Greg Valent

Tennis players live 9.7 years longer than sedentary people. Not 9.7 months. 9.7 years. Nearly a decade. The Copenhagen City Heart Study tracked 8,577 people for 25 years and ranked every sport by how much life it adds. Badminton: 6.2 years. Soccer: 4.7. Cycling: 3.7. Swimming: 3.4. Jogging: 3.2. Tennis almost triples jogging. A separate study of 80,000 adults found racket sports cut all-cause mortality by 47% and cardiovascular death by 56%. Swimming hit 41%. Aerobics hit 36%. The question is why racket sports destroy everything else. Three mechanisms stack on top of each other. First, the physical demands. A tennis rally requires explosive sprints, lateral cuts, and sustained aerobic output. You're training fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers simultaneously. Most cardio only trains one system. Second, the cognitive load. You're reading spin, predicting angles, adjusting position, and executing motor patterns in real-time. Your brain is solving spatial puzzles at 80+ mph. That hand-eye coordination and strategic processing builds neural connections that protect against cognitive decline. Third, and this is the one researchers keep coming back to: you literally cannot play alone. Every racket sport requires another person on the other side of the net. That forced social interaction triggers neurochemical benefits that solitary exercise cannot replicate. Strong social connection alone increases your chance of longevity by 50%. Jogging is you and your thoughts. Tennis is you, a strategic opponent, and a community. Dr. Daniel Amen is right. The data is overwhelming. If you want the single highest-ROI activity for a longer life, pick up a racket.

In Brazil there is a tradition to give the first slice of your birthday cake to the person you love the most.This little boy gave his to his brother. Watch the reaction

I watched this video 5x in a row. Each time it started the more in depth I was in thought. We need a lot more of this in our world. A lot more!!!!

Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal (completed in 1865)

@TaborJohn1 @SpeakerWelchIL @Baseball_Naz Remember Michael Jordan was a Wizards Legend! 😂 @REFLOG18

@SpeakerWelchIL @Baseball_Naz 'White Sox legend' Man, you are one dumb piece of shit! LOL

With two months to go before 8th grade graduation, I’m proud to report that Tyler is taking his talents to Nazareth Academy for high school. He is so excited to be a part of the Roadrunner family. Special thanks to baseball Coach Lee Milano and White Sox legend Jim Thome for making him feel welcome! Congratulations son. #ProudDad

@SpeakerWelchIL @Baseball_Naz White Sox legend??? It’s like saying Joe Montana is a Chiefs legend!

🚨 Florence, Italy 🇮🇹 The incredible centuries-old Easter Sunday tradition of the “Explosion of the Cart” A ritual of fire, archbishops, crusades, doves, resurrection, and a good omen! ✨🕊️

@iAnonPatriot Cowboy biathlon

The European mind cannot comprehend this.

