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Moss is So Unique it’s Acted Like Fingerprints to Help Solve a Dozen Crimes

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Field Museum of Chicago
credit – Field Museum of Chicago

Tiny plants, like moss, are easy to overlook. They’re often as small as an eyelash, and they tend to grow on the ground in dark, wet places. But these small plants sometimes turn out to be big clues in forensic cases.

A team of scientists learned that firsthand in 2013, when they were asked to use bits of moss to help pinpoint the location where a body was buried. Now, the researchers have published a paper in the journal Forensic Sciences Research, compiling all the cases they could find of mosses and their relatives being used to help solve crimes.

“With our paper, we wanted to highlight the significance of botanical evidence, because chances are, investigators are simply overlooking it because they don’t know what they’re looking at,” Matt von Konrat, Head of Botanical Collections at the Field Museum in Chicago and corresponding author of the paper. “We’re hoping that our study helps show how important these tiny plants can be.”

Mosses are part of a family of plants called bryophytes. These are some of the most basic plants, and they don’t have true stems, leaves, roots, or seeds. Their simple anatomy allows them to take in water and nutrients directly from their environment, which helps them thrive in shady, wet, boggy areas where more “advanced” plants often struggle. Some bryophytes are extra-sensitive to their environment, with different species having particular affinities for different living conditions.

“Because they’re so small, they have all sorts of microhabitats— even if an area overall seems to be one sort of habitat, they can find a spot that works for them in the shade, or in the canopy, or even growing under the grasses,” says von Konrat.

“And different types of even smaller organisms can live on those mosses, which can give even further clues. This means that mosses can be a valuable tool for forensic scientists looking to confirm details of where a crime took place.”

In 2024, Jenna Merkel, then working on her Master’s degree in forensic science at George Washington University, interned with von Konrat at the Field Museum.

“I thought, why don’t we look into writing a review of how bryophytes have been used in forensics?” says von Konrat. “So we reviewed 150 years of scientific literature to see how these plants have been used in investigations. Well, it turns out, the answer was, ‘Not that much.’”

The earliest case the team found was from 1929, when the growth rate of mosses on a decomposing skeleton helped investigators determine how long ago the person had died. Over the past century, there have been at least 10 more cases, in Finland, Sweden, Italy, China, and the United States, in which bryophytes have played a role in determining when, where, or how a criminal case had occurred.

The researchers’ paper also serves as the first in-depth scientific record of a case von Konrat and several of his co-authors consulted on a decade ago.

In 2011, a baby girl named Kate was killed by her father, and her body could not be found. However, her father had given the police general information about where he’d buried her in northern Michigan, and his shoes had microscopic bits of plant material on them. In 2013, von Konrat led a team of botanists and volunteers in surveying the different grasses, trees, and mosses growing in the area, looking for a spot where the dozen plant species on the father’s shoes could be found.

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“There are hundreds of species of moss and dozens of species of grasses and trees living in that area,” says von Konrat. “But based on the bits of moss, we knew what sort of micro-habitat we were looking for.”

The team ultimately identified a small area of about 50 square feet where Baby Kate was likely buried, narrowed down from the seven counties that law enforcement originally was investigating. Her father confirmed in a police interview that the spot pinpointed by the researchers is indeed where he buried his daughter.

NATURE’S REMARKABLE POTENTIAL: Scientists Find the Secret to ‘Unhackable’ Security Systems on the Wings of Butterflies

The paper’s authors hope that bryophytes can continue to help serve justice and bring closure to families affected by violence.

“Plants, and specifically bryophytes, represent an overlooked yet powerful source of forensic evidence that can help investigators link people, places, and events,” says Merkel. “Through this paper, we aim to raise awareness of forensic botany and encourage law enforcement to recognize the value of even the smallest plant fragments during investigations.”

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2025 Was ‘Year of the Octopus’ Says UK Wildlife Trust, Amid Record Cephalopod Sightings

By
Andy Corbley
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Pia
Pia

It was 75 years ago the last time there were as many octopus in British waters as there are now, with the UK’s Wildlife Trusts declaring that 2025 was the ‘Year of the Octopus.’

These eight-legged spineless creatures, one of the most fascinating to inhabit our planet, have been seen in record numbers by divers, and caught in record amounts by commercial fishermen.

Scientists suggest it could be milder winters leading to the “bloom,” which is the term for octopus birthing seasons.

“It really has been exceptional,” says Matt Slater from the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. “We’ve seen octopuses jet-propelling themselves along. We’ve seen octopuses camouflaging themselves, they look just like seaweeds,” he told the BBC.

“We’ve seen them cleaning themselves. And we’ve even seen them walking, using two legs just to nonchalantly cruise away from the diver underwater.”

