OGN Thursday

Editor OGN Daily
Oct 2
4 min read

Thursday's bite-sized chunks of uplifting news to brighten the day.

Vote of Confidence

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott - former wife of Jeff Bezos - has donated $70m to the UNCF, the largest private provider of scholarships to minority students, to help strengthen all 37 of its historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). It's one of Scott’s largest single donations ever and is seen as a “powerful vote of confidence” in HBCUs. It's hoped it will inspire other funders to follow Scott’s example in supporting these important institutions. Over the past five years, MacKenzie Scott has given over $19 billion in unrestricted gifts to more than 2,000 organizations in her quest to spend down the billions she received as part of her divorce settlement from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Birthday Headlines

What was going on the day you were born? This ingenious headline generator plumbs the New York Times archives to show you the headlines for everyday from as far back as the 1950s.

Scientists Crack Code of How Fish Pick Their Birthday: The timing of their birth can be a matter of life or death.

A beach in Barbados — Islands agree "full free movement"

Caribbean Agreement

An historic EU-style free movement agreement has come into force in four Caribbean countries, in a deal which officials hope will stem the flow of skilled professionals leaving the region for North America and Europe. The agreement between Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines follows decades of discussions and negotiations among members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) - a regional grouping of 15 member countries. The “full free movement” will allow nationals of the four countries to reside, work and remain indefinitely in any of the countries without the need for a work or residency permit.

32 Chunk, the Fat Bear Week champion — Champion Chunk | Credit: T Carmack

Chunky Chunk Wins

After a record-breaking week of public voting, Katmai national park and preserve in Alaska has announced the winner of its “biggest Fat Bear Week yet”. 32 Chunk, frequently described as “the most dominant brown bear on the river”, won the fatness competition. “A fat bear means a successful bear,” says a Katmai park ranger. “A fat bear means that bear is more likely to survive hibernation.” Chunk dethroned 128 Grazer, the female bear who has held Katmai’s fat bear title for the past two years, as the fattest bear on the Brooks River. This year’s competition attracted more than 1.5m public votes. Fat Bear Week started in 2014 and is designed to create greater public awareness of the bears and their ecosystem.

Frida Kahlo's 'El Sueño (La Cama)' from 1940 — Credit: Sotheby's

Female Artist Record?

When a self-portrait by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo goes to auction in November, it’s likely to become the most expensive work by a female artist ever sold. Titled El Sueño (La Cama) -Spanish for The Dream (The Bed) - the 1940 oil painting depicts Kahlo asleep in a large four-poster bed, enveloped in green vines. A large skeleton wrapped in explosives and holding a bouquet of flowers lies on the bed’s canopy above her. “It’s not just one of the more important works by Kahlo, but one of a few that exists outside of Mexico and not in a museum collection,” says Sotheby’s. The auction house estimates that the painting will fetch between $40 million and $60 million when it goes under the hammer in New York. The current auction record for an artwork made by a woman belongs to Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1932 Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.

Indian Challenger racing across the Bonneville Salt Flats — Credit: Indian Motorcycle

New Record

Who said baggers can’t go fast? Indian Motorcycle just showed us a glimpse of its racing DNA by setting a new record with its race-spec Challenger, which achieved close to 200 miles per hour at Bonneville Salt Flats. Two-time KOTB champion, Tyler O’Hara, sprinted off the starting line to accomplish a record-breaking 192 mph (308.99 km/h), and with just a few adjustments, the second run resulted in 196.576 mph (316.358 km/h) to set the class record with their 2000cc APS-AG (class A for "special construction motorcycles," PS for "partially streamlined," and AG for "altered gas").

"If you want to succeed, you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success." John D. Rockefeller

On This Day

2 October 1967: American lawyer and civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming its first African American member.