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Ancient Egyptian Observatory is Unlocking Celestial Secrets of Their Cosmic Culture

By
Andy Corbley
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Various artifacts found inside the observatory -credit Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Various artifacts found inside the observatory -credit Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Another stunning remnant of ancient Egyptian civilization has been unearthed in the form of a large astronomical observatory.

At over 9,000 square feet, it’s the largest of its kind ever found in the land of the Nile, and is believed to have been last used around the 6th century BCE.

credit – Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

The Egyptians were more than able stargazers. Many of the foundations of their society, religion, and culture were centered around their advanced knowledge of the movements of the stars and planets.

The observatory was found in the town of Buto on the grounds of what is known as the Temple of the Pharaohs.

Shaped like an L with the doorway facing east to observe the rising sun, the building was adorned with tall sandstone pillars, testifying to its use in religious ceremonies as well. A trove of religious artifacts was discovered there, including carvings of all sorts dating back as early as 2,600 BCE, further reinforcing that the observation of the stars was very much tied to the Egyptian cult, both of the old gods—Osiris, Horus, Isis, etc. and the later moon god Amun.

Among the instruments discovered in the observatory during excavations was an inclined stone sundial known as a shadow clock, which is considered to be one of the most prominent timekeeping instruments in ancient times, according to a statement released by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The building consists of a straight cluster of 4.8-meter-long limestone tiles, with five level blocks of limestone, three vertical and two horizontal blocks, and is thought to have had sloping lines used to measure sun inclination and shade and monitor sun movement during daytime hours.

WANT MORE ASTOUNDING EGYPT?

The Egyptians measured time as we do: with a 24-hour day, and a 365-day year. So the shadow clock would work as well for us as for them.

Mr. Fawzi Qutab, head of the Central Department for Marine Surface Monuments and Sinai, explained that on the middle floor of the main hall, a stone platform was discovered with engravings that represent mostly astronomical views of sunrise and sunset during the three seasons of the year.

Calculating key dates of religious festivals and the flooding of the Nile would have been done in the hall, Qutab and his colleagues explain in the statement.

Egyptian astronomy could be incredibly precise, as some of the constellations they mapped remain with us today. Some scholars believe they had the knowledge to calculate precession, or the time it takes for the equinoxes to precess through one complete cycle around the band of the ecliptic or zodiac: approximately 25,920 years.

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Scientists Make Stunning Breakthrough, Turning Banana Peels into Textiles and Renewable Fuels

By
Andy Corbley
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Dr. Jibran Khaliq from Northampton University - released to the press
Dr. Jibran Khaliq from Northampton University – released to the press

Off-grid communities in parts of rural Pakistan could soon have access to a reliable source of electricity for the first time thanks to a new project that aims to convert waste from the banana-growing industry into energy.

80 million metric tons of agricultural waste are generated in Pakistan every year from growing bananas.

Academics from Northumbria University have now teamed up with partners in the UK and Pakistan to create a new solution that will make use of this waste product and provide benefits for local people at the same time.

Together the project partners are developing an innovative two-part system – the first part of which will use new technology to convert the banana waste into textile fibers, with the second part taking the waste generated from that process and using it to produce renewable energy.

This will not only reduce the environmental impact of Pakistan’s textile industry, but also bring cleaner electricity to the 50% of people living in rural areas of the country who live off-grid and currently rely on fossil fuels for energy.

The process has the potential to be applied to almost any form of agricultural waste, meaning it could be used all over the world, benefitting communities and the environment through the supply of renewable textiles and energy.

Entitled, Improving access to sustainable energy in rural Pakistan using food and fiber agro-waste as a renewable fuel (SAFER), the project has been awarded around $330,000 through Innovate UK’s Energy Catalyst program.

Funding through the scheme is awarded to support UK and overseas businesses and organizations to develop highly innovative, market-focused energy technologies that enable energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa and South or Southeast Asia.

Dr. Jibran Khaliq, of Northumbria University’s Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, is a material scientist who researches converting waste energy.

“Pakistan’s textile sector is responsible for significant environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and microplastics,” said Dr. Khaliq in a statement. 

BEHOLD THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY: 

“Our partners at the National Textile University in Faisalabad have developed a technology to convert banana agro waste into textile fibers, but the lack of electricity in rural Sindh, where the majority of the bananas are grown, has prevented this innovation from being scaled-up until now.”

“Over the next year we will be working to develop a new waste-to-energy technology which will convert agro-waste into clean and affordable energy. This solution will benefit the textile industry, and local communities, as well as improving soil fertility and food production through the generation of biofertilizers,” he added.

It is estimated that the banana-growing industry in Pakistan could produce 57,488 million cubic meters of syngas, or synthesis gas as it is otherwise known, as well as 30 million tonnes of nitrogen-enriched biofertilizers.

Syngas is a man-made gas which is created through chemical processes using waste products. It has a wide range of uses and is recognized as a greener way to generate electricity.