Regarding the fisheries, it’s been a banner year for the industry. 2021 and 2023 have seen the highest yearly catches recently, when around 200 metric tons were landed. This year it was 12-times that amount.

Interestingly, their chief prey species, lobsters, crayfish, and scallops, have maintained year-over-year populations, with only crab falling.

It’s up to scientists now to figure out whether this octopu-nanza is part of a one-off event, or something that will be a more permanent feature of British seas. If the suggestion that warmer winters may be behind the massive bloom, future hatching seasons could be similarly large.

While it may be premature to celebrate an unusual effect that seems tied to climate change, it’s hard to argue with the smiles on the faces of the divers, the diners, and the fishermen.

WATCH the octopuses ‘parascoping’ below… 

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Hungary’s Famous Thermal Baths Are Saving the Country’s Famous Grasslands from Desertification

By
Andy Corbley
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Wells in the Hortobágy National Park Puszta, with a stable - credit Self2 CC 2.0., via Wikimedia
Wells in the Hortobágy National Park Puszta, with a stable – credit Self2 CC 2.0., via Wikimedia

Drought is affecting the Great Hungarian Plain like never before, but a team of concerned citizens have hatched a clever plan to address it in the short term.

It’s arguable what the Eastern European country is more famous for, its grasslands and horse heritage, or its thermal baths. The capital of Budapest is filled with spas, a traditional part of Hungarian culture that relies on thermally heated water from deep underground.

The citizens have successfully used this one part of their culture to ameliorate a problem with the other, pumping outflow water from a spa onto low-lying grasslands in the Great Plain to help raise the water table, irrigate cropland, and recreate natural wetland processes.

As in so many parts of Europe, the canalization of streams and rivers have removed a key ecosystem service these blue arteries had on the continent for ages—flooding. In flat areas, a simple stream bursting its banks can have far reaching consequences on the water retention and biodiversity of the surrounding ecosystem.

The region in the south of Hungary, known as the Homokhátság, has experienced an accelerated retreat in the groundwater table. Increasingly hot and dry summers have damaged this famous ag region’s production, and some studies have classified it as semiarid, a region more typical of Africa than Europe.

The Australian Outback, the American Southwest, or the African Sahel have been used as comparisons to the Homokhátság’s current state: one of little rain, depleted wells, and a retreating water table. Fields that used to receive floodwaters from as far off as the Danube and Tisza rivers, now bake in the sun, while storms passing over the plain pick up so little moisture as to remain rainless, blasting the grasslands with air and drying them out further.

Rainfall, because of this lack of moisture in the landscape, has become erratic. One of the great dangers in this cycle is that once a landscape dries out, at a certain point it becomes very difficult to reverse. Soils that were used to holding large amounts of water disaggregate, microbial populations die out, plants shrivel away, and wind blows topsoil hither and yon. The resulting sand, even if a deluge were to come, cannot hold the water long enough for good soil to regenerate.

That’s the bad news: the good news is that Hungarian farmers and citizens aren’t going to let that happen.

Oszkár Nagyapáti is a farmer and member of the volunteer “Water Guardians” who are working on regreening their lands through the repurposing of thermal water.

COMBATING DESERTIFICATION: She Used Nature to Transform Dry Stream Beds into Lush Oasis During USGS Study

“I was thinking about what could be done, how could we bring the water back or somehow create water in the landscape,” Nagyapáti told Euro News. “There was a point when I felt that enough is enough. We really have to put an end to this. And that’s where we started our project to flood some areas to keep the water in the plain.”

Typically, the thermal water outflow from a nearby spa would go into a canal and out eventually to the sea, but Nagyapáti has negotiated with authorities to channel it instead onto low-lying fields in an area called Kiskunmajsa.

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Following 2025’s hot dry summer, the Water Guardians blocked several channel switches along a canal, and brought thousands of gallons of water streaming down onto the land. After months of emptying the spa’s outflow, the field—about 6 acres, was totally flooded.

Scientists working with the Guardians say that even though it was only the field that was flooded, the water should have an impact on some 4 square kilometers of area around it, helping raise the water table and keep the lands moisturized.

MORE HUNGARIAN NEWS: ‘PET Pirates’ Remove Seven Tons of Trash from Hungarian Lake in Plastic Picking Competition

“After the water guardians’ first attempt to mitigate the growing problem in their area, they said they experienced noticeable improvements in the groundwater level, as well as an increase of flora and fauna near the flood site,” Euro News reported.

“This initiative can serve as an example for everyone, we need more and more efforts like this,” Nagyapáti says. “We retained water from the spa, but retaining any kind of water, whether in a village or a town, is a tremendous opportunity for water replenishment.”

