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Autistic Bowler Achieves Dream With His First Perfect 300 Game And Joins the PBA as a Pro

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Matt Sipes
Matt Sipes

On March 25, an autistic bowler who recently entered the Professional Bowlers Association achieved something he’s been dreaming about for years—his first-ever 300 game.

For most casual bowlers, a sanctioned perfect game is rare. For Matt Sipes, it represented so much more than just 12 strikes. It was the result of years of dedication, focus, and determination, and although there have been challenges along the way, he never gave up on his goal.

“It’s something I’ve dreamed about my entire life,” the former collegiate bowler told GNN.

“To finally achieve it feels almost surreal. I’m so grateful, and I hope I can inspire other athletes on the spectrum.”

Since playing his first game at age six, he’s loved the sound of the pins crashing into each other—but it was the sense of calmness and the sense of belonging he felt that changed his life.

Bowling was something that clicked right away. The energetic child with ADHD growing up in Wood Dale, Illinois, had “so much fun” that he kept asking his mom to take him back to the lanes.

He bowled competitively in the Junior League and later in high school.

“When I graduated from high school, college was not really on my mind. I thought I would just get a job and keep bowling in leagues,” he wrote in an essay for Bowlers Journal.

But his coach suggested Matt try out for a college team—and he got a scholarship to Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, not far from his home.

“That’s when everything changed.”

He has competed in leagues and tournaments for 15 years, both locally and across the country in Las Vegas, Reno, and Baton Rouge. One of the highlights was playing in the Pro Bowlers Association LBC National Championships and Open Championships.

“Competing at that level makes me feel like my hard work is paying off. And it is so cool to sometimes be bowling alongside the pros.”

For his mother, Christine Sipes, watching him throw that final strike in his perfect game at Wood Dale Bowl was overwhelming.

“It wasn’t just about the score—it was about seeing his hard work, resilience, and love for the sport come together in one unforgettable moment,” she said.

Perfect game score of 300

(Watch the video of that final strike in a video below…)

“Bowling has helped me become the person I am today,” said the 23-year-old.

MORE PASSION FOR AUTISM:
• Car Wash Hires All-Autistic Staff to Wash Away Barriers: 10 Years Later, There’s Now 4 Florida Locations
• Man Who Didn’t Read or Write Until His Late Teens Becomes Cambridge University’s Youngest Black Professor

“I’m excited to keep growing, support others on their journey, and see what’s possible for me as I prepare for the PBA.”

@mattthebowler

i was unstoppable with that 300 game 🤙🏻🤙🏻🤙🏻🤙🏻🤙🏻🤙🏻

♬ Unstoppable (I put my armor on, show you how strong I am) - Sia

CHEER THE PERFECT MOMENT By Sharing With Autistic Communities on Social Media…

Native Americans Were Making Dice and Gaming Thousands of Years Before Anyone Else

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Native American dice as old as 13,000 years– Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution American Museum of Natural History and Wyoming University (SWNS
Native American dice as old as 13,000 years – Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History and Wyoming University (SWNS)

Tribal casinos in the US may seem a more natural fit, after hearing about new research showing that Native Americans were making dice for gaming thousands of years before anyone else in the world.

Evidence revealed that the earliest known dice in human history were made and used by hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains more than 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age.

That was thousands of years before the earliest known dice from Bronze Age societies in Europe, Africa and Asia, according to scientists.

The new study, published in the journal American Antiquity, indicates that dice and games of chance have been a “persistent” feature of Native American culture for at least the last 12,000 years.

The earliest examples were from 12,800 years ago, discovered at archaeological sites from the Late Pleistocene Folsom era in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico—and the artifacts predate the earliest known Old World dice by more than 6,000 years.

“Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations,” said the study’s author Robert Madden.

“What the archaeological record shows is that ancient Native American groups were deliberately making objects designed to produce random outcomes, and using those outcomes in structured games, thousands of years earlier than previously recognized.”

Unlike modern cubic dice, they were two-sided “binary lots”—carefully crafted, small pieces of bone that were flat or slightly rounded, often oval or rectangular in shape, sized to be held in the hand and tossed in groups onto a playing surface.

LOOK AT THESE, TOO: Exquisitely Preserved 1,000-yo Gaming Pieces Found in German Castle Offer Snapshot of Medieval Pastimes

Folsom era Native American dice – Courtesy of the Department of Anthropology at University of Wyoming (via SWNS)

The two faces of the binary lots were distinguished by applied markings, surface treatments, colouration, or other visible modifications, much like heads or tails on a coin, with one face designated as the “counting” side.

When thrown, they reliably landed with one side or the other facing upward, producing a binary—or two-outcome—result.

Researchers say that sets of the dice were also cast together, and scores were determined by how many landed with the counting face up.

“They’re simple, elegant tools,” said Madden, a Ph.D. student at Colorado State University.

“But they’re also unmistakably purposeful. These are not casual by-products of bone-working. They were made to generate random outcomes.”

The study introduced a new test—a checklist of measurable physical features for identifying North American dice archaeologically—derived from a comparative analysis of 293 sets of such dice documented across the continent by Stewart Culin in his 1907 Bureau of American Ethnology book, Games of the North American Indians.

Native American ball games, 1845 illustration- The New York Public Library Digital Collections (cropped)

Researchers applied the test systematically to the published archaeological record, essentially re-examining artifacts long labeled as possible “gaming pieces” or otherwise overlooked to determine whether they meet the new objective criteria for dice.

