Head of neurobiologist jill bolte taylor. And i realized, oh, my gosh, im having a stroke im having a stroke rose taylors talk went viral. We need mathematicians. Rose . And soon, Internet Users couldnt get enough of ted talks. Every child. Rose a million views turned into a billion, and now it is an internet phenomenon. Ive been to the future. Want to join me . cheers and applause and now for your Holland CollegeGolden Knights stahl every once in a while, we come across someone with an amazing ability, a power so unusual, so unexpected and so fascinating, it becomes a story. Thats why were telling you tonight about a man named bob petrella who has used his extraordinary memory to create a fantasy world. At forward, a 69 sophomore from little rock, arkansas. This is really unusual. I have never heard of anything like this before, never. Im steve kroft. Im lesley stahl. Im bill whitaker. Im lara logan. Im charlie rose. Im scott pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 minutes. Cbs must be watch update brought to you in part by glor good evening. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and a group of Business Leaders will be in cuba tomorrow for trade talks. Shanghai gm says it will spend 16 billion over five years to build new energy vehicles. And a deck chair from the titanic was auctioned off for 150,000. Im jeff glor, cbs news. For the first time in forever. Therell be music. Therell be light. For the first time in forever. Ill be dancing through the night. Everyones excited because frozen fun is now at disney california adventure park. cause for the first time. In forever. I wont be alone. When youre not confident your companys data is secure the possibility of a breach can quickly become the only thing you think about. Thats where at t can help. We monitor Network Traffic worldwide, so we can see things others cant. Mitigating risks across your business. Leaving you free to focus on what matters most. Pelley if you have Young Children watching right now, usually thats a good thing, but this story is not for them. The pictures you are about to see are agonizing. This will be hard to watch, but it should be seen. Generally, mankind does not outlaw weapons. Anything a military can think of is in the arsenals of the world. But there are a few exceptions and one of them is for a weapon so hideous that virtually every country has banned not only its use, but the mere possession of it. The weapon is sarin. Its nerve gas, and in 2013, it was unleashed on syrian civilians in what the u. N. s secretary general calls, a crime against humanity. A year and a half later, no one has been held responsible. For several months, we have been gathering evidence. Much of what you are about to see has not been public before. None of what we found will be omitted here. About 2 00 in the morning, august 21, 2013, hundreds in the suburbs of damascus were awakened by the panic of their last breath stuck in their throats. Neighbors carried neighbors to makeshift clinics. Victims were stripped and washed. Everything was tried, but nothing could be done. There was no forcing life into lungs that could not accept it. Their nerves, electrified by sarin, fired nonstop. Muscles seized until death released them. Kassem eid nobody knew what was going on. People were just praying for god to have mercy on them. Sir, ive seen things you wont even dream about in your worst nightmares. Im on a tour inside the streets of moadamiyah. Pelley kassem eid has recorded his nightmares in moadamiyah. Four years ago, the suburb rebelled against the dictatorship of bashar alassad. Eid has shown the world the shelling and years of hunger imposed by an army blockade. Eid that was a close one. Pelley he was there in august when strange rockets pummeled the night. Eid and when they crashed, they didnt make the same, Old Fashioned bombing sound. But it was, in a way, silent. Pelley the rockets hit the ground, but it didnt sound to you like they were exploding. Eid yes. They were. Didnt sound like it was. They were exploding. With the closest rocket hit almost 100 meters away from the place that i was staying in. Pelley 300 feet or so. Eid yes. And within seconds. It just took seconds before i lost my ability to breathe. I felt like my chest was set on fire. My eyes were burning like hell. I wasnt able even to scream or to do anything, so i started to beat my chest really hard. Pelley beat your chest . Eid yes. Trying to take. A breath. Just to be able to take a single breath. It was so painful. It felt like somebody was tearing up my chest with a knife made of fire. Pelley over the years, artillery had sheared the tops off of the neighborhoods, so women and children slept in basements. Sarin is heavier than air. It slipped past doors and crept down stairwells. Death was arbitrary it seemed that, for every corpse, there was a witness who just missed a lethal dose. A neighbor appeared at kassem eids door. Eid and she had two of her kids, suffocating and vomiting this weird white stuff out of their mouths. She was begging us to help her to get her children to the Field Hospital. This Field Hospital is just a basement in a building with almost zero medical equipments. Pelley its not a real hospital. Eid its not a real hospital. It felt like judgment day for me. Pelley sarin has no color, no odor. Often, the dead drop never knowing what happened. But their eyes bear witness. The seizures draw the pupils tight, and the world goes dark which might be a blessing. This father had willed his daughters through months of hunger. Now, hes shouting, do you know what they said before going to sleep . I gave her food. She said, dad, its not my turn to eat, its my sisters. he goes on, what should we do good people . What are we to do . Look at that face, look at that face. You were being exterminated. Eid i