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January Stargazing Offers the Best Time of the Year to See Jupiter and its Moons

By
Andy Corbley
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Jupiter Galilean moons

Jupiter Galilean moons

Kicking off the new calendar this month is a tasty opportunity to see Jupiter and its four largest moons with the naked eye.

On January 10th, generally across the US time zones, Jupiter will crest the eastern horizon at sundown and continue to climb until midnight when it reaches the highest point in the sky.

On this date, our solar system’s largest planet is in opposition, which means it’s positioned on the other side of the sky from the Sun from the prospective of Earth.

After dark, one will be able to see Jupiter with the naked eye, and with a pair of binoculars or a telescope, can see Io, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto, the four largest moons of Jupiter.

Also called the Galilean Moons, they were first identified by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Io is the most volcanic world in the solar system, while Ganymede is the largest satellite. Callisto appears spotted because of its many craters.

The 10th will be 7 days after the full Moon, which this month will be a supermoon, so there may be some light pollution from the waning half.

It is called the Wolf Moon because it was believed that wolves were more likely to howl in North American lands in January, it will peak at 2:00 a.m. Pacific time.

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“Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.” – Stephen Covey

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.” – Stephen Covey

Image by: ©GWC

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, January 2

By
Good News Network
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Wikimedia Commons

Today is also National Science Fiction Day, a date that honors the birth, 106 years ago, of literary sci-fi genius Isaac Asimov. A Russian immigrant in Brooklyn, he taught himself to read at age 5, skipped several grades, and got his high school diploma at 15. He sold his first short story at the age of 19, and became famous for his I, Robot and Foundation series books. READ more about the great man… (1920)

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‘It Feels Like Me Again’: World’s First Arm Exoskeleton Gives Stroke Patients Independence

By
Andy Corbley
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Johanne Hemnes using the Vilpower arm - credit Vilje Bionics
Johanne Hemnes using the Vilpower arm – credit Vilje Bionics

An exoskeleton for the entire arm has been invented and designed in Norway to help stroke victims recover the use of their arms.

It detects and then amplifies tiny movements through the arm and shoulder, and the developers hope to launch it as a fully commercial product this year.

Today, more and more people are surviving strokes, and living longer and longer with  disabilities resulting from them. This creates the need for better therapies, accommodations, and regenerative treatments.

Vilje Bionics, the company behind the shoulder-mounted exoskeleton, says that most below-the-elbow prosthetics are for amputees, an few if any exist for victims of partial paralysis—like Johanne Marie Hemnes.

In 2017 Hemnes suffered a brain hemorrhage and collapsed in her living room. The resulting stroke paralyzed her down her left side—usually the result of a stroke in the right half of the brain.

All her rehab and focus was on the left leg to ensure she could walk again, and while that was successful, her arm was entirely neglected.

“I call my arm Jenny, because it feels like it’s not a part of me, because it doesn’t do what I want it to do,” she told Euro News, adding that she even considered cutting it off because it just got in the way. “But when I actually have this on, it feels like me again. It doesn’t just feel like another human being’s arm.”

Vilje Bionics’ robotic arm assists movements for the shoulder, elbow and hand, which makes it the world’s first exoskeleton for the entire arm. Many of the components were 3D-printed, and Vilje’s founder Saeid Hosseini, says it works by the user “thinking how they’d use their arm.”

“Because if you think, you make a small movement and then it amplifies that movement,” Hosseini said. “It detects very small movements of a residual movement of a paretic arm and amplifies those movements.”

EXOSKELETON INVENTIONS:

40 people have trailed the Vilpower exoskeleton so far, and the company hopes it will be ready in the first 4 to 6 months of 2026 starting in Norway.

The robotic arm may be used for rehabilitation purposes in the future, but the company is currently focusing on helping “patients with lasting and significant disabilities to be more independent.”

According to the World Stroke Organization, one in four people will suffer a stroke at some point in their life.

Hemnes has been able to get used to cutting vegetables and opening bottles again, exactly the kind of independence Hosseini wants his product’s users to be able to reclaim.

WATCH the story below…

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Western Tatami Mat Mania Keeping Alive Japan’s Traditional Woven Grass Flooring Industry

By
Andy Corbley
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A modern tatami room - credit, Filiz Elaerts on Unsplash
A modern tatami room – credit, Filiz Elaerts on Unsplash

Western admirers of Japanese aesthetic are keeping afloat tatami craftsmen in Japan, where modernity and maintenance requirements are driving down interest in this artisanal form of flooring.

From Europe to the US and even in the Middle East, eager importers of tatami mats now account for a sizable amount of orders from workshops like that run by Mr. Fumio Kuboki.