In most cases, Madden said the evidence had been in the archaeological record for decades, but without a clear standard for identifying dice, it had never been analyzed as part of a larger pattern.

“What was missing was a clear, continent-wide standard for recognizing what we were looking at.”

Using the new approach, he identified more than 600 diagnostic and probable dice from sites spanning every major period of North American prehistory, beginning in the Late Pleistocene. They appeared at 57 archaeological sites across a 12-state region, associated with a variety of different cultures.

Historians of mathematics widely regard dice games as humanity’s earliest structured engagement with randomness, an intellectual precursor to probability theory, statistics, and later scientific thinking. Until now, the origins of such practices were thought to lie exclusively in Old World complex societies beginning around 5,500 years ago.

NATIVE GOOD NEWS: First of its Kind Medical School in Cherokee Nation Graduates First Class of Doctors

“These findings (show) they were intentionally creating, observing, and relying on random outcomes in repeatable, rule-based ways that leveraged probabilistic regularities, such as the law of large numbers.

RELATED: Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Finally Published After 70 Years–It Turned Out to be ‘Deep and Very Fun’

“That matters for how we understand the global history of probabilistic thinking.” But Madden had other theories, too.

“Games of chance and gambling created neutral, rule-governed spaces for ancient Native Americans. They allowed people from different groups to interact, exchange goods and information, form alliances, and manage uncertainty.

“In that sense, they functioned as powerful social technologies.”

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Your Weekly Horoscope – ‘Free Will Astrology’ by Rob Brezsny

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Our partner Rob Brezsny, whose latest book is Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as an Oracle, provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)

Here is your weekly horoscope…

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of April 4, 2026
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com

ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Now is an excellent time to decide your favorite color is amaranth (a vivid red-violet), or sinopia (earthy red-orange), or viridian (cool blue-green, darker than jade). You might also conclude that your favorite aroma is agarwood (deep, smoky, resin-soaked wood), or heliotrope (cherry-almond vanilla), or petrichor (wet soil after a rain). I’m trying to tell you, Aries, that you’re primed to deeply enhance your detailed delight in smells, colors, tastes, feelings, physical sensations, types of wind, tones of voice, qualities of light—and everything else. Indulge in sensory and sensual pleasures!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
My Taurus friend Elena keeps a “gratitude garden” in her backyard. When she feels grateful for a specific joy in her life, she writes it on biodegradable paper and buries it among her flowers, herbs, and vegetables. “I feed the earth with appreciation,” she says. “Returning the gift.” She feels this practice ensures that her garden and her life flourish. Her devoted attention to recognizing blessings attracts even more blessings. Her cultivated appreciation for beauty and abundance leads her to discover more beauty and abundance. Elena’s approach is pure Taurean genius. I invite you to create your own rituals for expressing your thankful love. Not just paying dutiful homage in your thoughts, but giving your appreciation weight, texture, and presence in the actual world.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Many of us periodically slip into the daydream that everything would finally feel right if only our lives were somehow different. If we’re single, maybe we imagine we ought to be partnered; if we’re partnered, we wish our beloved would change, or we secretly wonder about someone else entirely. That’s the snag. The blessing is this: In the days ahead, you’re likely to discover a surprising ease with your life exactly as it is, and feel a genuine, grounded peace. Congratulations in advance!

CANCER (June 21-July 22):
A cautious voice in your head murmurs: “Proceed carefully. Don’t be overly impressed with your own beauty. Stick with dependable methods. Live up to expectations and avoid explorations into the unknown.” Your bold genius interrupts: “Tell that fussy, boring voice to shut up. The truth is that you have earned the right to be an inquisitive wanderer, an ingenious lover, a fanciful storyteller, and a laughing experimenter.”

