Just Good News Monday
- Editor OGN Daily
- 5 minutes ago
- 4 min read
What better way to start the week than with a collection of upbeat news nuggets?
Breathtaking Feat
The act of breathing has been central to life on Earth since the beginning, and the average human will take more than 600 million breaths in a single lifetime. But there’s a specific group of humans - a subclass of freedivers known as apneists - who train their minds and bodies to efficiently halt this intuitive autonomic function, far exceeding the typical 30-to-90-second limit of breath-holding. Take for instance Vitomir Maričić, who just broke the world record for longest human breath hold with a stunning 29 minutes and 3 seconds - almost five minutes longer than the previous record, set in 2021. A member of the Adriatic Freediving group, Maričić performed the attempt in a three-meter-deep pool at the town’s Bristol Hotel in front of a 100-person crowd. He says he took on this record as both a personal challenge and a way to raise awareness for ocean conservation.
‘Biocultural Corridor’
Mexico, Guatemala and Belize launch tri-national reserve to protect the Maya forest. The countries’ three leaders announced a ‘biocultural corridor’ of the Great Mayan Forest, spanning an astonishing 57,000 km² across southern Mexico, northern Guatemala and Belize. That’s the size of the US state of Iowa - making it the biggest protected area in the Americas after the Amazon, reports The Associated Press. "This is one of Earth’s lungs, a living space for thousands of species with an invaluable cultural legacy that we should preserve with our eyes on the future," says Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico.
New Ultrasound Tool
Doctors could soon use high-resolution ultrasound devices to identify meningitis in babies, replacing spinal taps. Physicians participating in a Barcelona Institute for Global Health study -
in collaboration with hospitals in Spain, Mozambique, and Morocco - were able to detect meningitis in the youngest patients with 94 percent accuracy, thanks to a deep learning algorithm that's able to interpret images, find and count cells, and determine if there are inflammatory signs consistent with meningitis, reports Medical Xpress. The ultrasound tool could limit unnecessary antibiotic use and lead to earlier diagnoses.
By The Numbers
54 percent: Share of Americans who say they drink alcohol, the lowest on record since 1939
13.4 million: Number of Mexicans lifted out of poverty between 2018 and 2024
Zero: Helsinki has gone a full year without a traffic death, the result of lower speed limits, more traffic cameras, and better infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.
581: Miles driven by an electric SUV (a Polestar 3) on one charge, a new Guinness World Record.
'Significant Change'
The PGA Tour has unveiled a new committee led by Tiger Woods to modernize the world’s premier golf circuit - with radical changes on the horizon. “The purpose of this committee is pretty simple,” says Brian Rolapp, the Tour’s newly appointed chief executive. “We’re going to design the best professional golf competitive model in the world for the benefit of PGA Tour fans, players and their partners. It is aimed at a holistic relook of how we compete. That is inclusive of regular season, post-season and off-season. We’re going to focus on the evolution of our competitive model and the corresponding media products and sponsorship elements and model of the entire sport. The goal is not incremental change. The goal is significant change.”
Dire Wolf
Dire wolves were fearsome predators that prowled around during the Late Pleistocene, between roughly 10,000 and 250,000 years ago. These carnivorous canids - Aenocyon dirus - were specialized hunters, using their large, sharp teeth to chow down on large animals like horses, camels and bison. Dire wolves have been extinct since around the end of the last ice age. However, paleontologists continue to find their remains throughout North and South America. Now, one of those specimens is headed to auction on 29 August. Collectors have a rare opportunity to purchase the upper skull of a dire wolf during an upcoming Heritage Auctions sale - but it likely won’t be cheap. The fossil, which is being sold with a cast mandible to complete the skull, is expected to fetch at least $30,000.
“The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.” Ruby Dee
On This Day
25 August 1835: New York's The Sun began running a series of news accounts that falsely claimed British astronomer John Herschel had observed all sorts of life on the Moon, including winged human creatures about four feet tall; it became known as the Great Moon Hoax, and was the most spectacular global news event of the year, despite it being a complete fabrication. The first fake news?
Today's Articles
Game Changing
Mood Boosting Video
Point Nemo: Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, the most remote spot on Planet Earth where the closest land is thousands of miles away.