Kuboki is just the latest of his kin to run the family business which has been making tatami mats for 280 years. He still sells mostly to the Japanese market, but substantial help is coming from across the Pacific.

Half of the company’s international orders come from the US, Kuboki told the Japan Times. 

For hundreds of years, a Japanese house wouldn’t be complete without wall-to-wall mats made of woven grass, called tatami. Made of tightly woven igusa grass, they were the standard feature in all dry rooms.

But one of Japan’s great marvels is that, even with as characteristic and attractive a traditional culture as it cultivated over the centuries, its modern aesthetic and lifestyle is almost just as iconic. As a result, the tatami mat has become somewhat neglected among Japanese crafts: reminiscent of your grandparents house and rural living.

Western-style flooring began to be the norm starting in the 1970s, and China began mass producing synthetic tatami that was easier to clean, longer-lasting, and cheaper to replace. As a result, it’s estimated that every year, 40 traditional tatami makers close up shop for good.

Yet for the increasing number of foreign residents, tatami represents the attractiveness of the Japanese aesthetic, and as well as installing it in their residences in the country, many of them bring it back to Europe or the US.

Arno Suzuki, a professor of architectural design at Kyoto Tachibana University who has studied the use of tatami in Spain, Italy and France, told the Times that seeing the appreciation for tatami among the rest of the world has somewhat reminded the younger generations of Japan of its value

Having a tatami “space” in an apartment or house is suddenly not as uncool as it once was.

JAPANESE CRAFTS: Think Kids Are Addicted to Phones? US ‘Stationery Nerds’ Are Fueling a Japanese Notebook Boom

“Nowadays they have a tatami space—not a tatami room, but at the corner of their living room they have three or four tatami mats, and they enjoy it. And also, many people realize that it’s better for when—especially when they have small kids, like toddlers and babies, it’s safer for them to crawl,” Suzuki told the Times.

In the city of Kobe, Taro Mano is the 4th in his family to take over the 70-year-old tatami business. He too has seen a rise from foreign buyers in countries like those Suzuki studied in.

“Tatami is a kind of symbol of Japan. It’s an easy way to express a Japanese atmosphere, even in other countries,” Mr. Mano said, adding that he first thought the interest would come from the United States, but it came to be far more diverse than that.

INTERESTING JAPAN: Trading Cards Starring Middle-Aged Men Go Viral in Japanese Town, Boosting Volunteerism and Respect for Elders

Mr. Kuboki makes some 10% of his revenues from overseas sales, with many of his products being stocked year-round at Japan House in Los Angeles. 100 years ago, no one ever wondered what else could be made of tatami, but now, whether it’s a coaster or a book cover, the artform is being reimagined.

“Every day I talk with visitors and listen to what kind of tatami they want,” Mr. Kuboki said. “The products that are selected and loved by people are the ones that will naturally become the future of tatami. The future of tatami will be decided by customers.”

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4,500 years ago, Worship of the Sun Took Place in This Recently-Uncovered Temple in Egypt

By
Andy Corbley
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Valley Temple of King Sahure by Massimiliano Nuzzolo and Rossana Perilli Universities of Turin and Naples - Egypt Supreme Council of Antiquities
Valley Temple of King Nyuserre by Massimiliano Nuzzolo and Rossana Perilli Universities of Turin and Naples – Egypt Supreme Council of Antiquities

An Italian-Egyptian archaeological mission has finally excavated a temple for the worship of the sun after it was identified over 100 years ago.

It’s only one of two sun temples that have been definitively identified, and dates to the reign of King Nyuserre, the sixth ruler of the Old Kingdom’s Fifth Dynasty.

He is credited with a reign of between 24 to 36 years depending on the scholar, some 4,500 years ago.

Massimiliano Nuzzolo and Rossana Perilli from the universities of Turin and Naples respectively, managed to reveal half of the total temple layout, extending some 1,000 square meters. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, described the find as a “milestone” in the exploration of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty.

A German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt had first noted the sun temple’s presence in the Abusir necropolis, near the Egyptian town of Abu Ghurab, in 1901, but groundwater inundation from the Nile prevented any excavation at that time.

Perilli and Nuzzolo uncovered the structure’s original entrance where it lay buried under 3 feet of Nile river silt. The dredging revealed the temple’s original floor, limestone pillar bases that would have held up the portico, and several granite doorframes still in their original positions.

A sloping ramp that likely led down to the Nile or one of its ancient branches was identified, along with the remains of an internal staircase leading to the roof.

Borchardt’s hypothetical temple plan of Nyuserre.