SHARE This Great News For The Planet And For Rural Pakistan… 

After Police Didn’t Take it Seriously He Exposed an International Bike Theft Ring on His Own

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Vladislav Bychkov, unsplash
credit – Vladislav Bychkov, unsplash

An avid cyclist used his community bike theft prevention tool, Facebook, a VPN, and a bottomless reservoir of determination to dismantle one of the most prolific bicycle thievery schemes in American history.

California, USA, 2020: riots and looting, a looming presidential election, a pandemic still raging on into the new Delta variant, and Mr. Brian Hance is urgently attempting to get the police to investigate what he says is an organized international bicycle smuggling ring depriving hundreds of Americans of their high-end bikes.

As one might imagine, the police in counties like Sonoma, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz didn’t listen to him. “We’re not Interpol” they would say.

Mr. Hance took up the charge himself, putting together dossiers of evidence on a one-man mission to prevent bike theft in America. Submitting them to various district attorneys, he watched as several key cogs in a giant machine of sophisticated bike theft and smuggling were dismantled.

The story, four years in the making, and summarized by Jessica Garrison of the LA Times, started in early 2020. Bike sales in the terrified and locked-down state of California are skyrocketing as residents seek alternatives to public transport.

Bryan Hance runs Bike Index, a website where bike owners can register their bikes with serial numbers and photos to help ensure that if they’re ever stolen, there’s a community of people who may be able to help find it.

There are 1.3 million bikes on the site, and for a long time the reported thefts were simply crimes of opportunity, but in the spring of 2020, scores of high-end bikes began appearing as missing on Bike Index, and Hance began seeing pictures on Facebook and Instagram of bikes for sale that matched the descriptions of those listed as stolen from Bike Index.

They were all up for sale: in Guadalajara, Mexico. All up and down California, bikes would be reported missing, and then extremely similar, if not identical bikes, would appear on Facebook and Instagram in Mexico in just a few days.

TO GET YOU SMILING: FBI Cracks Down on Rental Price-Fixing Scheme, Raiding Company That Uses Software to Raise Cost of Housing

Hance urged theft victims to report the crime in as detailed a way as possible to build a case file, and then ask the police to contact him so he could explain what he had stumbled upon. He spoke with a dozen police departments and none of them took any action.

Finally, a major development occurred when the Attorney General’s office of Colorado indicted eight people on 227 counts of theft, including 29 bike shop burglaries. All eight pled guilty; one had driven his truck 158 times to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico during the year in which the robberies were committed. That same person had a habit of making large cash withdrawals in Denver and large cash deposits in a bank in El Paso.

MORE GOOD JUSTICE NEWS: Governor Issues Largest Ever Pardon of US Cannabis Convictions with 175K Marylanders Getting Clemency

Hance had been clued into the Colorado bike smuggling ring with a Modus Operandi extremely similar to that of the one he believed was behind the thefts all over California, but was even more bold—bike thieves at one point smashed through the front of a bike shop with a van, loaded up the van with a dozen bikes, and drove off.

As to the California smugglers, Hance believes the man at the end of the trail is operating out of Jalisco, and Hance’s sleuthing turned up perhaps the chief fence on this side of the border. Victoriano Romero—who was then subsequently raided by police and found to be in possession of bikes similar to ones reported stolen on Bike Index, along with $200,000 cash in a strongbox in his San Jose auto shop.

The arrest of Romero hasn’t disrupted the network, and Hance still sees that the Jalisco seller routinely offers high-end bikes for sale on his social media pages: accessible only because Hance uses a VPN to funnel his connection through Mexico.

SEE ALSO: U.S. Marshals Find 200 Missing Children Across the Nation During 6-Week Special Operation

At the moment, the case is hot but has reached an impasse, with Hance still receiving correspondences with people explaining how their bikes have been stolen in ways that match what he’s already identified as being connected to the Mexican smugglers. He’s only one man, but he’s made a heck of a difference; and he’s not finished yet—incensed as he is every time he sees the Jalisco or Guadalajara sellers put a new bike up for sale.

SHARE This Man’s Incredible Detective Work With Your Friends… 

“Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao Tzu

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching

Photo by: Francesco Benvenuto (cropped)

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Good News in History, August 30

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Good News Network
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Melbourne skyline - Melbpal, CC BY 4.0. SA

188 years ago today, the city of Melbourne was founded in southeast Australia. A traditional meeting place of several Aboriginal peoples including the Boonwurrung, Wathaurong, and Wurundjeri peoples, Melbourne blossomed rapidly into a “canvas city” following the designation of a crown colony in 1837, and news of a gold rush in 1850. Melbourne today is the largest city in Australia, and consistently ranks among the most liveable in the world. READ more about the city… (1835)

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Baby Rhino’s First Video: Adorable Footage of Southern White Calf Born in Aussie Zoo

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Werribee Open Range Zoo
credit – Werribee Open Range Zoo

A zoo in Melbourne welcomed a trunkload of joy last week as their resident rhino gave birth to a little male.