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
In medieval European gardens, there was a tradition of creating “pleasure labyrinths.” They were walking meditations that spiraled inward to a center, then back out again. There were no decisions and no wrong turns, just the relaxing, meditative journey itself. I think you need and deserve a metaphorical pleasure labyrinth right now, Leo. You’ve been treating every choice as a high-stakes dilemma and every path as potentially problematic. But what if the current phase isn’t about making the perfect decision? Maybe it’s about trusting that the path you’re on will take you where you need to go, even if it meanders. By cosmic decree, you are excused from second-guessing every turn.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Your eye for imperfection is a gift until it becomes the lens through which you see everything. The critical faculty that drives you to refine and enhance may also shunt you into a dead end of never-being-good-enough, where impossible standards immobilize you. In the coming weeks, dear Virgo, I beg you to use your vaunted discernment primarily in the service of growth and pleasure rather than constraint. Be excited by buoyant analysis that empowers constructive change. Homework: For every flaw you identify, identify two things that are working well. You won’t ignore what needs attention, but instead will compensate for the excessive criticism that sometimes grips your inner critic.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
You Libras shouldn’t expend excessive effort trying to force the external world to be more tranquil. That’s mostly a futile task that distracts from your more essential work. The secret to your happiness is to cultivate serenity within. How do you do that? One reliable way to shed tension is to continually place yourself in the presence of beauty. Nothing makes you relax better than being surrounded by elegance, grace, and loveliness. Now is a good time to recommit yourself to this key practice.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
In computer science, there’s a concept called “graceful degradation.” When a system encounters an error, it doesn’t crash completely. It loses some functionality but keeps running with what remains. According to my reading of the astrological omens, Scorpio, you’d be wise to acknowledge a graceful degradation like that. Something isn’t working as you had hoped and planned. A relationship? Project? Adventure? In classic Scorpio fashion, you’re tempted to burn it all down. But I encourage you to practice graceful degradation instead. Keep what still works and release only what’s actually broken. Not everything has to be all-or-nothing. You can lose some functionality and still run. You can be partially out of whack and still be valuable. PS: The awkwardness is temporary.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
At your best and brightest, you are a hunter—though not the kind who stalks prey with weapons and trophies in mind. Your hunt is noble: the fervent pursuit of adventures that nourish your curiosity and the brave forays you make into unfamiliar territories where intriguing new truths shimmer. And now, as the world drifts deeper into chaos, you are called to respond with even more exploratory audacity. I invite you to further refine your hunter’s craft. Lift it up to an even higher, more luminous form of seeking.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Capricorn meditation teacher Wes Nisker guided his students to relax the relentless mental static that muddled their awareness. But he also understood that excessive striving can sabotage the peace we’re seeking. I invoke his influence now to help you release some of the jittery goal-obsession you’ve been gripped by. Nisker and I offer you permission to temporarily suspend the potentially exhausting drive to constantly be better and more accomplished. Instead, just for now, simply be your authentic self. Loosen your high-strung grip on self-improvement and allow yourself the radical luxury of purposelessness.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Here’s a danger you Aquarians are sometimes prey to: spending so much energy fixing the big picture that you neglect what’s up close and personal. You may get so involved in rearranging systems that immediate concerns get less than your best attention. I hope you won’t do that in the coming weeks. Your aptitude for overarching objectivity is a gift because it enables you to recognize patterns others can’t detect. But it may also divert you from the messy, intricate intimacy that gritty transformation requires. Your assignment: Eagerly attend to the details, which I bet will be more interesting than you imagine.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
In horticulture, “hardening off” is the process of gradually exposing seedlings started indoors to outdoor conditions before transplanting them. Too much exposure too fast will shock them; no exposure at all will leave them unprepared. Let’s invoke this as a useful metaphor for you. I believe you are being hardened off, Pisces. Life is making small, increasing demands on your tender self. Though this may sometimes feel uncomfortable, I assure you that it’s preparation, not cruelty. You’re being readied for a shift from protected space to open ground. My advice is twofold: 1. Don’t retreat back into the ultra-safe greenhouse. 2. Don’t let yourself be thrown into full exposure all at once.

WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com

(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)

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“We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering.” – Sharon Salzberg

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Good News Network
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Credit: Ishan Gupta

Quote of the Day: “We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering.” – Sharon Salzberg

Photo by: Ishan Gupta

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?

Credit: Ishan Gupta

Good News in History, April 4

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Good News Network
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51 years ago today, Microsoft was founded as a partnership between childhood friends and computer whiz-kids Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The company became the largest seller of software in the world, developing MS-DOS for early IBM PCs, and later, Windows, and Microsoft Office. Its market capitalization has topped $1 trillion, and through various acquisitions has become one of the most valuable brands in history. READ more about their long string of successes… (1975)

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‘Grain Bank Accounts’ Free Indian Farmers from Middleman Through Online Marketplace

By
Andy Corbley
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Ergos app reshapes how small farmers sell their crops in India - Courtesy of Kishor Kumar Jha / via Better India
Ergos app reshapes how small farmers sell their crops in India – Courtesy of Kishor Kumar Jha / via Better India

From the Indian state of Bihar comes the story of a life-changing argi-tech application that’s giving farmers unprecedented control over the financial destiny of their crop.

Called Ergos, this digital “grain account” is linked to a network of “grain banks” where farmers can store their crops, monitor inventory and national prices, and sell when they’re ready too with the touch of their phone.

Farming is a hard job with no shortage of anxieties. No small landowning farmer has the hours to spare during harvest season to build a network of brokers, couriers, and sales teams that would be necessary to get their grain to market at a price that will reliably put food on their table.

That’s where that most infamous and mostly necessary figure in commerce comes in: the middle man. Before, one farmer said, middle men would quote prices, and farmers had little choice but to sell or risk their crop wasting away.

This status quo was something Kishor Kumar Jha and Praveen Kumar hoped to end. They founded Ergos, the system of grain banks and accounts to remove these middle men and allow farmers complete control of their sales decisions.

Ajay Kumar Chaudhary, a 66-year-old farmer from Bihar’s Kalyanpur, spoke to the Better India news outlet about his experience using Ergos, and how it transformed him from distressed seller to patient trader.

“If they said the price has fallen by 10 [rupees] today, we had to sell at that rate,” he explains. “Now we decide when to sell. If the price is not good today, we can wait. Maybe after a few days, the rate becomes better.”

“If we need money immediately,” Chaudhary says,” we can take a loan at about 1% interest and keep the grain stored The loan is automatically repaid when the grain is eventually sold.”

GAME-CHANGING APPS: Big Insurance Uses AI to Quickly Deny Claims, One Man Fights Back with AI App That Quickly Appeals

Borrowing money in the developing world can be extremely costly. If you think a 19.5% interest on your Discover card is a lot, try signing for some of the rates that these Bihari farmers are subjected to: often 50, 60%.

Undoubtedly some of that is predatory. On the other hand, consider the risks involved in lending money to a poor farmer who has little in the way of farm machinery, sanitary grain storage capacity, A-rated collateral, or effective pest control measures.