Early evidence indicates that the temple extends northward, reported Ahram Online, which would be consistent with the architectural layout of Fifth Dynasty royal complexes such as the Valley Temple of King Sahure, a predecessor of Nyuserre’s.

MORE EGYPTIAN DISCOVERIES:

A wealth of artifacts inside revealed the temple’s activities, including a board and wooden game pieces from the Egyptian pastime Senet. Pottery from several periods show how the temple fell out of religious use and became a dwelling by the Intermediate Period.

The archaeologists will continue their work on the temple for the next few excavation seasons to try and establish what the religious functions might have been.

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Young Atlantic Salmon Seen in Three English Rivers for First Time in a Decade

By
Andy Corbley
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A salmon running in Scotland - credit, CC 4.0. BY, Oakley
A salmon running in Scotland – credit, CC 4.0. BY, Oakley

Considered critically endangered in Britain, young salmon must nevertheless be finding their way safely back to the island from the Arctic Ocean, as they’ve been found spawning in three different rivers.

In the Mersey, Goyt, and Bollin, the fish have been recorded where they’d once been absent, a development described as a “significant environmental turnaround.”

The sightings have prompted environmental authorities to plan a salmon study, with hopes they’ll be able to learn more about the animal’s return.

“Significant stretches of river were biologically dead in the 1980s but today they support thriving ecosystems and are home to a number of pollution-intolerant fish species. Those species are recovering thanks to a significant environmental turnaround,” Mark Sewell, a wastewater catchment manager at United Utilities told the BBC. 

Since 2006, Atlantic salmon have declined by 40% across the island, with some rivers losing them entirely. Following 2 to 3 years of feeding and growing in the cold waters of the arctic, the salmon will return to their home river and even the same tributary where they hatched, to lay their eggs on gravel beds.

These beds along several rivers are unreachable because of obstacles like locks, dams, and weirs, The Bollin and the Goyt are both feeder rivers of the Mersey which runs through Liverpool, a major river is now experiencing some of the highest levels of biodiversity among major English rivers.

In 2023, GNN reported that a study had identified some 37 species of fish, as well as “huge” eels, sea scorpions, and 5 species of sharks. In 2009, the Mersey was announced to be “cleaner than at any time since the industrial revolution” and is “now considered one of the cleanest [rivers] in the UK.”

SALMON STORIES:

Humpback whales were seen at the time in Liverpool Bay for the first time since 1938, while the river and its sound welcomed back otters, octopus, porpoises, and seals.

A trophy fish both excellent as both a stand in for measuring river health, and on the dinner table, the prospect of returning salmon will be a great incentive for other English rivers that once acted as their homes to scale back unneeded industrialization and try to improve the water quality.

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“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better person.” – Benjamin Franklin

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Good News Network
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Credit: Kateryna Hliznitsova For Unsplash+

Quote of the Day: “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better person.” – Benjamin Franklin (Happy New Year!)

Image by: Kateryna Hliznitsova for Unsplash+

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: Kateryna Hliznitsova For Unsplash+

Good News in History, January 1

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Good News Network
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125 years ago today, the Federation of Australia was born. The Constitution of Australia came into force, uniting the 6 colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia under one federal government. The idea of being ‘Australian’ had been celebrated in songs and poems for decades; finally, a fireworks display in Sydney marked the political achievement with a sign that read ‘One people, one destiny.’ READ more… (1901)

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University in China Begins Installing World’s Strongest Gravity Centrifuge to Compress Space and Time

By
Andy Corbley
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The CHIEF1300, the previous centrifuge which the 1900 will replace - credit, Gov.cn
The CHIEF1300, the previous centrifuge which the 1900 will replace – credit, Gov.cn

What can you do if you want to test a dam, railway line, submersible, or a space capsule’s resistance to gravitational force without risking the destruction of it in the process?

Well now, you can take a scale model to Zhejiang University in China, where the CHIEF1900 gravitational centrifuge can batter it with 300 times Earth’s gravity.

It’s the largest such centrifuge ever made, housed within the Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) in the city of Hangzhou. Here used to be found the previously largest centrifuge, which the 1900 will replace.

It’s also around 40% more powerful than a similar device housed at a facility of the US Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The device is capable of spinning an object weighing up to 20 metric tons at speeds that will generate around 100g of force. For reference, a home washing machine generates around 2g during its spin cycle.

With this extreme exposure to force, scientists and engineers can test all manner of objects and structures to see how they hold up against extreme force.

“For example, to assess the structural stability of a dam 300 meters (984 feet) tall, scientists can build a three-meter model and spin it at 100g,” writes South China Morning Post’s Jing Lin. “This replicates the same stress levels the full-scale dam would experience in the real world.”