It’s the second calf that Mother Kipensi has had at the zoo, and it’s already displayed a “forthright” personality.

Kipenzi is an 11-year-old southern white rhino, one of the most numerous rhino subspecies. Her calf was born on August 18th, and unlike her first baby which she tragically rejected years ago, she has been an attentive mother this time around.

Sheltered from public view as the two bond, visitors will soon be able to see the new boy stomping about his enclosure. Dr. Mark Pilgrim, the zoo’s director, said that Kipenzi was “doing her best to shepherd it and keep it close to her, and making sure that it’s not wandering off too far. So she’s just doing the perfect thing we expect a mother rhino to do.”

Kipenzi herself was born at Werribee Zoo in 2013 to resident rhino Sisi, who also presented a danger to her calf as she would not let Kipenzi out of her sight, even just to walk alongside her to nurse.

The new rhino calf will be named by public vote in the coming weeks. His mother’s name means “precious one” in Swahili.

ANOTHER LITTLE RHINO: Birth of Rare Eastern Black Rhino is Cause for Celebration–Watch the Amazing Birth Caught on Camera, With Only 1,000 in Wild

Of what Dr. Pilgrim expects of the calf over the months and years, he told The Guardian: “He’s going to be a real handful later on.”

WATCH those first steps below… 

SHARE This Adorable Pick Me Up With Your Friends On Social Media… 

Big Chocolate on Brink of Revolution as Swiss Scientists Use Cocoa Bean Waste to Replace Sugar

By
Andy Corbley
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A Peruvian farmer holds a cocoa bean pod - credit USAID / Bobby Neptune CC 2.0.
A Peruvian farmer holds a cocoa bean pod – credit USAID / Bobby Neptune CC 2.0.

Researchers in Zurich have found a way to potentially transform chocolate manufacturing by using the husk and the flesh of the cocoa bean pod to create a sugary syrup.

Clearing two hurdles in one jump, it would allow chocolatiers to remove sugar from the process, and reduce the immense amount of biological waste required to produce chocolate.

Reporting for the BBC from Geneva, Imogen Foulkes describes chocolate production as picking up an apple, pulling out the seeds, and throwing the rest in the garbage.

Cocoa beans, the key ingredient in chocolate, are just that—the beans of the plant. The large, papaya-sized pod and the heaps of white milky flesh inside, are tossed away to rot in the sun, producing thousands of tons of methane, a potent, short-lived greenhouse gas.

At Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology, scientist Kim Mishra and his team distilled the juice contained inside the flesh into a concentrated syrup. Then, by mixing in the pulp as a thickener, and even the husk, they produced a chocolatey gel that’s ideal for making chocolate outright, or as a sweetener, and which contains 14% simple sugars by weight.

Mishra and his team explain that cocoa farming faces several endemic problems, including the poverty that the farmers often live in, and the constantly rising price of the beans.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Coffee Grounds Show Potential to Clean Up Common Water Contamination from Agriculture

“The farmers get significantly extra income through utilizing cocoa pulp,” Mishra told the BBC. “But also the important industrial processing is happening in the country of origin. Creating jobs, creating value that can be distributed in the country of origin.”

As is often the case with sustainable renovations on old industries, the cocoa gel is more expensive than sugar—currently nine times more expensive by Mishra’s reckoning.

But he points out that most governments that manage large domestic sugarcane industries generously subsidize its production.

If the subsidies were removed, the cocoa gel would be much more competitive.

Mishra told the BBC that chocolate industry entities from three continents have already contacted him with interest in his invention, and is certain he will receive some interest from the Swiss chocolatiers.

BETTER AGRICULTURE: Bird-Friendly Maple Syrup Boosts Vermont Forest Diversity and Resilience

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This Isn’t Pasta–It’s Star-Shaped Sand Found in Japan With A Huge Secret Hidden Inside

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Mouser Williams CC 2.0., Flickr
credit – Mouser Williams CC 2.0., Flickr

GNN is not beyond taking a moment to admire the majesty of nature, regardless of form, or in this case, size.

If you went to one of the beaches of the Ryukyu Islands of Japan—take Okinawa for example, and picked up a grain of sand and held it under a magnifying glass, you might notice something amazing—it would have a star shape.

Japan has one of the world’s highest concentrations of star sand beaches on Earth. Sand is made up of ground stone and coral that’s been reduced to grains over many years, but star sand was once actually a living organism.

“Star sand is an empty shell of unicellular microorganisms called Foraminifera,” ‪Kazuhiko Fujita, a professor at the University of the Ryukyus, told National Geographic. “It looks like a star in a cartoon… It has a rounded body with five or more spines like a sea star.”

The beaches on islands like Taketomi, Hatoma, and Iriomote are made up of the skeletons of these microorganisms.