MORE INDIAN NEWS: Teacher Wins $1M Prize for Turning India’s Slums Into Hundreds of Open-Air Classrooms

The farmer reiterated that in his profession, there are no shortages of uncertainties: weather, political decisions, pests and crop health, and of course, market pricing. But with the introduction of Ergos, at least one major dependency has been removed.

The benefits, explains the business’s founder Jha, extend beyond the farmer and his finances, and indeed touch the whole nation. India loses approximately 18% of her harvested grain every year, Jha says, through improper storage facilities. The village grain banks operated by Ergos use scientific best-practices for keeping grain stored for long periods without rot.

SHARE This Brilliant Finance Tech For Those Who Need It Most on Social Media… 

Used Diapers Turned into New Ones Thanks to Super-Recycling Japanese Towns and New Innovation

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Andy Corbley
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Japanese diaper brands on a shelf - credit 維基小霸王- CC BY-SA 4.0.
Japanese diaper brands on a shelf – credit 維基小霸王- CC BY-SA 4.0.

In the 1990s, a pair of Japanese municipalities estimated that the landfill they shared was going to be full by 2004.

Unless they did something to start reducing the size of their waste streams, the towns would have to sacrifice more precious land, or truck their waste much farther afield to another site.

Their response was to ramp up recycling of the clearest categories such as glass, paper, and metals, before moving on to more complicated streams, particularly a very stinky one: dirty diapers.

“Ultimately, our top priority is to reduce our trash and extend the life of the landfill,” Kenichi Matsunaga, an environment official for the city of Shibushi, told the Japan Times.

Billions of diapers—used by the very youngest and the oldest in society, are discarded every year in Japan. Made of layered, super-absorbing fibers and other materials, they aren’t readily recyclable.

Located in Kagoshima Prefecture, a new recycling initiative for diapers separates and shreds this core material in a way that prepares it for reuse while saving millions of tons of landfill-bound waste.

Shibushi, and the nearby town of Osaki, recycle 80% of household waste—some four-times the national avergae. Here, the company Unicharm aimed to pioneer its diaper recycling method where locals are already used to sorting their trash.

Residents’ diapers are collected, but only if their names are written on the bags to ensure accountability. Then, they’re washed and shredded until their component elements of  plastic, pulp, and super-absorbent polymer (SAP) are separated.

TACKLING DIAPERS: Packet of Fungi Inside New Diapers Breaks Them Down in Landfill Turning it to Mycelium

Previously, GNN has reported that the company has used this material to make toilet paper, but now have advanced their method and machinery enough to reuse the pulp in diaper manufacturing.

The recycled diaper toilet paper – credit: Osaki Municipal Government’s SDGs Promotion Council

The process uses ozone, a sterilizing gas, to clean and deodorize the pulp to the point that it passes sanitary requirements. The company is currently working on ways to prepare the SAP for reuse, and expects progress by 2028.

MORE JAPAN NEWS: Japan’s Yogurt Delivery Ladies Serve as a Support Net for Country’s Aging Population

The country is probably the only one in the world where more diapers are produced for incontinent elders than for babies. Larger and more robust, they take up more space in landfills.

Japan wants to aim for 100 cities and towns to be recycling diapers by 2030, “or at least to start talking about it” reports Japan Times.

SHARE This Great Start To Tackling A Huge Smelly Problem… 

Young Boy with Cancer Delivers 124 Gorgeous Easter Baskets to Kids in Hospitals After Fundraising $2,000

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Andy Corbley
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12-year-old Nathan Yuill donates Easter baskets to Providence Alaska Children's Hospital (Courtesy of hospital via FB)
12-year-old Nathan Yuill donates Easter baskets to Providence Alaska Children’s Hospital (Courtesy of hospital via FB)

Nathan Yuill was diagnosed as a child with stage-4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but the good news is that he’s two treatment courses away from what is anticipated to be a bell-ringing remission announcement.

But before his time in Providence Children’s Hospital came to an end, 12-year-old Yuill raised $2,000 to give almost every child there a colorful, present-filled Easter basket.

Clinical Nurse Manager of Pediatric at Providence, Nicki Thurwanger said that the carts they normally use to transport meals and other things from room to room were overflowing with the baskets—all donated and put together by kind, nearby residents.

“When the kiddos are here, every day becomes challenging and hard, and you look for the little things that make you be a kid,” Thurwanger told Alaska News Source.

“And so I think that’s what things like this give back is, yes, you’re in the hospital, but you’re a kid, and you get to still be a kid when you’re here.”

Nathan’s mother, Dena Yuill, said she was shocked when donations for the project, dreamt up by her son, topped $2,000 in just 24 hours.

“He’s amazing. I wish I had half the strength he does,” she said.

124 baskets in total were distributed in time for Good Friday in Providence and the nearby Alaska Native Medical Center.

SIMILAR STORIES: 

Children certainly get to have more fun for Easter than their parents, and thanks to Yuill, his fellow patients get an opportunity during a difficult time to just be a kid again.

WATCH the story below from Alaska News Source… 

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Teen Finds 6-Inch Megalodon Tooth Millions of Years Old While Diving for Fossils on Florida Coast

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Andy Corbley
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Teen Aiden Andrews finds megalodon shark tooth while diving in Florida - Courtesy of Fossil Junkies
Teen Aiden Andrews finds megalodon shark tooth while diving in Florida – Courtesy of Fossil Junkies

A Florida teen will have quite the story for his friends to chew on when they all meet back in class after spring break.

