OGN Wednesday

Editor OGN Daily
Sep 17
4 min read

Wednesday's eclectic collection of upbeat news stories to brighten the day.

The three-story, Georgian-style Ebenezer Hancock House in Boston — Credit: Dave Killen | LandVest

Hancock's House

A rare piece of U.S. history has hit the market: Founding father John Hancock’s former home is for sale in Boston. The three-story, Georgian-style Ebenezer Hancock House is 5,748 square feet and sits on a half-acre. It was built by Hancock, one of the signatories on the Declaration of Independence, and still has some of its original features. The home’s listing price is undisclosed, but it's the only vernacular structure from the mid-1700s that still exists in central Boston. Go inside the home.

Thomas Paine: The quaint English town where one of America's Founding Fathers, and the world's first international revolutionaries, sparked a spirit of rebellion that still continues today.

Bookstore Renaissance

Barnes & Noble is expanding its physical footprint to reach more readers. After more than 15 years of declining store numbers, the bookseller expects to open over 60 new locations across the United States in 2025, following a period of "strong sales" in existing stores. 34 stores have already opened this year and another 31 bookstores, some of which are "relocations" of previously closed locations, may be coming to a city near you before December, with Barnes & Noble saying there's "lots more to come in 2026!"

Major Shift in Guatemala

Guatemala has permanently closed the Xan oil field in Laguna del Tigre National Park, marking a major shift from fossil fuel extraction to forest protection. The site, once responsible for nearly 90 percent of the country’s oil production, will now serve as a security base to curb illegal logging, ranching, and trafficking in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. The country is investing in hydropower, solar and natural gas for its energy needs, reports Mongabay.

A 1,000 year old Viking ship called the Oseberg — Roughly 71 feet long, the Oseberg was crewed by 30 rowers | Museum of the Viking Age

Viking Ship Relocates

A 1,000 year old ship called the Oseberg is described by officials in Oslo as the “world’s most significant discovery from the Viking Age” and means “the same to our part of Europe as the tomb of Tutankhamun does for Egypt,” Håkon Glørstad, then-director of the Museum of Cultural History, told the New York Times in 2019. Excavated in 1904, the vessel was found in remarkable condition, with about 90 percent of its original wood - it's the best preserved Viking ship in the world - and eventually put on display at Norway's Viking Ship Museum in 1926. But, due to conditions inside the museum, it needed a better climate-controlled facility, so a new museum was built to house it and the ship has just been painstakingly moved about 115 yards to its new home in Oslo: the Museum of the Viking Age. It will open in 2027, once two other similar ships have also been relocated there.

Rendering of NASA's supersonic X-59 — Credit: Lockheed Martin/NASA

Son of Concorde

NASA’s quiet supersonic research aircraft is preparing for its first takeoff, says the agency. Nicknamed 'Son of Concorde', the X-59 could fly from London to New York in around three hours and 44 minutes. The aircraft is currently undergoing final safety tests at the U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The X-59 is projected to fly at Mach 1.5, or approximately 990 mph, and could reach a maximum cruising speed of Mach 2.04, or 1,354 mph, which is more than twice the speed of sound. It’s designed to generate a quiet thump rather than a loud sonic boom as it flies, a noise problem that resulted in the original Concorde from flying over populated areas.

Methane Milestone

California’s dairy farms have reached a major climate milestone by cutting methane emissions equivalent to 5 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, says a new UC Davis report. This achievement represents one of the largest reductions in dairy farm greenhouse gas emissions by any agricultural region worldwide, putting the state’s dairy industry more than two-thirds of the way toward meeting California’s ambitious goal to reduce livestock methane by 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030.

Young Activists

A group of young climate activists who won a “landmark” climate trial against the state of Montana are asking a federal judge to block US president Donald Trump’s executive orders promoting fossil fuels, according to the Associated Press. In the court hearing starting which started yesterday, the young people filing the federal lawsuit are arguing that Trump’s boosting of fossil fuels and halting of renewables “violates their constitutional rights”, the article explains. The activists’ previous victory - on the basis that Montana had deprived them of a “clean and healthful” environment - “resounded across the country”, according to the Daily Montanan.

“Trust that your best tomorrow will be even better than today’s.” Maggie Smith

On This Day

17 September 1849: American Harriet Tubman escaped from the Southern plantation where she was enslaved and later led other enslaved people to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroad - an elaborate secret network of safe houses organized for that purpose. On Veteran’s Day 2024 Tubman was posthumously awarded the rank of one-star brigadier general in the Maryland National Guard in recognition of her military service during the American Civil War.