They live under the sea on the crests of reefs, or on the flat sandy plains on the side of the reef that’s sheltered from the current and waves.

While seemingly straightforward, these little star sand Foraminifera have a companion microorganism that shares the interior of their stary exterior—a diatom.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Rare ‘Doomsday’ Fish Surfaces in California–Just the 20th Discovered in the State Since 1901

Diatoms are one of the ocean’s hidden workhorses. They are microscopic algal cells that convert light into carbohydrates and oxygen—i.e. photosynthesis.

Star sand on Hatoma beach – credit, Alain Couette, CC 2.0.

The presence of the diatom inside the star sand accounts for why the skeleton of the Foraminifera forms a star shape. The star points, which are not symmetrical or uniform, allow light to penetrate the exoskeleton and reach the diatoms which in turn convert it to energy to feed both it and the star sand.

As they pass away, the skeletons are washed up on beaches.

MORE ASTONISHING SEA LIFE: White Tufted Sea Creatures Among the Winners in This Underwater Photography Contest

“As their population grows, the number of those skeletons grows, so the sand itself grows,” Mark Wilson, an invertebrate paleontologist at the College of Wooster in Ohio, tells Nat Geo. This could mean “they may play some role in protecting these little islands, essentially adding material to the shores of the island.”

SHARE This Simply Extraordinary Natural Phenomenon Of Life On Social Media…

Door Guardian Sculpture Discovered at Angkor Archaeological Park

By
Andy Corbley
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Credit - APSARA National Authority (ANA), handout
Credit – APSARA National Authority (ANA), handout

Even in the world’s most excavated ancient sites like the Pyramids and Angkor Wat, discoveries are made all the time.

Take this story from Cambodia for example, where at the Angkor Archaeological Park, a nearly complete Dvarapala sculpture, or “door guard” in South Asian mythology, was found buried under the Banteay Prei temple.

Carved of sandstone, the statue had been apparently dislodged because of damage to the upper structure of the gate it was guarding. It was found buried two-and-a-half feet below the ground.

Banteay Prei is a rarely visited temple located near another small temple called Prasat Prei in the northwest corner of the Angkor site. A Buddhist temple, (Angkor was a Buddhist kingdom though also contained many Hinduism elements) Banteay Prei was built by King Jayavarman VII in the late 12th or early 13th century.

“The statue remains in relatively good condition. However, it was found head down facing west, with the body broken into six pieces, including damage to the neck, forearm, left side, waist, and below the knees of both legs,” Chea Sarith, an archaeologist from Cambodia’s Department of Conservation of Monuments and Preventive Archaeology, said in a statement. “A part of its stick is also missing.”

The Dvarapala is a ubiquitous element in Asian ornamental sculpture and architecture. A Sanskrit word meaning door guard, it can be found all across the Buddhist world, including in Japan, Indonesia, and Korea, while also being a constant presence in Hindu and Jain architecture as well.

A dvarapala at Banteay Kdei, Angkor, Cambodia. credit – Diego Delso, CC 3.0.

They can be enormous, monstrous, snake-like, sprite-like, divine, or bedecked with jewels, but the ones at Angkor were carved into lean, modest figures with downward-pointing clubs.

There’s a real element of China’s Terracotta Army about the newly-discovered door guard.

KEEP READING ASIAN HISTORY: 4,000-Year-Old Pyramid Rises From the Soil of Kazakhstan–First of its Kind Ever Found on the Eurasian Steppes

Angkor Archaeological Park is 401 square kilometers, which for a cultural heritage site is nearly unique in the world in terms of size. Many of the kingdom’s most famous temples are concentrated, but there are other temples and structures all over the area that receive almost no visitors.

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“You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

Photo by: Hasan Almasi

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Good News in History, August 29

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Good News Network
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Dr. Ambedkar on a 2015 Indian postage stamp - credit Ministry of Communications GODL India

On this day, 77 years ago, Dr. Bhimrao R. Ambedkar was appointed to chair the Indian constitutional drafting committee. This national hero is responsible for the constitution being one that is largely considered one of the most robust and progressive in all world law, as it guaranteed equal treatment under the law for all members of India’s many castes, something not even Mahatma Gandhi envisioned for a post-Independence India. READ more about his work on the constitution… (1947)

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Rubble from Bombed Ukrainian Buildings Is Being Turned into LEGO-like Blocks to Make New Homes (WATCH)

By
Andy Corbley
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Credit: Crisis Construction
Credit: Crisis Construction

An Australian startup has created the world’s first mobile brick factory that pulverizes rubble from ruined buildings and presses them into LEGO-like bricks.

Idealized as the ultimate in long-term housing solutions for disaster areas, locals who need shelter can place the rubble from their ruined homes inside the machine and within a few days will have thousands of bricks with which to build sturdy homes.