16-year-old Aiden Andrews found the 6-inch-long tooth of an ancient shark known as a megalodon while diving near Sarasota.

This was the largest shark species in history, and is believed to have had a stronger bite than any other creature to ever live. The largest megalodon known weighed an estimated 50 tons in life, and stretched 60 feet nose to tail.

Aiden was on a shallow-water dive expedition with his dad Brian through a fossil-hunting tour group in Venice, Florida, called Fossil Junkies when he pulled the giant gnasher from the silt off Manasota Key, near Sarasota.

Though experts call it a rare find, Fossil Junkies seem to be experts in knowing where to look, as their homepage is covered in smiling, ecstatic divers holding their megalodon teeth.

Though the megalodon shark was enormous, its teeth do seem to have a habit of ending up in small hands.

In 2022, GNN reported that a 6-year-old walking on Bawdsey Beach in the UK turned up a 4-inch-long tooth of a megalodon, buried for at least 3 million years.

Semi-professional fossil hunters with trowels and knee pads for kneeling in the mud told the father and son at the time that it’s nearly unheard of to find megalodon teeth in Great Britain, despite the fact they have been found nearly everywhere on Earth.

It’s not that unheard of, as it turns out, because in 2023 another young man, 13-year-old Ben Evans, found a 10-million-year-old megalodon tooth at Walton-on-the-Naze Beach in  Essex.

On Christmas Day, 2022, Molly Sampson from the Chesapeake Bay area went fossil hunting with her dad after receiving a pair of insulated waders and a sifting basket from Santa Claus. She too pulled up a ‘meg’ tooth that was roughly 15 million years old.

Molly told local news that when it comes to megalodons, every inch in the teeth was 10 in the body, so Molly’s would have been 50 feet long.

WATCH Aiden pull up the tooth from the shallows below…  

SHARE This Great Spring Break Surprise With Your Friends Who Can Dive… 

“We are not only our brother’s keeper; in countless large and small ways we are our brother’s maker.” – Bonaro Overstreet

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Good News Network
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Credit: Andriyko Podilnyk

Quote of the Day: “We are not only our brother’s keeper; in countless large and small ways we are our brother’s maker.” – Bonaro Overstreet

Photo by: Andriyko Podilnyk

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?

Credit: Andriyko Podilnyk

Good News in History, April 3

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Good News Network
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Goodall in 2018 by Muhammad Mahdi Karim, GFDL; and chimpanzee by NH53, CC license

92 years ago today, Dame Jane Goodall was born. The beloved British primatologist first observed chimpanzees creating tools in 1960 (and 2 years earlier had been a secretary). It was the first time that an animal was observed to modify an object to create a tool for a specific purpose. She studied at Cambridge, became Dr. Jane Goodall, and put forth another unconventional idea for the time: “It isn’t only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought [and] emotions like joy and sorrow.” READ more about her work… (1934)

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Endangered Cockatoos Finally Hatch Chick in Artificial Nest, a Promise of Conservation Success

By
Andy Corbley
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- credit Benjamin Muller, supplied to ABC Au
– credit Benjamin Muller, supplied to ABC Au

The future looks substantially brighter for a beautiful and totally unique Australian cockatoo species that requires very specific nesting habitat.

Scientists say it takes 250 years, some termites, no wildfires, and a cyclone to make the ideal home for the palm cockatoo, a difficult combination at the best of times. But deforestation is making this natural coincidence harder and harder to take place.

Now, however, conservationists at the NGO People for Wildlife have “cracked the code” on how to get these birds to nest in artificial tree hollows, opening up a whole new chapter in their protection.

“This is huge news,” People for Wildlife associate researcher Christina Zdenek told ABC News AU. “We have a highly endangered species in severe decline, and we’ve been working for years to crack the code of how to help them. And we finally have.”

Located in the northernmost state of Queensland, the palm cockatoo is a large bird well-over one foot in length from tip to tail. It sports a beautiful black crest and red cheek, huge black beak, and like other cockatoos, can use tools—specifically it uses a stick to drum out rhythms on hollow trees during mating season.

It’s earned the nickname the Ringo bird, after Ringo Star, the drummer for the Beatles.

There are less than 2,000 of these birds remaining, however, as the habitat they evolved to nest in is extremely specific. They look for hollows made in mature trees by termites or fungi which have been exposed by the strong winds of Southern Pacific cyclones. These conditions can sometimes take 250 years to manifest, and the combination of logging and more intense wildfires severely interrupts this process.

Teaming up with a specialist woodcarver, People for Wildlife designed the “Palm Cockatube,” a section of old-growth tree trunk hollowed out in such a way as to mimic the natural feel of these hollows.

An adult palm cockatoo and its fledgling chick – credit Benjamin Muller supplied to ACB Au

Three different designs divided across 29 artificial nests were hung from trees in prime habitat where it was known the cockatoos lived but weren’t currently nesting. Last September, Dr. Zdenek and her colleague Benjamin Muller noticed one specific hollow being visited by adult birds. Later they discovered an egg was inside, and just recently, it hatched to their delight, and to the delight of the Apudthama Traditional Owners.

