It wasn’t all bad
■ Kevin Eaise was 10 and playing in the Little League AllStar baseball game when he noticed that he was seeing double. His parents took him to the hospital, and doctors discovered he had a brain tumor that needed immediate surgery. Phillip B. Storm, his surgeon, treated him quickly and Eaise was playing ball again in a week. The kid and the doctor kept in touch, and 14 years later, Eaise is working as a clinical research assistant for the doctor who saved his life and plans on a medical career. Storm says that he brings unique skills because “he can relate to what families are going through.”
■ After 52 years, Paul McCartney has been reunited with his cherished Höfner bass guitar, stolen from a Beatles’ touring van in London in 1972. In 2018, a group of Beatles fans launched the Lost Bass Project, an endeavor to trace an instrument featured on the group’s first two albums. Tracking over 100 leads, the group discovered that the thief sold the guitar to Ronald Guest, a London pub owner, and suspected that the Guest family still retained ownership of the bass. In September, after the project was featured in a news article, a person in southern England reached out to McCartney’s company and gave back the instrument. Despite a little bit of damage, the Höfner bass remains completely playable.
■ Ashwath Kaushik last month became the youngest chess player to defeat a chess grandmaster in a classical tournament game. The prodigy—at age 8 years, 6 months, and 11 days—beat Jacek Stopa, 37, in the fourth round of Switzerland’s Burgdorfer Stadthaus Open 18, and finished 12th in the tournament. Born in India and now living in Singapore, Ashwath started playing chess when he was 4, and in 2022 became the World Under-8 Rapid champion, a meteoric rise. In the future, he would like to become a world champion. “It’s surreal, as there isn’t really any sports tradition in our families,” said Kaushik Sriram, Ashwath’s father.