If one thinks about it, ‘rubble’ is a word that has many meanings. In all its depth, rubble implies the presence of clay-based brick, cement or concrete, shattered glass, perhaps metal rebar or drywall. But most critically, rubble generally entails a harrowing, traumatic experience in a human heart.

It was this tragic aspect that led Manfred Him and Blake Stacey to design a machine that would help locals turn their shattered lives into new hope—recycling disaster into relief.

While today’s disasters are a fleeting feature in the 24-hour news cycle, Mobile Crisis Construction (MCC) has utilized the continual coverage of the war in Ukraine to gather enough funding to get their project well and truly on the road.

“In a few weeks after the war started, some pictures came to be seen, and I saw this old lady sitting in front of her completely destroyed house and it just cut deep to my heart,” said Hin, in a video produced by MCC. “And in my heart I said, ‘I can help this woman.’”

The MCC brick factory ticks many boxes. It’s mounted inside a shipping container for quick and easy transport around the world. Rubble is mixed with cement, which when clay-like soil is added, cures the bricks without the need of a high-temperature kiln. For this reason, it also doesn’t need significant power to work and can be run on a generator in areas where the grid is down.

Mobile brick-making machine inside storage container – Crisis Construction

Each mobile factory requires 120,000 Australian dollars to be shipped to Ukraine, arriving ready to be fully operational with minimal local input and minimal local expertise to operate. The bricks are produced in a LEGO-like, interlocking fashion that doesn’t require mortar—and in areas where it’s available, rebar can be inserted into holes running through the center of the bricks to reinforce them.

HURRICANE-PROOF SHELTER: Dominica Financed 2,000 Hurricane-Proof Homes for Locals by Offering Citizenship to Foreigners Who Invest

MCC has plans to establish the initial rebuilding efforts in a relatively safe area near Kyiv, and expand operations into other areas as needed, dependent on funding.

The first project, a collaboration with a local foundation, will rebuild several townhouses. “It’s very simple construction, all in a row,” Nic Matich, one of the co-founders of MCC, told Fast Company. “It’s sort of a test case.”

With unlimited cement, clay, and rubble, a single machine can make up to 8,000 bricks per day and MCC estimates it can produce enough blocks to construct 10 small homes every three days, or one schoolhouse.

MORE PORTABLE DISASTER RELIEF: Revolutionary Portable Airdrop Hospital Unveiled in India Quickly Deploys to Treat 200 People During Disasters

Stacey explains that he has spent his whole career around bricks. “If you’re a doctor you do your thing, but for me I make bricks, so I do my thing. You could say it’s a labor of love,” he said with tears in his eyes.

WATCH the video below…

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Family Unearths Treasure of 1,500 Medieval Coins During Excavation for a New Swimming Pool

By
Andy Corbley
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Credit: State Office for Monument Preservation in Stuttgart
Credit: State Office for Monument Preservation in Stuttgart

The kids of one German household would have been bouncing with excitement as excavations for their new below-ground pool were going on. But imagine their surprise when men from the local council arrived to explain they had found buried treasure instead.

Described by Live Science as “the biggest treasure since 1949 in the region of Freiburg,” the State Office for Monument Preservation in Stuttgart was alerted by a man digging a trench for the pool’s piping after he noticed “small metal plates.”

Claus Völker was working on the pool in Glottertal, a small municipality in the area around Freiburg that was once the center of one of Germany’s biggest silver industries.

After he and his wife began finding more and more of the small “plates” Völker halted his digging and contacted the local council, which sent three certified metal detectives to search the trench where they found 1,000 silver coins dating to the 14th century.

Despite a local deluge turning the excavation area into a muddy soup for days, the detectives returned and were rewarded with another 600 coins.

“You could have bought about 150 sheep with the coins,” said participating archaeologist Andreas Haasis-Berner.

Some of the 1,500 silver coins discovered in the Black Forest region of Germany. (Image credit Courtesy of the State Office for Monument Preservation in the Stuttgart Regional Council)

“These are mainly coins from the mints of Breisach, Zofingen, and Freiburg, which were minted in the period around 1320 [CE],” Haasis-Berner said in a translated statement. “In addition, there are a few coins from Basel, St. Gallen, Zurich, Laufenburg, and Colmar.”

HOARDS OF HISTORY: 

The evaluation of this coin hoard will hopefully better inform the history and development of minting in Breisgau—an area once a part of Freiburg, and which was controlled by the houses of Zähringen and Urach.

These dynasties from the Middle Ages controlled Glotteral when the minting activity in this area of the Black Forest was booming. In the 1940s, a hoard of 5,000 silver coins was found in Breisgau, but despite Glotteral being known as a medieval mining Mecca, until now, no coins had been found here.

SHARE This Buried Treasure With Your Friends On Social Media… 

US National Parks Are Receiving Record-High Gift of $100 Million to Protect and Restore Fragile Ecosystems

By
Andy Corbley
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A reef in Biscayne Bay National Park - credit National Park Service
A reef in Biscayne Bay National Park – credit National Park Service

The official non-profit organization representing America’s National Parks has received notice that it is set to receive the largest philanthropic gift of its history.