MORE AUSTRALIAN BIRDS: 

Tree hollows are used by more than just cockatoos in Australia; a whole gamut of animals exploit these natural lignan caves as shelter. Dr. Zdenek believes that if the fussy cockatoos enjoy the artificial nests, than other animals like the glider, a tree-dwelling marsupial with wings like a flying squirrel, will also benefit.

“Palm cockatoos here are the umbrella species — if you save them, you save dozens of others,” she said.

SHARE This Cockatoo And Its Cockatube With Your Friends Down Under…

Remains of ‘Three Musketeers’ Hero May Have Been Found Under Church Altar – DNA Testing Underway

By
Andy Corbley
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The d'Artagnan statue on the monument of Alexandre Dumas, in Paris - credit, Marimarina CC BY-SA 4.0.
The d’Artagnan statue on the monument of Alexandre Dumas, in Paris – credit, Marimarina CC BY-SA 4.0.

It had long been suspected that somewhere in or under the Church of Peter and Paul in Wolder, the Netherlands, lay the remains of the man who inspired the character of d’Artagnan, immortalized in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers.

Real name Charles de Batz de Castelmore, this wartime participant was a close aid of the Sun King Louis XIV, who was killed during the siege of Maastricht in the 17th century.

De Batz was also called Count d’Artagnan, hence why it’s believed he was the model of Dumas’ character, who helps the entirely-fictional Musketeers in the timeless classic.

It happened that recently, the Deacon of the church in Wolder, in the southwest corner of Maastricht, decided to perform a bit of digging to see if someone had been buried there after a few floor tiles had come loose.

“We prized up some loose flagstones to carry out repairs and we saw there was a skeleton in sacred ground near where the altar used to be,” Deacon Jos Valke told the London Times.

Using delicate excavation methods, they found a bone, and eventually an entire skeleton, just as the old rumors had suggested.

“Only royals or other people of rank would have been buried there. We thought it could be d’Artagnan so we called in an archaeologist.”

Archaeologist Wim Dijkman, who’s previously stated that there is neither historic nor physical evidence for the belief that the Count was buried in Wolder, took some samples that contain DNA and sent them off to Germany, while a few of the bones were personally moved to the Dutch city of Deventer where they will be assessed for their age and sex.

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These scientific protocols are what might be called “due diligence,” since found along with the skeleton were artifacts which left Valke 99% certain they’d found their man.

“He was buried on sacred ground below where the altar was; we found the [musket ball] that put an end to his life and we found a coin from 1660 in his grave, and it was from the bishop who attended Mass for the Roi Soleil,” he told the BBC. 

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Dijkman admitted he needed to leverage his scientist reserve to remain calm, since he’s been researching d’Artagnan’s ultimate fate for over 20 years, and believes the deacon may have helped him solve the biggest mystery of his career.

That Count d’Artagnan was involved in the fighting at Maastricht has given some historians the notion that the Three Musketeers, while themselves being entirely fictional, could have embodied certain elite fighting men the Count was somehow associated with.

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Windows Broken Into Become Earrings in One Woman’s Quest to Keep Glass Out of Landfills

By
Andy Corbley
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Sydney Jones in front of her Odd Commodity stall - credit, oddcommodityshop.com
Sydney Jones in front of her Odd Commodity stall – credit, oddcommodityshop.com

Car break-ins in the Bay Area are down, but not out. From each one of these ugly surprises, local artisan Sydney Jones creates a surprising amount of beauty.

Using a kitchen-top kiln, she takes advantage of safety glass’ crystalline structure to quickly turn the broken pieces into floral-themed earrings of jade green.

It not only helps divert long-lived glass from piling up in landfills, but diverts a little bit of the anger over the break-in too.

“I was actually overwhelmed by the community response to the reuse of glass. I never would have thought it would be reclaimed glass that people would get excited about,” Jones told CBS News Bay Area.

She recycles glass in several ways through her small shop in Oakland called Odd Commodities (missed the opportunity to call it ‘Oddity’ Commodities there Sydney) but the most popular is her “Street Revival collection,” a simple selection of four patterns of molten safety class from car windows.

“I was actually overwhelmed by the community response to the reuse of glass. I never would have thought it would be reclaimed glass that people would get excited about.”

AMERICAN ARTISANS:

She typically collects the glass herself with a broom and dustpan. Neighbors or fans of hers reach out when there’s been a break-in somewhere in the neighborhood, and she quickly arrives to sweep up.

The most common glass recycling in the US involves extreme heat, and is therefore more likely to be carbon intensive and expensive—prohibitively so. It’s not uncommon for trash collection companies to simply resort to landfills rather than investing in the expensive recycling method.

Jones’ customers are pleased they can reduce this impact, even in their own small way.

WATCH the story below from CBS News… 

SHARE This Woman’s Efforts To Make Beauty Out Of Ugliness… 

8-year-old’s ‘Sweet Monsters’ Drawing Chosen as Winning Design to Decorate Real Train

By
Andy Corbley
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Phileine next to her Sweet Monster Train - credit, NS released
Phileine next to her Sweet Monster Train – credit, NS released

Now from the Netherlands comes the delightful story of an 8-year-old’s dream design made reality on the carriages of a very special train.

Hosted by the national train operator NS, the NS Drawing Competition invites children all over the country to submit drawings to be used as an exterior design for one of the operator’s trains.

8-year-old Phileine from Zutphen, near Utrecht, won the competition’s 2025 edition which experienced a record number of entries: over 1,200 children took place.