know. I cannot imagine how anybody can do this to people, to other people. Dying this way is one of the most ugliest ways of death people ever knew through history. Pelley the history of sarin begins in the 1930s. It was a nazi weapons program. The name is an acronym of the scientists last names. In 1997, sarin and other chemical weapons were outlawed and the world set up the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. Scott cairns is a chemist and lead inspector for that organization. A person who is exposed to sarin, what do they experience . Scott cairns a number of physical symptoms and some psychological effects. You get this overwhelming sense of doom and hopelessness and fear. Pelley and what causes death . Cairns typically, its the paralysis of the respiratory system, eventually. Your muscles dont work, you lose the oxygen to your brain. It just puts you into overload. Its a very horrible way to die. Pelley as fate would have it, scott cairns would see evidence of that for himself. He was in damascus with a team the day of the assault. Theyd arrived days before to investigate other alleged chemical attacks. Cairns id just gotten up, and what i thought id heard was another regular bombardment of conventional weapons to the east of damascus. Pelley he had heard the rockets en route to the largest sarin massacre of civilians since Saddam Hussein in iraq in 1988. Cairns demanded access. They raced in in u. N. Trucks and the shooting started. What happened . Cairns the gunman was firing on the first two vehicles. Pelley so, the vehicles were hit . Cairns oh, the vehicles were hit. The first vehicle was disabled. Pelley did you find out who was shooting at you . Cairns no. Pelley why do you think they were shooting at you . Cairns they were shooting at us just to tell us, send us a message. If they wanted to kill us, they wouldve killed us. At no point was there any interest in the turning around and going back to the hotel. Pelley finding and documenting the truth was worth risking your life for. Cairns yes. Pelley howd you go about your work . Cairns very quickly. We didnt have a lot of time. We had places where we could set up our interview stations. We could take samples, biomedical samples from people blood, urine, hair. We had places where we could take medical sample, blood urine, hair. Pelley they also collected swab samples from mangled rockets. Days later they discovered the rockets were much larger and had delivered even more gas. Never before had investigators arrived at a chemical crime scene so soon. Cairns well over 90 of the samples that we took tested positive for sarin. Pelley what witness sticks in your mind as the person you cannot forget . Cairns there are several. A child of seven or eight who lost most of his family. A woman of. In her early 30s who lost her entire family, her husband and all her kids. A man that, out of his 20 family members, he was the only one left alive. So interviewing these people was very difficult. Pelley our work to find witnesses took us out into the desert. The refugees we found were on the run from the regime of bashar alassad. Millions of syrians have fled the country into desolate refugee camps like this one, and over a period of weeks, we have been able to find more survivors of the nerve gas attack. These people asked us to not show you their faces or tell you their names because they have family back in syria, and they are quite certain the dictatorship would hunt them down. Even at that, they told us some risks have to be taken to tell this story. This man told us, assad gassed people. He killed people. Hes killing women. What he did could not be done by any other human being. He killed everything, even the trees. He and his son, who is a nurse told us that they were among those who had given first aid. How many patients did you treat that day . He told us, people were being brought in on ambulances motorcycles, pickup trucks, a tractor, and a semi. There were people rushing in with their kids, crying out, help him, help him. Hes about to die. i didnt have a chance to count. This woman was three months pregnant with her son when the gas entered her lungs. She came to in an aid station. Her brother was carried in next. He was calling my name before he died, she said. take care of your mother, he told me. How did you survive . I lived by gods will. But i wished i had died. Her son was born six months later. She believes he has epilepsy. He loses consciousness, he starts shaking, his mouth foams. The same symptoms i had. How often does he have these seizures . She told us, approximately three a day. The rockets were types used by the syrian army, and they were launched from land held by the dictatorship. U. S. Intelligence believes the syrian army used sarin in frustration after years of shelling and hunger failed to break the rebels. With the threat of air strikes president obama forced assad to give up his chemical arsenal. But if assad was the trigger man, there is one thing odd about the timing. Why would anyone launch the largest chemical weapons attack in decades while chemical weapons inspectors are in town . Cairns i ask myself that a lot. I dont know. Pelley we dont know why. Cairns no. I dont think well ever truly know. Pelley we also dont know, precisely, how many died, but have a look around the makeshift morgues. So many were lost, all at once that the living had to make room for the dead. U. S. Intelligence estimates 1,429 civilians were killed; 426 of them children. Of course, syria is dying, too. Prosecution of this atrocity will have to wait for whatever civilization emerges from the ruin. But the dead will be waiting because a crime buried without justice is never laid to rest. For a look at 60 minutes decision to broadcast some of the most disturbing footage in its history, go to 60minutesovertime. Com. Sponsored by lyrica. I was a doer. Then the chronic, widespread pain slowed me down. My doctor and i agreed that moving more helps ease fibromyalgia pain. He also prescribed lyrica. For some patients, lyrica significantly relieves fibromyalgia pain and improves physical function. With less pain, i feel better. Lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. Tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression or unusual changes in mood or behavior. Or swelling, trouble breathing rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling or blurry vision. 