In 1835, port of New Orleans, Irish families step off the gangway into swampland heat, carrying everything they own. Among them, a small girl named Margaret Gaffney clutches her father's hand. She is five years old. She does not yet know that within the year, both her parents will be dead. Yellow fever moves through the immigrant quarters like wildfire through dry grass. Margaret's mother dies first. Her father follows days later. At six years old, she becomes a ward of Welsh neighbors who need extra hands more than they need another mouth to feed. There is no school. No tenderness. Just work. By nine, she is scrubbing laundry. By eleven, she is entirely on her own. At twenty-one, she marries Charles Haughery. They have a daughter. For the first time since childhood, Margaret feels safe. Then yellow fever comes again. Her husband dies. Her baby dies. She is twenty-two, widowed, childless, illiterate, and alone in a city that considers Irish Catholics less than human. Most people would have broken. Margaret borrowed forty dollars, bought two cows, and started selling milk. She walked the French Quarter before sunrise, knocking on doors, undercutting prices, outworking everyone. People mocked her. A poor Irish widow with a milk cart was not supposed to become anything. Within a year, she paid back the loan. Within five, she owned the largest dairy in the city. Then she met the nuns at the orphanage. They were trying to feed children no one else wanted. Margaret saw herself in every face. She gave them all her milk, every day, and refused payment. She told them she remembered what hunger felt like. She remembered being six and abandoned. In 1858, she sold the dairy and bought a bakery she had no idea how to run. She could not read recipes. She learned by feel, by repetition, by refusing to fail. Within a year, her bread was everywhere. She standardized loaves, mechanized production, and fed a city that once looked through her like she was invisible. When yellow fever returned, she nursed the dying. During the Civil War, she fed Union soldiers and Confederate families without asking which side they supported. She became one of the wealthiest women in America and gave away over six hundred thousand dollars. She never learned to write her name. She signed every document with an X. When Margaret Haughery died in 1882, New Orleans erected the first statue ever dedicated to a woman in the city. At the base, they carved an X. The mark of someone who could not write, but who rewrote what mercy looked like. Margaret lived so simply that many people did not realize she was wealthy. She wore plain dresses, lived in modest rooms, and walked to work every day. Visitors to her bakery often mistook her for a cleaning woman. She preferred it that way. She believed attention should go to the work, not the person doing it. The statue erected in her honor still stands in Margaret Place in New Orleans. It depicts her sitting with a child on her lap and another at her side. The inscription reads simply, "Margaret." For decades, locals called her "the Bread Woman of New Orleans." Children she helped grew up, had children of their own, and told them about the woman who made sure no one went hungry. Margaret's bakery became so successful that during the Civil War, Union officers tried to seize it for military use. She reportedly walked into the commanding officer's tent and told him that if he took her bakery, the orphans would starve. He let her keep it. Another detail: she was known to test her bread by touch alone, never needing to read temperatures or measurements. Workers said she could tell if dough was ready just by pressing it with her thumb. 📷 : Portrait of Margaret Haughery, 1842, by Jacques Amans. © Daughters of Time #archaeohistories

Thousands of residents in Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania reported hearing a loud boom, which NASA confirmed was caused by a meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere. Dashcam footage shows a bright fireball streaking across the sky during the morning commute.

@nypost 1 mile from my house

@VADistillery I prefer the Kentucky Godfather-bourbon & amaretto

What American / Italian cocktail combo we drinking for the world baseball classic? Courage & Comviction Sherry Cask Single Malt + Italian Amaro (50/50) over ice 🇺🇸🇮🇹🥃

International Women’s Day, I hear you say? The greatest woman who ever lived:

@DudespostingWs My ankles broke just watching this

@coachkomlanc @ztasker Pomp clearly and concisely, in a most diplomatic fashion, communicated his displeasure with the call

@ztasker Pomp is at the bar with them. They said I flailed my arms and didn’t like that . Congrats 5 point swing.

It’s been 3 years since I got a technical and I got 1 today for jumping.

@RuiterWrongFAN @edgallekfox8 @PeggyGallek @fox8news He wasn’t in his car. He’s that fast.

As @edgallekfox8 and @PeggyGallek reported on @fox8news #Browns DE Myles Garrett was pulled over in Wayne County on Feb. 21 at 1:35 by the sheriff’s department after being clocked doing 94 in a 70 on I-71 north. Garrett was cited for speeding.

@coachkomlanc In baseball, there’s a reason you warm up with a weight on the bat.

The only games that matter are the tournament. Regular season should prepare you but not define you.

@d_tao There once was a whiskey from Nantucket

What if I told you the best American single malt comes from a tiny distillery on Nantucket?

@obky_bourbonite @CircleCityWhisk If the Penelope Old Fashioned bottle count, then YES

Bourbon/based RTDs. Are you a fan?

@ohiowhiskey All spots sold out on 3/3

🚨 BUFFALO TRACE BTAC EVENT ! 🥃 BOTTLED IN BOND DAY 🗓️ MARCH 3 Details below ⬇️