“From jungle trains full of animals to flying locomotives and fantasy creatures that move along the track, all drawings combined humor, fantasy and adventure,” NS wrote in a statement. 

Phileine’s concept was the “Sweet Monster Train,” which she got to see first hand at the competition’s conclusion in Utrecht’s Maliebaan station.

Phileine worked with a professional illustrator Jip Piet to cover the train cars in friendly monsters, deliberately designed to be impossible to scare anyone as they crawl and slither along the exterior.

Phileine’s original design – credit, NS released

Her entry was presented as an ingenious design that would allow the operator to print the design out at scale on large decal stickers, no paint needed.

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Then, Phileine arrived with her family to cut the ribbon at the opening of the intercity train next to competition judge Daan Schutt, a board member of NS.

“With the drawing competition, NS wants to inspire children in a playful way for train travel,” the translated statement from NS said.

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“Children often experience a train journey as an adventure, much more than we sometimes realize as adults. By focusing on their imagination and really bringing one dream train to life, we show how special travel can be through children’s eyes.”

WATCH young Phileine see the train for the first time… 

SHARE This Child’s Imagination Made Reality On A Special Train… 

“Nothing others do is because of you. What others say is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

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Good News Network
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Credit: Thomas Bennie

Quote of the Day: “Nothing others do is because of you. What others say is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

Photo by: Thomas Bennie

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?

Credit: Thomas Bennie

Good News in History, April 2

By
Good News Network
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87 years ago today, the soul singer-songwriter and musician Marvin Gaye was born in Washington, DC. ‘The Prince of Motown’ helped to shape the sound of the 1960s with a string of hits, like I Heard It Through the Grapevine (the best-selling Motown hit ever). The pianist’s 1970 composition What’s Going On, written about an act of police brutality at an anti-war rally, was called “too political” for radio by Motown founder Berry Gordy who refused to release it. Gaye responded by going on strike from recording until the label released the song. READ what happened next… (1939)

Continue

The Sunniest, Windiest Country Announces Renewables Project to Power 6 Million Homes

By
Andy Corbley
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Wind turbines at Zaafarana, Egypt - credit, Hatem Moushir CC BY-SA 3.0.
Wind turbines at Zaafarana, Egypt – credit, Hatem Moushir CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Land of the Nile has quickly joined the number of countries responding to the current oil shock by announcing new wind and solar projects.

For a country that’s over 90% sand desert, where the Sun was deified in ancient times as a scarab beetle and its dung ball, and where the Sahara wind is so desiccating it’s known as samoom, or “poison,” installing gigawatts of solar and wind energy seems a no-brainer.

On March 18, the Egyptian electricity and renewables ministry announced than agreement for nearly 6 gigawatts of solar, wind, and battery storage facilities along the Red Sea coastline to be developed in a partnership between the Egyptian firm Orascom Construction, French utility Engie, and Japanese conglomerate Toyota Tsusho.

The photovoltaic panel is currently, and by a substantial margin, the cheapest form of scalable renewable energy technology, and so while 900 megawatts will come from wind energy, 5-times that amount will be generated from solar and battery storage.

Egyptian electricity minister Mahmoud Essmat said that expanding renewable energy projects and adopting battery storage will help to “reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels, cut carbon emissions, enhance grid stability and security, and ensure uninterrupted electricity supply.”

Home to 107 million people, Egypt is the most-populous state in the Arab world, and enjoys one of the highest GDP per capita therein.

EGYPTIAN NEWS:

Egypt’s electricity demand has more than doubled over the past two decades, driven by rapid population growth and industrial expansion. This surge has primarily been met by natural gas, which made up 84% of Egypt’s electricity mix in 2023. To reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, Egypt has set a target of 42% renewable electricity by 2030.

If it wasn’t ironic enough that the country blessed with more wind and sunshine than almost any other country on Earth has almost no outstanding renewable capacity for sun and wind power, most of the renewable power it does have comes from water—a resource absent from roughly 98% of the whole country’s land area. The River Nile is a heck of a thing.

In 2019, Egypt completed one of the biggest solar installations in the world, Benban Solar Park, which generates 1.8 GW to power 1 million homes. In April 2025, Africa’s largest wind farm began operating in the town of Ras Ghareb, with 500 MW, and plans for a 650-MW expansion.

SHARE Egypt’s Big Step Towards Energy Independence On Social Media… 

Once Dried up and Full of Plastic, Canal in India Is Now Clear and Lined with Mangroves

By
Andy Corbley
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Canal in Tamil Nadu India (After and Before cleanup) by Supriya Sahu IAS via X @supriyasahuias
Canal in Tamil Nadu India (After and Before cleanup) by Supriya Sahu IAS via X @supriyasahuias

A canal in India has been transformed from a plastic-choked fetid mess into a growing mangrove forest.

The clean-up has restored the waterflow, and the 20,000 mangrove seedlings will help clean the water and reestablish fish stocks.

Along a 1.8-mile stretch of Buckingham Canal in India’s Tamil Nadu state, manual clean-up efforts began in Cuddalore district by some 600 paid volunteers.

This 494-mile-long fresh water canal was constructed during British rule, and ran from Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu bringing water and navigation to millions.

Fewer countries are as thirsty as India can be during the dry season, but waterways in the country suffer heavily from pollution and buildup of plastic waste and invasive weeds, Buckingham Canal being a chief example of this trend.