It follows that anything which must resist massive force, such as the objects mentioned above—or anything else for that matter—could be tested by CHIEF1900. Lin explains that other, centuries-long processes can be tested in days, such as how environmental pollutants leach through soil.

The Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) in Hangzhou – credit, Gov.cn

But the device’s implications and potential go even farther beyond these valuable practicality.

“We aim to create experimental environments that span milliseconds to tens of thousands of years, and atomic to [kilometer] scales—under normal or extreme conditions of temperature and pressure,” said Chen Yunmin, CHIEF’s chief scientist and a professor at Zhejiang University. “It gives us the chance to discover entirely new phenomena or theories.”

MORE DEVICES LIKE THIS: Greatest Spectroscope Ever Built Can Tell What 2,400 Cosmic Objects Are Made of Every 20 Mins.

Its construction involved a large, multidisciplinary team often operating without any precursor blueprints, to build the most powerful device of its kind—more or less from scratch.

As such, CHIEF promotes international collaboration. The facility is open to users from universities, research institutes and industries, both domestic and overseas.

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Hall of Peacock Frescoes Restored at Pompeii Villa Belonging to Emperor Nero’s Wife

By
Andy Corbley
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Image courtesy of the MIC–Archaeological Park of Pompeii.
Image courtesy of the MIC–Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Conservation work on a luxurious royal villa near Pompeii has revealed sumptuous frescoes, including one depicting a famous fictional theater character, and another of a peacock.

Additional recent work using cast molds has identified the position of a colonnade of trees in the villa’s garden, showing that they were planted in precise ornamental positions.

Image courtesy of the MIC–Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Called the Villa di Poppea, it is believed to have belonged to Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of the mad Emperor Nero. Located in a town called Oplontis, south of Naples in the heart of Greater Pompei, as the archaeologists called it, it was buried along with the town under the ash of the mighty Vesuvius.

Ongoing excavations and conservation on the Villa di Poppea are focused on the western wing, where the frescoes were found in one of the most elegant of the staggering 103 rooms so far documented on the property.

It’s being called the Hall of the Peacock due to a pair of male birds depicted in vivid pigments on the south wall. Another depicts the character Pappus, a common figure in a kind of Roman theater called Antellan Farce. Pappus is an old fool, easily tricked by women, who in his attempts to appear young becomes more and more absurd looking.

Other rooms were found during the recent round of conservation work, including several small studies or bedrooms called cubicula, from which we draw our hated office haunts called cubicles.

These were found to be decorated with stucco artwork, frescoed walls, painted vaults, and floor mosaic. In the villa’s garden, casts made out of cavities in the volcanic ash that cover the area revealed the presence of tree roots. They were laid out in exactly the same pattern as twin rows of columns in the villa’s southern portico.

Image courtesy of the MIC–Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

“These first results offer new and promising research perspectives for our understanding of the plan of the villa and for the study of the interactions between human settlement and the natural environment in the long term,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

MORE POMPEIIAN DISCOVERIES: Latest Digging from Pompeii Turns Up Large Private Spa Built to Spoil Wealthy Visitors

The delicate pigments—including Egyptian blue—are being conserved by the workers to ensure they remain in their original glory for years to come.

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Missing for 200 Years, the Galapagos Rail Reappears Following Floreana Island Restoration

By
Andy Corbley
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The Galapagos rail - credit, Carlos Espinosa
The Galapagos rail – credit, Carlos Espinosa

Centuries after they were made famous by Charles Darwin, and a century after they had become plagued by invasive rats and cats, the Galapagos Islands are well on their way to recovery.

Few events could better capture that recovery than the recent reappearance of the beautiful blue Galapagos rail, a bird which hadn’t been seen on Floreana island for 200 years.

After almost a decade of preparatory work, invasive rats, avian vampire flies, and domesticated cats were eradicated from the island thanks to the close coordination of several conservation groups from around the world working alongside the Galapagos National Park Directorate.

The cleansing of the island has, to the delight of conservationists and scientists working on the project, resulted in a dramatic return for many of the islands persecuted endemic species like lava lizards, Galapagos doves, geckos, and dark-billed cuckoos,

“But the most exciting finding was the re-discovery of the Galápagos Rail,” said Birgit Fessl, principal investigator of landbird conservation at the Charles Darwin Foundation, part of the team restoring Floreana. “This bird had not been recorded on Floreana for centuries—the only historical proof of its presence [was] a specimen collected by Darwin himself.”

The rail is a beauty: boasting a range of blue feathers that begin in midnight blue around the cap to cobalt and powder blue at the wings and wingtips, two vibrant red irises, and a chocolate brown patch on its back.

