Midweek collection of positive news.
Good news for Londoners: A £31m plan to transform the Thames at night with ever-changing lighting of 14 of its bridges will bring out the beauty of these quirky landmarks. The paradoxical invisibility of light in architectural discourse has allowed this project to become reality with comparatively little fuss. Four schemes, from London Bridge to the Millennium Bridge, were switched on in 2019. Five more, from Blackfriars to Lambeth, will light up later this month. A further five, upstream from Lambeth, will follow.
In a world’s first, a commercial hydrogen-powered cargo vessel will make its maiden voyage later this year when it's deployed on the river Seine in Paris, paving the way for more local zero-emission transport to be developed in the near future. Designed to only operate on inland water routes, the vessel will be tasked with moving goods on pallets and containers along Paris’s iconic waterway.
Carbon Cure: The concrete industry has discovered a way to lead the transition to the new low-carbon economy. That's really important! If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world.
With only about 27,000 rhinos remaining in the wild, it's good to learn that the number of rhinos killed by poachers in South Africa, which has the world’s biggest population of the animal, fell 33 percent last year. That’s the sixth straight year of decline, says South Africa’s Department of Environment. Meanwhile, 6,000 miles away in Nepal, there's more good news: Nepal’s population of endangered rhinoceros has shown a promising 16 percent increase over the past six years and now stands at 752.
Mission 'near impossible': NASA is about to test “the laws of physics” by attempting the “near impossible” feat of launching the first ever controlled flight on another planet - in Mars' perilously thin atmosphere.
Launched in July 2020, U.K. nonprofit Buglife has announced it had completed the first phase of its B-Line project, aiming to create connected wildflower habitats - pollinator pathways - around the country. England has lost more than 97 percent of its grasslands in less than a century, the group says. So far, Buglife has either created or restored 1,500 hectares of butterfly habitat, 10 percent of its goal.
This year's most extraordinary story? Woman discovers, at the wedding, that her son's about-to-be bride is her long lost biological daughter. That's only part of the tale!
The Queen will not be left to 'walk alone' following the death of her beloved husband of 73 years. Senior royals are coming together to ensure the monarch is accompanied by a member of the family on future public engagements. Today, the Queen returned to royal duties, just four days after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, to mark the retirement of her household’s most senior official. What a remarkable woman!
Fred Astaire acknowledged it as the best ever dance scene in a movie - which is really saying something! Check out Fayard and his brother Harold Nicholas dancing up a gale in the 1943 classic Stormy Weather.