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Until i started gellin. I got dr. Scholls massaging gel insoles. When theyre in my shoes, my feet and legs feel less tired. Its like walking on a wave. Dr. Scholls massaging gel insoles. Im a believer when eating healthy and Drinking Water just isnt enough to ease my constipation i trust dulcolax tablets. I take dulcolax for dependable overnight relief and in the morning i am back to myself dulcolax, designed for dependable relief rose it has become a place where big ideas find a global audience. It is known simply as ted, and ted talks are little presentations that anyone can watch online for free. There are ted talks on almost every subject you can imagine building your own nuclear reactor; stopping cyberbullies; exploring antarctica; a better way to tie your shoes. But what sets ted talks apart is that the big ideas are wrapped up in personal stories, and theyre mostly from people you have never heard of before. And it is those stories that have captured the imaginations of tens of millions of viewers around the world. Giving a ted talk can be life changing, even if some speakers dont always realize what theyre getting into. Bryan stevenson id never heard of ted and i didnt know what a ted talk was. Rose but Bryan Stevenson was exactly the sort of person the people at ted wanted. He was an attorney whod spent years trying to reform the criminal Justice System. They thought hed have a lot to say. He said yes, then he remembered a serious conflict on his calendar. Stevenson it was scheduled two weeks before i had an argument at the u. S. Supreme court. And i told one of my young staffers somebody named ted wanted me to come and do a ted talk and i told them no. And my staffer went crazy, said, what are you talking about . You have to do a ted talk. Rose and what did they say though, to convince you . Stevenson this is really a big deal. Its an incredible platform. You should absolutely do it. Everybody watches ted talks. Being here at ted and seeing the stimulation. Rose in march of 2012, Bryan Stevenson took the stage at the annual ted conference in long beach, california. He was one of more than 60 speakers that week. Stevenson we have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if youre rich and guilty than if youre poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. Rose he made the case for changing the criminal Justice System with the same mixture of passion and logic that he uses to persuade judges and juries. He introduced his equal Justice Initiative in a disarmingly personal way. Stevenson i had the great privilege when i was a young lawyer of meeting rosa parks and ms. Parks turned to me and she said, now, bryan, tell me what the equal Justice Initiative is. Tell me what youre trying to do. And i began giving her my rap. I said, well, were trying to challenge injustice. Were trying to help people who have been wrongly convicted. Were trying to confront bias and discrimination in the administration of criminal justice. Were trying to end life without parole sentences for children. Were trying to do something about the death penalty. Were trying to reduce the prison population. Were trying to end mass incarceration. I gave her my whole rap, and when i finished, she looked at me and she said, mm, mm, mm. She said, thats going to make you tired, tired, tired. laughter rose and with that, he had them. Stevenson ive simply come to tell you, keep your eyes on the prize, hold on. Thank you very much. cheers and applause rose when you ended it, did you think youd done a good job . Stevenson people were very enthusiastic and responded in a really wonderful way. Rose thats what we call a standing ovation. Stevenson yes, yes. cheers and applause rose the crowd also offered financial support, which was unprecedented, since ted talks are not about raising money. Stevenson some people came up to me and they said, you know, we think that what youre doing is really quite extraordinary. There are a lot of people in this room who want to support you. And i had to leave. Rose you had another engagement in seattle . Stevenson i did. And so, i said, well, i cant stay. And much to my amazement, we raised a Million Dollars. Rose a Million Dollars . Stevenson a Million Dollars. Rose and this is happening without you there. Stevenson without me there yeah, exactly. Rose and what difference did raising a Million Dollars at an event that you knew nothing about make for the cause that youve devoted your life to . Stevenson hundreds and hundreds of people were now going to have a chance to get fairer sentences. Rose and it didnt end at the speech, because you have this thing called the internet . Stevenson yes, thats exactly right. Even now, i get lots and lots of people who are responding to the ted talk. Youre an inspiring person. Rose the person who put Bryan Stevenson on the stage was Chris Anderson, the man who runs ted. He chooses the speakers, he hosts Ted Conferences, and he decides which talks go online. Chris anderson there are numerous brilliant people out there, and theyve come up with something really important. And so part of the way we see our. Our role is to help them make their knowledge accessible. Rose its a campfi