This ground-dwelling bird was at a high risk of predation by cats, while rats routinely preyed on its eggs. They survived on other islands, but on Floreana, they were believed to have been extirpated.

Being that the fame of the Galapagos stems in no small part from their famous isolation from one another, which led the biologist Charles Darwin to develop the theory of Natural Selection by examining closely-related species island by island, one wonders where the rails even came from.

“[The rails] reappeared and now it’s very common to find these birds just walking around the island. You can hear it, you can see it, it’s unbelievable,” Paola Sangolquí, a marine biologist at the Jocotoco Conservation Foundation, told the BBC.

BEGUILING BIRDS: UK’s Rarest Breeding Birds Raise Chicks for First Time in Six Years

Whether a tiny number clung to existence in the shadows of the volcanic island, no one can say for certain. It’s as if the restoration of the balance of nature on the island led to its spontaneous resurrection.

Elsewhere on Floreana, the native finches have been documented greatly expanding their songs. Young birds will sing louder and longer. Some are creating new song patterns never-before-documented, and it’s all believed to be a result of shedding the need for secrecy.

MORE GALAPAGOS RETURNS: A Tiny Gecko Species Once Thought Extinct Just Made a Comeback in the Galápagos

A bold young bird, singing loudly on a branch to attract a female, would make himself easy prey for a waiting cat or rat, and with their removal, more than a century of pent up melody seems to have been released upon the island airwaves.

You can learn about the finches in greater detail by reading the BBC piece on the return to normalcy on Floreana.

SHARE The Long-Awaited Return Of Rail And Song On Floreana Island… 

Brother-Sister Spring into Action to Help Save Their School Bus Driver from Medical Emergency

By
Andy Corbley
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Catrina and Charlie as they radioed the school for help - credit, Crestview Local Schools
Catrina and Charlie as they radioed the school for help – credit, Crestview Local Schools

When an Ohio school bus driver began to suffer a medical event, a brother and sister took action that may have saved her life.

Footage taken from a surveillance camera inside the bus shows 8-year-old Catrina sitting in the seat nearest the driver, who began to have trouble breathing. Catrina asked if she was alright, and a shake of the head replied in the negative.

The footage, released by Crestview Local Schools in Ashland, then shows Catrina run to the back of the bus and alert someone she knew she could count on: her 7th-grade brother Charlie.

Charlie rushes to the front and used the radio to call the school and alert them to the emergency, while an 8th grader named Kali also called 911.

The driver, who was hospitalized and later discharged, had allegedly instructed all her regular riders how to use the radio to call the school in case of an emergency, and she said she was glad they remembered her instructions, according to ABC News.

“When I realized that something was going on, [I] went up there and grabbed the radio and then called the school because I knew that that was the quickest way to get help,” Charlie told ABC affiliate WEWS.

“My brother … in the inside when something’s going wrong, he’s scared but on the outside, he’s like calm and concentrated,” said Catrina.

ANOTHER SCHOOLBUS RESCUE: 14-Year-old Grabs Wheel of His School Bus After Driver Passes Out with Foot on the Gas

“The actions of these students were truly outstanding,” said Crestview Local Schools Superintendent Jim Grubbs “They remained calm, communicated clearly, and helped one another in a situation that could have been much worse. Their families should be incredibly proud.”

WATCH the kids in action below… 

SHARE This Example Of Childhood Heroism With Your Friends… 

“Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi

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Good News Network
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By Igor Omilaev

Quote of the Day: “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi

Image by: Igor Omilaev

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?

By Igor Omilaev

Good News in History, December 31

By
Good News Network
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Time Zones of the World

31 years ago today, a strange thing occurred, that isn’t exactly good news, but certainly will make a person think “huh.” On Kiribati, the island nation in the South Pacific, December 31st, 1994, was skipped altogether as part of a reorganization of the oceanic islands according to time zones. The archipelagic republic’s Fenix Islands and Line Islands had their hours shifted forward, inadvertently causing their calendars to read January 1st. READ more about this silly occasion… (1994)

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Britain’s Loneliest Sheep is Now Pregnant with Twins Two Years After Cliffside Rescue

By
Andy Corbley
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Fiona, Britain's Loneliest Sheep - credit, The Sheep Game
Fiona, Britain’s Loneliest Sheep – credit, The Sheep Game

Having been called “Britain’s Loneliest Sheep,” and later the “World’s Most Famous Sheep,” Fiona is now pregnant with twins 2 years after her harrowing rescue.

GNN reported in 2023 that rural Scotsmen were planning a daring, cliffside extraction of a sheep that had been seen stranded on an isolated beach two years earlier by a kayaker.

