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Positive News Saturday

Updated: Nov 30, 2023

What better way to start the weekend than with a global round up of positive news?


A still from the short film Lovers and Madmen
A still from the short film Lovers and Madmen | inVerse Films
Shakespeare in Space

A portrait of William Shakespeare has traveled to the edge of space to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s First Folio. Accompanying the portrait on its journey was a speech from one of the author’s most celebrated plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The project is the work of director Jack Jewers, who has released six short films in honour of the Folio anniversary. One of them, Lovers and Madmen, features footage from the portrait's journey. Jewers worked with a team from the aerospace company Sent Into Space to facilitate the portrait’s journey. They took the items to Earth’s upper atmosphere using a weather balloon equipped with a GPS tracker and a camera to document the excursion.


Hats Off to Portugal

The country produced more than enough renewable power to serve all its customers for six straight days, from October 31 to November 6. For nearly a week, the nation of 10 million ran on nothing but wind, solar and hydropower. Not bad for a country that became coal-free in 2021.


Man walks again after spinal implant
Marc with spinal implant | Credit: Jocelyne Bloch | CHUV Lausanne University
Spinal Implant

A man with Parkinson's disease has regained the ability to walk after physicians implanted a small device into his spinal cord that sends signals to his legs. Marc, 62, is the first and only person to have received the new spinal neuroprosthesis - after enrolling in a clinical trial at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Now, remarkably, when he wants to take a walk, Marc simply pushes a button on a remote control that sends wireless signals to the neurostimulator. It then sends bursts of electrical signals that stimulate the lumbosacral spinal cord, a region of the lower spine that activates leg muscles. And off he goes...


Group of teenagers outside their breakfast club
Credit: Peggy Winckowski
30 Extra Grandbabies

The Wednesday Breakfast Club tradition at Peggy Winckowski's home in St. Louis began in 2021 after her grandson, Sam Crowe, then a high school freshman, told his friends that his grandma made a better breakfast than the diner where they went when they had a late start. Then in July 2022, after Sam was killed in a car crash, the teens came to grieve with her every day for a week to make sure she was okay, reports the Washington Post. However, Winckowski told the teens they were still welcome to come for breakfast and there are now about 30 regular attendees. Winckowski and her husband are on a fixed income but local businesses and students' families have been helping with groceries. "I've lost my 15-year-old grandson, but in his place, Sam gave me 30 extra grandbabies," she says. "I think Sam is directing this from above."


First class dinner menu, Titanic, 11 April 1912
Credit: Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd.
First Class Dinner

On the evening of 11 April 1912, first-class passengers aboard the Titanic enjoyed a decadent feast. At dinner that night, they ate oysters, salmon with hollandaise sauce, beef, squab, lamb with mint sauce, roast chicken and many other upscale dishes. The ship struck an iceberg three days later. Now, a water-stained first-class dinner menu from the doomed ship has sold at auction for £84,000 (about $102,000), says BBC News. This is the only known menu in existence from 11 April, the day after the Titanic set sail.


Tonight's The Night

The Leonid meteor shower hits its peak tonight. If you're in the northern hemisphere and can spot the Big Dipper/Plough, you’re in the right part of the sky to enjoy some shooting stars. You can expect around 15 Leonids per hour.


Jogger Finds Footprint

A dinosaur footprint spotted by a jogger could be from a 140-million-year-old iguanodon, experts believe. Sophie Giles stumbled across the print as she jogged on Brownsea Island, on England's south coast. The print, which was made when the area was covered in tropical forests and swamps, had fossilised over thousands of years and had become easier to see after it filled with water during a rain shower. Experts believe the find is a rear footprint of an iguanodon - a three-toed herbivore that grew up to 36ft long.


Merc's Charging Hub

Mercedes-Benz has cut the ribbon on its first EV fast-charging hub in the US, complete with a swanky waiting area. The new hub in Atlanta (the first of 400 planned for the US) has eight stalls with two plugs each and a brightly lit canopy to provide protection from the elements - plus a 15-foot-tall sign, visible from the street that indicates when charging stalls are free or in use.

 

"That men do not learn much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." Aldous Huxley

 
On This Day

18 November 1626: Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, which replaced an earlier basilica, was consecrated; it is the second largest religious building in Christendom.

 





 
Mood Booster

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Here's the first full trailer for the long-awaited sequel to Aardman studio's beloved 2000 film Chicken Run.



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