Good News Saturday

Editor OGN Daily
Jul 19
3 min read

What better way to start the weekend than with some good news?

The Cerne Abbas Giant on a hillside in Dorset, England — The Giant after being re-chalked in 2019 | National Trust

Lost Manhood?

Created on a hillside in Dorset, south west England, the 1,000 year old Cerne Abbas Giant's impressive genitals might today be lost in a small forest, had a local resident got his way in the early 1930s. According to correspondence recently unearthed by local historian Karen Heaney, Walter Long had written to the Home Office to complain that the "impassioned obscenity" offended "our Christian standards". In response to this charge of indecency, an official wrote to the National Trust, noting that the Giant's 35ft penis could be covered by a "small grove of fig trees". Ultimately, however, the secretary of state declined to take action against the national monument.

Teenager kayaking on the Klamath River — Credit: Rios to Rivers

Historic Journey

For decades, Native people called for the removal of dams and the restoration of the Klamath River near the border of Oregon and California. Finally, four dams and three reservoirs were removed last year in what was then the world’s largest dam removal project. Leading up to the dam removal, Ríos to Rivers’ Paddle Tribal Waters project had been helping Native youth reconnect to the ancient river - teaching them to whitewater raft so that Native people would be the first to journey down the newly restored river. And that historic journey is now complete: Youth from the Yurok, Klamath, Hoopa Valley, Karuk, and other tribes paddled 310 miles over a month from a Klamath River tributary to the Pacific Ocean.

River Revival

China has demolished 300 dams on the Chishui River, a major tributary of the upper Yangtze, restoring 250 miles of river and luring the once-vanished Yangtze sturgeon back to spawn. Begun in 2020, the cleanup has reopened migration routes and surpassed the Klamath as the world’s largest river-habitat revival, and it's working. Scientists observed the first hatching of wild sturgeon in April 2025.

Bronze statue of Civil War Union General Philip Sheridan on horseback — Civil War Union General Philip Sheridan in Washington D.C. | Wikimedia Commons

End of an Era

The United States military has utilized horses since the nation’s inception, but its equine era is finally ending as the US Army announced plans to shutter its Military Working Equid program, an organization within the Department of Defense that oversees its remaining animals: 236 horses, donkeys, and mules. The decision will save the government an estimated $2 million annually.

Impressive Progress

Since 2016, three state-level projects have brought reliable power to 140 million in India, laying out more than 2,670 miles (4,300 km) of power lines and rolling out smart meters and digitised billing. What's even more impressive, says Reuters, is that this has happened even as India has reached its target of 50 percent clean power capacity way ahead of schedule, fulfilling its 2030 Paris pledge five years early.

Flying Visit to India: A stunning 4 minute film featuring the best of the northern part of this vast subcontinent.

Denver Dino Discovery

Researchers from Denver's Museum of Nature & Science made use of drilling work on the museum grounds to extract earth samples from deep beneath the modern-day car park. They were hoping to "better understand the Denver Basin's geology", says Popular Science, but instead found a "pair of bone fragments" belonging to a 67.5 million-year-old dinosaur. "It's basically like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day," said geology curator James Hagadorn.

"Carry out a random act of kindness with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you." Princess Diana

On This Day

Two women in 1948 holding a sign saying: VOTES FOR WOMEN

19 July 1848: the women's suffrage movement in the United States was launched with the opening of the Seneca Falls Convention, which sought to gain certain rights and privileges for women, notably the right to vote.