that comes with losing the precious item down the drain, mostly because you're likely to never see it again. Especially if it gets flushed down a toilet, which is why one woman had written off the anniversary ring she lost down the commode more than a decade ago.
Mary Strand received a beautiful, unique diamond ring for her 33rd wedding anniversary from her husband, Dave, according to NBC affiliate KARE 11. The ring slipped off of her finger 13 years ago when she was in her bathroom, and by the time she realized what had happened, it was too late.
“It was swirling around. I truly dove for it, and it went down the drain,” she told KARE 11.
Surely, the woman was frantic trying to rescue the ring before it took up residence with the fish, but Strand had no luck grabbing the ring before it swirled out of sight.
Hope was not immediately lost though. In a wacky coincidence, Strand's husband owns a drain and sewer company. The woman knew she had someone at her disposal who knew a thing or two about drains and would have the ring out in a jiffy. Dave did everything he could, according to KARE 11, including removing the entire toilet and searching the sewer line with a camera, but the couple had no luck recovering the ring.
"I was thinking, 'He'll never buy me another ring,' that's what I was thinking," Mary laughed while telling the outlet. "I felt really bad, because it was a gift."
\u201cRecently, we found a ring at one of our regional wastewater treatment plants. This is a rare occurrence, and we want to return the ring to its owner! Please contact us if you lost a wedding ring down the drain: MCES-Inquiries@metc.state.mn.us or 651-602-1269.\u201d— Metropolitan Council (@Metropolitan Council) 1680294910
Years went by with Mary assuming the ring had been lost forever until the Metropolitan Council posted on social media that a diamond ring was found at one of their waste treatment plants. Turns out, while workers were cleaning out the gunk from a machine, they spotted something sparkly that happened to be a diamond ring. The story about the found ring began circulating, which caused hundreds of people to inquire about it, but the Metropolitan Council wasn't letting the ring go without proof.
They compared the ring to photos that were submitted, but it was Strand's ring that looked like a match. According to KARE 11, two separate jewelers examined the ring and confirmed its likelihood to be a match for the photo of Mary's ring before it was eventually returned.
What a wild ride of coincidence that reunited a long-lost ring with its rightful owner. Hopefully, the ring has been properly sized—and sanitized—and there will be no more mishaps around drains that lead to another incredible tale of happenstance. Maybe, for their next anniversary, Dave will buy something that's easily tethered so it doesn't meet the same fate as the ring.
You can watch Mary be reunited with her ring at the Metropolitan Council below.
Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
A recent video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their jobs.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is.
They did a study of over 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006. They counted how many comments that violated their comment policy were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared on 04.27.16