Wednesday's good news nuggets to brighten the day and put a spring in your step.
The Perseids “are considered the best meteor shower of the year,” according to NASA, and a Slovenian photographer successfully captured the incredible peak of this year's meteor shower. 31-year-old Uroš Fink photographed the annual Perseid meteor shower, which takes place every summer, from a mountain in Slovenia. His image shows the colourful Milky Way dotted with nebulas as the Perseid meteors shoot across the night sky.
Vax has been chosen as the word of the year by the team at the Oxford English Dictionary. Senior editor Fiona McPherson said vax was an obvious choice as it has made “the most striking impact” and although it “goes back at least to the 1980s” it was “rarely used until this year”.
A little girl named Bethan was exploring the Poole Museum in southern England, learning all about how museums and their collections work. Bethan then decided she wanted to kindly donate her "most precious" rock to the museum. Her only request was that the rock be placed behind glass and kept safe so that others could see it and enjoy it. The museum accepted her gift - and honoured her request. Don't all museums need an exhibit that displays small children's most prized possessions?
Ed Sheeran has topped the list of the richest celebrities under the age of 30. Over the past 12 months, the singer-songwriter has increased his estimated worth to £236.5m ($321m), according to Heat magazine.
Take inspiration from Dierdre Wolownick: Mother of daredevil who climbed El Capitan with no ropes also conquers the peak as she turns 70. Dierdre Wolownick celebrated her birthday by scaling a deadly 3,200ft rock and becomes the oldest woman to scale rock El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Her son Alex was the first person to tackle it without ropes or safety equipment, as seen in the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo.
Tens of thousands of travellers will arrive in Thailand this week as the country reopens to tourists after 18 months of Covid restrictions, the BBC reports. Jabbed travellers from more than 60 countries deemed “low risk” are being allowed to enter and avoid hotel quarantine. Next year, tourist numbers are expected to jump to as much as 15m, bringing in more than $30bn (£22bn).
In 2019, drought choked off the Macquarie River in Australia, and fires swept through the marshes which it fed. Amazingly though, just two years later the land looks as if nothing happened. Plentiful rains mean the river is back to meandering through the protected Macquarie Marshes (listed under the RAMSAR Convention for wetlands of international importance), and the reservoir behind the dam is full again. A happy reminder to us all of nature’s resilience.
Migratory western monarch butterflies are showing up at their overwintering sites in coastal California in far, far greater numbers than last year in a very positive sign of hope for the struggling population.
Texas is being covered with billboards saying Trump lost – funded by fed up Republicans. It's part of multimillion-dollar Republicans for Voting Rights campaign, which calls on state lawmakers to ‘reject frivolous audits of 2020 election results’.
The UK's new polar research ship, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, has completed basic sea trials and is ready to undertake its first expedition. The Attenborough, named after the TV naturalist and BBC presenter Sir David, is the ship the public wanted to call "Boaty McBoatface" in an online poll but were overruled by ministers.
Fun Fact: The saying “fly off the handle” originates from the 1800s. It’s a saying that refers to cheap axe-heads flying off their handles when swung backward before a chop. That would certainly make you angry!
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It's Good to Laugh
Hilarious radio conversation between US warship and Spain in 2004. Yes, it's authentic!