$100 million has been set aside for the National Parks Foundation (NPF) from the Lilly Endowment for the purpose of protecting the most fragile ecosystems our parks contain.

Some national parks like Glacier or Canyonlands are enshrined to protect whole tracts of pristine landscape, while others are established to protect very small tracts of very vulnerable ecosystems, like Biscayne Bay and Channel Islands.

To that purpose, Lilly Endowment Inc. has made it known that the $100 million is for the purpose of protecting ecosystems at immediate risk of degradation.

AP reported that the money will be used to address the needs in sites beyond the 63 national parks, said Will Shafroth, president and CEO of the NPF, of which over 400 are managed by the National Park Service.

Restoring coral reefs in Biscayne Bay National Park and other reef-bearing parks, restoring wild trout species in western parks, and protecting the most delicate ecosystems have all been among the NPF’s recent work, and Shafroth expects the first round of grants stemming from the Lilly gift to be within these areas.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: National Park Bounces Back From California’s Biggest Single Fire: ‘There’s still beauty’

Over much of the 21st century, a backlog of deferred maintenance in the national parks grew until it amounted to around $7 billion in needed work. The Great American Outdoors Act, passed by the 116th Congress and signed into law by President Trump, attempted to address this by permanently reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a mechanism that diverts 50% of all the money made from sales of energy (coal, oil, natural gas) on federally-owned land to conservation grants.

It was estimated by Congress that this would generate $9.5 billion for the national parks over five years. However, a recent re-examination of the maintenance needs by the NPS places the needed funding at around $24 billion.

In light of this, the NPF has launched a fund drive looking for private donors to make up part of the difference. Lilly is the first to have contributed.

MORE NATIONAL PARKS NEWS: Some of the Best National Parks Where You Can Avoid the Summer Crowds

Philanthropic gifts like the one from Lilly are crucial as they allow the NPS to act immediately to address time-sensitive and critical projects while they, like all the other federal agencies, jockey over budget negotiations and allocation, the NPF said.

“For over 50 years, private philanthropy has played a vital role in bridging the gap between park needs and available funding. This grant will allow us to supercharge our efforts to ensure our national parks are for everyone, for generations to come,” President Shafroth said in a statement. 

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Florida Man Deploys ‘Subliminal’ Advertising to Incite Happiness Through Viral Sign-Hanging Campaign

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - the Happiness Experiment, retrieved from Facebook
credit – the Happiness Experiment, retrieved from Facebook

“That’s 602,” says Gary King, climbing down from a ladder propped up against a telephone poll, a red and white sign reading “HAPPINESS” newly affixed to its side.

“All I’m doing is subliminal experiments using one word, one word. This word has been around forever but where do you see it? You don’t.”

King has been hanging metal Happiness signs all over St. Petersburg, Florida, since 2019. It’s all part of The Happiness Experiment, a sociology project to subtly influence the population of his hometown through subliminal advertisement.

Profiled in Fox News 13’s “Extraordinary Ordinaries” segment with Walter Allen, King says six proven sociological effects go into his work, the most powerful of which is what advertising companies have done for a century. By putting their logos everywhere, their products remain at the front of your mind.

But what if instead of selling soft drinks or fast food, the goal of that advertisement was to put a smile on your face? That’s King’s mission.

But as joyful as Gary King may seem driving around his home in his F150 wearing his official Happiness Experiment t-shirt and ballcap, the crucible of this happy work was the darkest depths of despair.

In 2012, his son Brian took his own life, leading King into a spiral of unhappiness that almost resulted in him doing the same. The Happiness Experiment’s first test subject was none other than King himself.

LIFT YOURSELF UP TO THE CLOUDS:

Today, King revels in messages received from Floridians who see the signs all over Florida and are affected by them.

“I first saw the happiness experiment TB signs on the day of my miscarriage last year. The signs reminded me that it was all going to be okay, and that I could find happiness during and after this,” read a letter he received.

In another letter, a woman bearing the burden of severe bipolar disorder almost ended her life—from the edge of the very same bridge King’s son Brian used to end his. But on her way there she saw one of the Happiness signs and turned around with fresh perspective.

Perhaps that’s why King said the greatest gift he ever received was his suffering.

WATCH King on Extraordinary Ordinaries with Walter Allen…

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“I think and think for months and years. 99 times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I’m right.” – Albert Einstein

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I’m right.” – Albert Einstein

Photo by: Dollar Gill

With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?

