Kick-starting the week with an eclectic bundle of positive news nuggets.
Redhead Day Festival
Thousands of people gathered in the Netherlands at the weekend to celebrate their red hair at the annual Redhead Days Festival. Scotsman Liam Hunter, 30, told Reuters attending the three-day festival made him feel better about himself. Like many redheads Hunter said he has experienced bullying over his unusual hair colour. "I don't feel alone anymore, I feel together, a part of something," he said, looking out over the festival grounds, "being here I'm completed". Redheads make up between 1 and 2 percent of the world’s population, with a higher frequency of between 2 and 6 percent in people with Northern or Northwestern European ancestry.
Mother to Baby
America's FDA just approved the first RSV vaccine for pregnant mothers to protect babies. RSV can be particularly dangerous in infants, and this vaccine transfers protective antibodies from mother to infant before birth.
Village DIY
The women of Romaszki, a Polish village, have taken it upon themselves to pave sidewalks, giving a whole new meaning to DIY. The village residents were fed up with having to walk on unpaved, muddy paths. When they heard their council was unable to provide contractors to pave the sidewalks, villagers decided to just pool resources and do it themselves. Specifically, local female residents took initiative to organize the process and learn the skill of laying road bricks. On nights and weekends, they volunteered their time and efforts to complete the project. The last section of pavement was completed at the end of July, following a request from a local priest to create a footpath from the church to the cemetery.
Don't Look Lost
Scientists have invented a wearable device that silently and invisibly 'taps' your wrist to tell you which way to turn, said The Times. Inventors at Rice University in Texas wanted to create a lightweight, discreet device that could guide people to their destination without the need to look at a map or for audible cues such as those from a GPS. The good news is that “wandering around a strange neighbourhood looking with bemusement at a map app on your phone could become a thing of the past”, said the paper.
Attendance Record
Nebraska’s fight song begins: “There is no place like Nebraska.” When it comes to volleyball, those words never rang more true than last week. The Cornhuskers laid claim to the world record for largest attendance at a women’s sporting event with 92,003 filling Memorial Stadium for their volleyball match against Omaha. Not bad for a state with a population of fewer than 2 million people.
Braille Lego
Lego has just started selling braille bricks to help vision-impaired children learn to read . Since 2020, Lego has been providing bricks coded with braille letters and numbers for free to schools and services for vision-impaired children. The bricks were tested and developed in partnership with blind organizations around the world. Now, the general public will be able to purchase packs of the braille bricks too. The packs will include educational game ideas and more to help families and siblings learn and play together.
Sucking Up CO2
The U.S. Department of Energy is committing $1.2 billion towards two facilities that will use direct air capture (DAC) technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These facilities, located in Texas and Louisiana, are just the beginning. The long-term plan includes creating four DAC hubs over the next decade, which will cumulatively aim to remove millions of tons of CO2 every year. In addition to these hubs, the DOE is funding 19 more studies to explore the potential of future DAC plants.
“When you make people laugh, you open the door.” Jean-Claude Carrière
On this Day
4 September 1972: American swimmer Mark Spitz won his seventh gold medal during the Munich Olympic Games, the first person ever to do so in a single Olympics.
Anything that humiliates Putin and shows that all is not going according to plan domestically is, surely, good news. Empty cinemas...
Dolly Parton announces switch to rock'n'roll in what will surely be the starriest supporting cast for any album this year. Rockstar...
Mood Booster
Old school movie stars, dancing to 'Step Back In Time', by Kylie Minogue.
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