Wednesday's Upbeat News
- Editor OGN Daily
- 19 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Mid-week selection of tasty good news nuggets to perk up the day.
Affric Highlands
A valley touted as “the most beautiful glen in Scotland” has joined the UK’s largest rewilding project. The Affric Highlands initiative aims to restore nature across 200,000 hectares of the Highlands. Glen Affric National Nature Reserve became the 20th landholding to sign up to the community-led initiative. “This is a huge step forwards for the entire area to become richer in nature, with new opportunities for people,” said Rewilding Affric Highlands. “This special place is hugely important.”
Social Media Ban
Denmark has become the latest country to announce a social media ban for under-15s, amid concerns that childhood is getting lost in the digital ether. It is part of the country's wider commitment to boost protections for young people online. Denmark will be watching Australia closely. Its social media ban for under-16s comes into effect next month.
CIA HQ Secret
The information needed to decipher the last remaining unsolved secret message embedded within a sculpture at CIA headquarters in Virginia has been sold at auction. The buyer will get a private meeting with the 80-year-old artist to go over the codes and charts in hopes of continuing what he’s been doing for decades: interacting with would-be cryptanalyst sleuths. The archive owned by the artist who created Kryptos, Jim Sanborn, was sold to an anonymous bidder for $963,000, according to RR Auction of Boston. The archive includes documents and coding charts for the sculpture, dedicated in 1990. Three of the messages on the 10-foot-tall (3m) sculpture - known as K1, K2 and K3 - have been solved, but a solution for the fourth, K4, has frustrated the experts and enthusiasts who have tried to decipher the S-shaped copper screen. So, splashing out nearly a million dollars is an expensive shortcut.
Wild West Outlaw
Billy the Kid has been photographed exactly once. One solitary tintype from the early 1880s is the only image historians agree is truly him. For more than a century, that tiny metal portrait has existed as a grainy, ghostly reminder of the Wild West. Now a modern photo restorer has brought the outlaw back into focus, revealing details long lost to time. Using tools like Photoshop, and an AI upscaler tool called Magnific, we see the photo for the first time in high resolution. The cleaned and carefully revived image sharpens the Kid’s features, brightens his expression, and gives us a version of him that feels startlingly present.
Ancient Artwork
A 12,000-year-old figure of a woman with a goose draped over her back is the oldest human-animal sculpture ever found. The tiny clay artwork, which is less than two inches tall, was discovered at a prehistoric Natufian village overlooking the Sea of Galilee in Israel. It depicts a crouching woman who appears to be carrying a living goose on her back rather than a dead hunted animal. In the Natufian culture, geese held both practical and symbolic importance, being both an important food source, and a provider of bones, feathers and talons for beads and adornments. It is thought the Natufians believed that humans and animals were spiritually interconnected and the scene of the goose and the woman may represent their enmeshed lives, both domestically and symbolically.
‘Seal-Cam’
For the first time, breeding season at England’s largest grey seal colony - at Blakeney Point in Norfolk - is being broadcasted live over the web. An estimated one in 10 of the UK’s seals are born at Blakeney Point, where their numbers have increased by more than three-quarters since 2018.
Women's Bank Accounts
World Bank figures show a big rise in the number of women globally with bank accounts, a development that it said pointed to a “remarkable transformation”. According to a new World Bank report, the number of women in low- and middle-income countries who have an account has risen to 73 percent, compared to 50 percent a decade ago. “The work continues to ensure every woman who wants a financial account has access to one - and can use it to her full advantage.”
“Don't wait until the fourth Thursday in November to sit with family and friends to give thanks. Make every day a day of Thanksgiving!” Charmaine J. Forde
On This Day
26 November 1791: First US cabinet meeting, held at George Washington's home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph attend.
Today's Articles
What's in Your Loft? Discovered in a dusty attic, a 1939 first edition Superman Comic Book smashes records.
'Floating Sanctuary': Aman, the luxury hospitality titan, announces that its first yacht will launch in 2027.
Mood Boosting Video
Watching Nature: Study by BBC Earth and University of California shows that watching nature documentaries makes you happier.