Good News in History, August 28

By
Good News Network
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Roger Tory Peterson

116 years ago today, Roger Tory Peterson, the inventor of the modern field guide, was born. The American naturalist, ornithologist, artist, and educator published his groundbreaking Guide to the Birds in 1934, at age 25, and its first printing sold out in one week. The Peterson Field Guide series eventually included topics ranging from rocks and seashells to reptiles and edible or medicinal plants. He won numerous awards, like the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, after igniting in our hearts a curiosity and love for the natural world. READ a bit more about Peterson and his books… (1908)

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5,000 Are Now Sleeping with Roof Over Their Head Thanks to Oregon Task Force Slashing Homelessness

By
Andy Corbley
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Credit: Multnomah County Oregon
Credit: Multnomah County Oregon

Nearly 5,500 Oregonians have been moved out of homelessness and into housing thanks to persistence from a recently-appointed task force.

This amounts to a 28% increase from the previous year, and the number of housing placements is the most seen in a fiscal year since the task force’s inception.

Located in Multnomah County, one of two counties into which the metropolis of Portland extends, the Joint Office of Homeless Services, set up in 2016, has been hard at work in the city and the surrounding counties addressing what is the largest homeless epidemics in the country.

In a recently compiled dashboard, the Joint Office revealed its gradually growing successes in tackling the problem, which in addition to the figures reported above, included a 35%, amounting to nearly 7,700 people, in the number of residents that “entered shelter” this year over last year.

“These outcomes show what we all know to be true: When we work together, we can create some positive results. These outcomes would not be possible without the providers and front-line staff who have worked tirelessly every day, with deep commitment, to make this progress possible,” said Dan Field, director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services.

Funded by Portlanders in 2020, the Supportive Housing Services Measure which runs a variety of services aimed at helping people experiencing homelessness, allowed for 2,600 additional people to be rehoused—greatly aiding the Joint Office’s efforts.

In adjacent Clackamas County, the rate of homelessness fell by 65% from 2019 to 2023, with 429 people and 223 homeless households being placed in permanent supportive housing, exceeding the stated goal for the period by 20, GNN reported.

Utilizing money from the Supportive Housing Services Measure, Clackamas was able to prevent 1,369 people, and 591 households from being evicted.

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“We work hard to reduce and prevent homelessness early on before it even happens, with rental assistance, and we make sure that we have the resources and the assets up and running to give people housing when they need it,” Ben West, Clackamas County commissioner, told KATU News.

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“Our work this year would not have been possible without us leaning into partnership, both building new connections and strengthening old ones. None of us can do it alone,” said Field. “These outcomes show that we are on an upward trajectory. We are leaving the past in the past, taking the lessons with us into the future, and pushing forward together.”

SHARE These Great Outcomes With Your Friends From The Pacific Northwest… 

Passionate Mushroom Researcher Spends Decade Unravelling Mystery of 200-year-old Museum Specimen

By
Andy Corbley
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Scientist Tom May has been recognized internationally for his work with fungi - released to the media.
Scientist Tom May has been recognized internationally for his work with fungi – released to the media.

A passionate expert on fungi has spent a decade trying to discover the identity behind a preserved and mislabeled specimen in an Australian collection—all for the sake of science.

Despite being one of the 5 kingdoms of life—alongside animals, plants, and two kinds of microorganisms—mycology, or the study of fungi, is not only a niche field, but a shrinking one.

At the National Herbarium in Melbourne, Australia works Tom May, the institution’s principal research scientist in mycology.

He’s a man for his place and time, to quote The Big Lebowski, and has worked for decades studying and identifying various fungi—and none presented a greater challenge than a small sample of wood and fungus contained within a handmade blue envelope dating back over a century.

It was donated to the Herbarium by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Victoria, and inside Dr. May found some small shriveled mushroom samples bearing only an untraceable name.

Dr. May opened that blue packet a decade ago, and unraveling the mystery of the sample therein required a masterclass in scientific sleuthing that took him all over Europe.

For all the time spent sifting through what were probably inventory records, May’s closest encounter while trying to identify the mysterious old sample was a book by a German researcher published in Latin back in 1805.

The little blue packet and tiny specimen that piqued Dr. May’s interest – released to the media.

A team of German scientists wrote the Conspectus fungorum in Lusatiae superioris, in which they documented 1,000 samples of mushrooms and molds found near the border between Germany and Poland. The blue packet contained the name Tremella saligna, and Dr. May believed it was one of around 300,000 specimens obtained by the then-Government Botanist of Victoria in 1883.

Finding out more was “sort of like putting bits together of a jigsaw”, May told ABC News Down Under.

Why it’s important

Today, searching for species by taxonomy is an invaluable resource for scientists studying life on Earth. Regardless of the scientist’s spoken language, they can communicate with each other, read inventories and papers, and conduct research, all in Latin—as taxonomy uses Latin exclusively.

Plants, birds, and especially fungi, often take on numerous colloquial names by local cultures, causing confusion as groups of people in the same country—even using the same language—will give different nicknames to the same species.

A page from the book published more than 200 years ago. Dr. May’s sample appears as number 7 – released to the media.

