Thursday's Upbeat News
- 6 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Today's smorgasbord of tasty positive news nuggets from around the world.
"Cries of Delight"
The critically endangered Sumatran orangutan has been filmed for the first time using a canopy bridge to cross a road. In 2024, conservationists in North Sumatra, Indonesia, built the bridge high over the Lagan-Pagindar road, which provides an essential route for local people but which became a barrier for animals. Natural crossing was “impossible for wildlife”, said the director of TaHuKah, the environmental organisation that helped install the bridge. For two years, the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS) and TaHuKah, its local partner, had been watching camera-trap footage of the bridge, waiting for the day that an orangutan would finally cross. “You should have heard the cries of delight from the team,” said Helen Buckland, chief executive of SOS. “After two long years, it’s finally happened.” It offers hope to conservationists worried that this population would become functionally extinct if it were sequestered in one part of the forest.
Doner From Heaven
A 92-year-old German nun said she was “delighted” to try a doner kebab for the first time. Sister Irmingard, who lives at the Arenberg convent in Koblenz, “has lived through the Second World War” and “the fall of the Berlin Wall”, but Germany’s favourite fast food had passed her by, said The Times. That is until last weekend, when she and seven other nuns stopped for dinner after attending a religious music festival. A clip of Sister Irmingard tucking in received “5.5 million views and 300,000 likes on Instagram within 48 hours”.
Route 66
In honor of the famous highway turning 100, cities and towns across the U.S. are celebrating throughout 2026, with official national events kicking off today. Road trippers won’t be bored: Route 66 boasts more than 250 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including diners, bridges, and historic hotels. But a century ago, it was just a patchwork of local, state, and national roadways made largely from materials like dirt, gravel, and bricks. Only 800 of its initial 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica were paved - it would take another 12 years to complete the rest.
Design Record
After a bidding war at Sotheby’s in Paris, Claude Lalanne’s Ensemble of 15 Mirrors drew $33.5 million at the auction block, the highest-ever price at auction for a work of design. French designer Yves Saint Laurent commissioned the mirrors, made of gilt bronze and galvanized copper and inspired by plants from the artist’s garden, for the music room of his Paris apartment. “Outside of Versailles, it is arguably the most important ensemble of mirrors ever conceived as a unified interior,” says Edith Dicconson, the founder of Dicconson Fine Art. Lalanne, a French sculptor and designer, lived from the 1920s to 2019. She often presented work as a duo with her husband, François-Xavier Lalanne, and together they were known as “Les Lalanne.” The couple’s works drew inspiration from Art Nouveau, Surrealism and the natural world.
Hippo Bar: A hippo-shaped bar cabinet designed by French artist François-Xavier Lalanne fetched an eye-watering $31.4 million in December 2025. At the time, it was the highest-ever price at auction for a work of design.
Dropping In
It wasn’t the landing anyone expected, but a California couple were left stunned when a hot air balloon carrying 13 strangers touched down right in his backyard. The bizarre moment unfolded in Temecula when the peaceful morning was interrupted by a full basket of people descending from the sky. What should have been a scenic ride quickly turned into an unforgettable emergency landing in this random garden. But there they were, a group of anxious people suddenly relieved to be on solid ground. The owner's grassy backyard patch is only about 10 feet (3 meters) wide. “It was unbelievable, like something out of a Disney fairy tale. The balloon didn’t hit our house or our trees. It was kissing the fence.” And somehow, despite the chaos, the whole thing ended without a single injury.
Lucky Find
When a 13-year-old schoolboy discovered a small coin in a field on the outskirts of Berlin, he knew that he’d stumbled onto something special. But it wasn’t until scholars analyzed the object that they realized its true significance. Minted in the third century B.C.E. in the city of Troy, located in what is now western Turkey, the bronze coin is the first ancient Greek artifact ever unearthed in the German capital. A numismatist identified the find as a Trojan coin dated to between roughly 281 and 261 B.C.E. The coin's obverse depicts Athena, the Greek goddess of war and wisdom, in a Corinthian helmet; while its reverse features an image of the deity in a kalathos headdress, with a spear in her right hand and a spindle in the other.
"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver." Virginia Woolf in Orlando: A Biography
On This Day
30 April 1789: George Washington is inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America at Federal Hall in NYC. This event marked the beginning of operations for the executive branch under the 1787 Constitution. Washington took the oath on the second-floor balcony due to large crowds on the streets.
Today's Articles
Extraordinary Find: Fragment of Homer's ‘Iliad’ found tucked beneath the wrappings of 1,600-year-old Egyptian mummy.
Benefits of Saying No: “More effort is wasted doing things that don’t matter than is wasted doing things inefficiently. And if that is the case, elimination is a more useful skill than optimization.”
New Exercise Trend: Walking is good for us, but the Japanese believe they have an even better way to boost the positive results of walking.
Mood Boosting Video
King Charles' best jokes during his speech to Congress.
