Wrapping up the week with a global collection of positive news stories and a couple of new discoveries.
Pothole Prank
After 8 months of swerving to avoid a potentially wheel shattering pothole in the road through an English village, a local decided he had had enough. Instead of leaving another indignant message on the local council’s answering machine, James Coxall enlisted the help of his wife and kids to artfully create a pair of wooden legs and feet, clad in jeans and shoes, and fix it down in the hole as if someone had fallen in headfirst. Tah-dah! It worked. Four days later the council fixed the pothole. Could this creative idea come in handy for a pothole near you, too?
MAGA Bucks
A Texas congressman is launching a bid to put Donald Trump on the $100 bill. Republican Brandon Gill says his "Golden Age Act", which would replace the current portrait of Benjamin Franklin with an image of Trump once he leaves office in 2029, would be "a small way to honour all he will accomplish these next four years". There's one snag, said The Hill: "Laws currently prevent a living person from appearing on US currency."
Veil Nebula Revisited
As it nears 35 consecutive years of space service, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken another look at a famous supernova remnant. The Veil Nebula is roughly 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It is the remnants of a star that was roughly 20 times as big as our sun and exploded about 10,000 years ago. This colorful new view combines images that were taken in three different filters by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and highlights hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms. It is showing only a tiny fraction of the Veil Nebula. This new image was taken at a single point in time, but still helps astronomers understand how it has evolved over the past three decades.
Air Taxi Survey
The electric air-taxi movement has received a big vote of confidence in future operations, if a recent survey by Honeywell is accurate. The multinational conglomerate, with a large aerospace division, said that 98 percent of U.S. airline fliers would consider taking an electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft as part of future travel plans. Honeywell surveyed 1,000 U.S. adult fliers. Nearly 80 percent said they would travel more often if they could take an air taxi to the airport. eVTOL manufacturer Joby told Verticalmag.com last summer that it plans to begin U.S. operations with its four-seat air taxi sometime this year. Competitor Archer also has plans to begin operations with its Midnight aircraft in Abu Dhabi by the end of this year.
Danish Dawn
The design industry is littered with icons, or so the giddier faction of design journalists tell us. But there can be no dispute that Arne Jacobsen’s Series 7 chair is indeed iconic. Archetypal even. And this year the manufacturer is celebrating the chair’s 70th anniversary with a series of activities under the banner: ‘Ever the Sevener’ with a nod to its Danish nickname. Celebrations kicked off this week with the launch of a limited edition release by Fritz Hansen of a new colour palette called ‘7:14 AM’, based on the spectra of sunrise hues in the Danish dawn.
Viking-Age Britain
With the help of more than 50 volunteers, archaeologists say they have identified the largest Viking-Age building ever excavated in Britain - a rare insight into the early medieval period’s Anglo-Scandinavian culture. The structure was buried beneath a field in Cumbria, a county in northwest England. Researchers from the nonprofit Grampus Heritage identified the remnants of a “large hall” - measuring roughly 160 feet long and 50 feet wide - last summer, according to a statement from archaeologist Mark Graham. Among the most intriguing finds were ten post holes that hinted at the structure’s size and shape, a kiln for drying grains and a pit for producing charcoal. Radiocarbon testing found that one of the post holes dated to between 990 and 1040.
“If my boss knew how unproductive I am on Fridays, he wouldn’t want me here either.” James Johnson
On This Day
7 March 1876: Alexander Graham Bell - a Scottish-born Canadian-American inventor, scientist, and engineer - received US patent 174465A, for a method of transmitting speech by telegraphy - the telephone.
Today's Articles
New Discovery: Earth's oldest impact crater found in Australia - more than a billion years older than previous record.
Shakespeare Love Poem: Rare hand-written copy of one of the most famous love poems ever written has been found in Oxford.
Friday: It's the gateway to the weekend. Here are a dozen celebratory quotations to get you in the mood.
Mood Boosting Video
Remarkable Adaptation: Superhuman Filipino diver from the Badjao tribe.