Even though it bore a Latin name, it was no straightforward thing for scientists so long ago to alert all of Europe that, for example, they had found a small tree-growing mushroom in Germany and officially named it.

MIND-BLOWING MUSHROOM DISCOVERIES: 

For that reason, May had to travel to the USA and Germany to confer with scientists about whether the specimen held in the Herbarium was the same as in the book. In Germany however, he found a handwritten list created by one of the book’s authors: Johannes Baptista von Albertini.

“We were thrilled to see that the handwritten names in Albertini’s list and on the specimens exactly matched,” Dr. May said.

Sure enough, the species had been catalogued even before Albertini’s 1805 publication as Propolis farinosa. ABC News described it as being like a phone book with the same person listed at two different addresses and numbers. Whoever logged it in the National Herbarium back in 1883 had taken the name from Albertini’s publication, one which mycology more broadly, had left behind.

The species has now been described, genetically mapped, and unified internationally as P. farinosa. Dr. May has also been recognized internationally, and inducted as a Fellow into the International Mycological Association for his outstanding contributions to mycology.

There are 150,000 species of described fungi, but there may be as many as 3.5 million out there yet to be discovered. Fungi—which contain both the lifeforms that produce mushrooms and molds—are thought to represent a pharmacological gold mine. Having already provided a little something called “penicillin” to medical science, fungi show strong natural anticancer effects—and mycologists like Dr. May say it is a key area to search for new medicines.

SHARE This Wonderful Story Of A Passionate Man’s Work For The Benefit Of Humanity… 

People Seen as Wise Share These Characteristics – All Over the World

By
Andy Corbley
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A modern statue of Socrates, Greece. credit - lentina_x, CC 2.0.
A modern statue of Socrates, Greece. credit – lentina_x, CC 2.0.

Across different cultures and countries, people perceive the wisest members of society to be logical and reflective as well as able to consider other people’s feelings and perceptions.

This was found in a new study that examined people’s conceptions of wisdom as a characteristic in 16 radically different world cultures, from Japan and Slovakia to Ecuador and Morocco.

Wisdom: a hallowed human trait that transcends intelligence, knowledge, and age. Wisdom received is identified as much by the feeling it imparts as by any metric of truth or actionability it contains.

Hoping to produce a concrete, phenomenological blueprint of wise conduct and character in humans, a group of researchers from the Univ. of Waterloo, Canada, looked at perceptions of wisdom across 12 countries and five continents.

The results offer a template for the characteristics a person may have to develop in order for their peers to consider them wise. Those with such an aim should read the study, published in Nature Communications, carefully.

Researchers examined the underlying principles guiding who we perceive as wise in political leadership, science, and daily life. Across different cultures, participants’ judgments converged on two dimensions: reflective orientation and socio-emotional awareness. Reflective orientation includes characteristics such as thinking logically, emotion control, and application of knowledge. Socio-emotional awareness includes characteristics like care for other’s feelings and attention to social context.

“To our surprise, the two dimensions emerged across all cultural regions we studied, and both were associated with explicit attribution of wisdom,” said Dr. Maksim Rudnev, a postdoctoral research associate in psychology at Waterloo and lead author.

The study posits a universal way that people around the world might choose to judge, support, and trust leaders, educators, and others in positions of influence.

“While both dimensions of wisdom work together, people associate wisdom more with the reflective orientation. If someone is viewed as not able to reflect and think logically, then perceptions of them as socio-emotionally competent and moral won’t compensate,” said Dr. Igor Grossmann, the senior corresponding author and the director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at Waterloo.

The collaboration among 26 research institutions was coordinated by the Geography of Philosophy consortium and included researchers from North and South Americas (Canada, U.S., Ecuador, and Peru), Asia (China, India, Japan, and South Korea), Africa (Morocco and South Africa), and Europe (Slovakia).

SOCIAL SCIENCES TODAY:  Humble Leaders Inspire Greater Cooperation Among Teachers – and Workers of All Kinds

The study involved 2,707 participants from 16 socio-economically and culturally diverse groups. They were prompted to compare 10 individuals, including scientists, politicians, and teachers, in the context of making a difficult choice in a real-life scenario without a clear right or wrong answer.

The participants were then asked to rate the degree of wisdom of these individuals and themselves. The data was analyzed to identify underlying dimensions governing perceptions of wisdom among individuals and between groups.

MORE WISDOM LIKE THIS: Retirees Share Top 40 Pearls of Wisdom With Our Younger Generations

“Interestingly, our participants considered themselves inferior to most exemplars of wisdom in regard to reflective orientation but were less self-conscious when it comes to socio-emotional characteristics,” Rudnev said.

“Understanding perceptions of wisdom around the world has implications for leadership, education, and cross-cultural communication. It is the first step in understanding universal principles in how others perceive wisdom people in different contexts.”

SHARE This Interesting Survey Of Who In Society Is Wise On Social Media… 

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