Near the town of Pichavaram, Tamil Nadu’s Climate Resilient Village initiative organized the restoration of several stretches of the canal where pollution and waterflow were the worst. Local government agencies led the clean-up program.

750 kilograms—almost 2,000 pounds—of trash were pulled from the canal along with heaps of invasive prosopis plants. The embankments were strengthened to prevent erosion, before 3,000 mangrove trees were planted to improve the ability of the canal to keep the water clean and biodiverse, as well as slow storm waters that might flood the town and canal.

CLEANING INDIA’S WATER: 

Other stretches further down the canal have seen similar rejuvenation. Near Chennai, the state capital, the Tamil Nadu Forest Department led the planting of another 20,000 mangrove seedlings along the canal banks, as well as in an island amid its flow.

This effort was supported with a grant from ICICI Bank’s sustainability initiatives, and involved carving a herring-bone pattern into the island. This allows for maximum mangrove anchorages across the small amount of available space, and for rising water levels to irrigate all equally.


Red, Indian, and tall-stilt mangroves were planted, and additional feeder canals and flow channels—over 180—were created to help keep the water circulating and the mangroves healthy.

“Step by step, TN Forest Department is building Chennai’s living coastal bioshield restoring mangroves that protect the city, nurture biodiversity and strengthen climate resilience,” said Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister for Environment Supriya Sahu.

Water has been a chief focus of Indian environmentalism this century. One of the sub-continent’s holiest places is a river, which makes it easy, said one NGO founder, to convince locals to help clean up water sources.

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New Views of Saturn Produced by Space Telescopes Help Researchers Understand the Planet’s Clouds

By
Andy Corbley
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Saturn (left) in 2024 imaged by Webb, and Hubble (right)
Saturn (left) in 2024 imaged by Webb, and Hubble (right) – credit, NASA/ESA

Storms, ribbons, and its iconic rings in screaming electric blue, Saturn appears like you’ve never seen it before in a new set of images released by our flagship space telescopes James Webb and Hubble.

Whether you want to call it peeling an onion or cutting through a 7 layer cake, the combination of these two observatories, the former imaging in infrared light and the latter in visible light, help deepen the story of Saturn’s atmosphere and weather.

The Hubble image seen here was captured as part of a more than a decade long monitoring program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) in August 2024, while the Webb image was captured a few months later using Director’s Discretionary Time.

Hubble helps see more subtle variations in color across the world, while Webb’s infrared view allows operators to image the deep clouds below the stormy atmosphere.

In the Webb image, a long-lived jet stream known as the ‘ribbon wave’ meanders across the northern mid-latitudes, influenced by otherwise undetectable atmospheric waves. Just below that, a small spot represents a lingering remnant from the ‘Great Springtime Storm’ of 2011 to 2012.

Several other storms dotting the southern hemisphere of Saturn are visible in Webb’s image, as well.

All these features are shaped by powerful winds and waves beneath the visible cloud deck, making Saturn a natural laboratory for studying fluid dynamics under extreme conditions.

Several of the pointed edges of Saturn’s iconic hexagon-shaped jet stream at its north pole, discovered by the Voyager spacecraft in 1981, are also faintly visible in both images. It remains one of the Solar System’s most intriguing weather patterns.

Its persistence over decades highlights the stability of certain large-scale atmospheric processes on giant planets. These are likely the last high-resolution looks we’ll see of the famous hexagon until the 2040’s, as the northern pole enters winter and will shift into darkness for 15 years.

In Webb’s infrared observations, Saturn’s poles appear distinctly grey-green, indicating light emitting at wavelengths around 4.3 microns. This distinct feature could come from a layer of high-altitude aerosols in Saturn’s atmosphere that scatters light differently at those latitudes. Another possible explanation is auroral activity, as charged molecules interacting with the planet’s magnetic field can produce glowing emissions near the poles.

Also in Webb’s infrared image, the rings are extremely bright because they are made of highly reflective water ice. In both images, we’re seeing the sunlit face of the rings, a little less so in the Hubble image, hence the shadows visible underneath on the planet.

RINGS AND AURORAE: New Webb Image Captures Clearest View of Neptune’s Rings, Revealing the Ice Giant in Whole New Light

Saturn’s orbit around the Sun, combined with the position of Earth in its annual orbit, determines our changing viewing angle of Saturn’s face and ring. The planet is tilted on its axis to a greater degree than Earth, which allows for occasionally exceptional views of the rings, and occasionally poor views.

The images also contain subtle ring features such as spokes and structure in the B ring (the thick central region of the rings) that appear differently between the two observatories. The F ring, the outermost ring, looks thin and crisp in the Webb image, while it only slightly glows in the Hubble image.

MORE PLANETARY SCIENCE: Citizen Scientist Spots Earth-like Planet: Now Astrophysicists Will Focus Most Powerful Telescopes on it

These 2024 observations, taken 14 weeks apart, show the planet moving from northern summer toward the 2025 equinox. As Saturn transitions into southern spring, and later southern summer in the 2030’s, Hubble and Webb will have progressively better views of that hemisphere.

Hubble’s observations of Saturn for decades have built a record of its evolving atmosphere. Programs like OPAL, with its annual monitoring, have allowed scientists to track storms, banding patterns, and seasonal shifts over time. Webb now adds powerful infrared capabilities to this ongoing record, extending what researchers can measure about Saturn’s atmospheric structure and dynamic processes.

SHARE These Beautiful Images Of Our Ringed Neighbor With Your Friends… 

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