The kayaker, Jill Turner, took photos of the sheep, who had grown a truly enormous fleece. How she got there—down the sheer cliffs on the Cromarty Firth—no one knows, but eventually, the Scotsmen raised money for a rescue attempt for their video blog “The Sheep Game.”

Thriving now at Dalscone Farm, where Fiona arrived enormously overweight from a diet rich in salty grass and no space to exercise, the farm recently paired her with a Suffolk ram, and got her “with lamb” after a difficult settling in period.

“She has kind of forgotten how to be a sheep,” said Ben Best, the farm’s manager.

A strict diet and the aid of a few hormones got the ewe in shape and in the mood, and with all the attention Fiona has received over the years, Best estimated that news of her pregnancy will make her the most famous sheep in the world.

Commonwealth media can blow up over sheep stories. When the infamous Australian Merino wether named “Shrek” was caught after 6 years at large, it was one of the most-read stories that week across English-speaking media.

If you don’t believe us, look at how Dalscone Farm presented the news.

WATCH it below… 


SHARE This Latest In Sheep Affairs With Your Friends… 

India’s Beautiful and Historic Stepwells Restored to Working Order for the Thirsty Nation

By
Andy Corbley
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The Moosi Rani Sagar - credit, Environmental Foundation of India
The Moosi Rani Sagar – credit, Environmental Foundation of India

Ancient Indian stepwells are being restored to modern water storage facilities to help cure modern water shortages.

Recently, an Indian environmentalist and editor was invited to share his incredible work restoring hundreds of natural and man-made water sources all across India on CNN.

His nonprofit, Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI), has cleaned and reshaped more than 600 bodies of water either to a state of nature or to a clean and functioning source for human use.

Most recently this has included stepwells, one of the jewels of Indian architectural heritage and civic planning, which have been used for millennia and multiple iterations of empire to supply water in the hot and often dry climate.

“Stepwell restoration is the next big implementation challenge that I would like to add to EFI’s responsibilities because we have a greater responsibility now on protecting these historical assets, which are a testament to human intelligence,” Arun Krishnamurthy tells CNN during an interview in India.

“There’s so much science behind it, the kind of material they use, the kind of artisan skill sets with which they developed and built them, so learning all of it and working on stepwells has been quite a remarkable experience for me.”

EFI has already restored two of these stepwells, and has another 6 slated for 2026. Unlike the 600 natural ponds and lakes Krishnamurthy and his volunteers have worked on, the stepwells demand another sort of expertise.

Their designs and materials often rely on antique methods of construction and landscaping, skillsets Krishnamurthy has had to go seek out as part of his first project in 2022 to restore the Moosi Rani Sagar, a magnificent stepwell in the Rajasthan city of Alwar.

Set amongst the oldest mountains in India, the Moosi Rani Sagar was fed by a hillside collection tank and a 900-meter-long canal equipped with a sedimentation tank. This infrastructure channeled water from the hills down into the magnificent stepwell, having first cleared the water of debris in the canal, and sediment in the secondary tank. It emerged as clean, relatively speaking.

Restoration work required dozens of hands to clear overgrowth of invasive weeds along the canal course, and dredging all of the structures to clear the silt buildups. Over time, lack of civic organization, poverty, and despondency has led to many of these convenient holes in the ground becoming garbage dumps.

With help from the Hinduja Foundation and Prince Albert II de Monaco Foundation, the silt was dredged, the stones cleaned, the fetid water pumped out, and the garbage removed. The holding tank, along with being a must-see local attraction, contributes its cleaned water to the civic water supply, mixing archaic with modern for the benefit of this parched Indian state.

MORE INDIAN INFRASTRUCTURE: Terracotta Is a 3,000-Year-Old Solution to Fighting Extreme Heat

EFI has just begun planning the renovation of a stepwell in Devanahalli, near Bangalore. Here, similar problems exist to those which plagued the Moosi Rani Sagar, but it will also require reinforcements to the stone design, for which Krishnamurthy had to find locals familiar with the stone and the working of it, a process he believes he will have to replicate many times in the future.

Stepwell in Parbhani District Maharashtra – credit, CC license Rohan Kale Explorer

Known as “baolis” or “bwaris,” many of India’s more than 3,000 baolis have fallen into disrepair or outright abandonment, being turned instead into dumps or being buried by foliage.

“When they began clearing what they thought was a garbage dump, they found the structure of a step-well beneath the garbage,” writes Vikramjit Singh Rooprai, a heritage advocate and writer who works with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture—a nonprofit also working toward the restoration of India’s baolis.

ALSO CHECK OUT: 100,000 New Jobs Will Clean Up the Coastline and Protect Species from Plastic, Overdevelopment

“It was one of the deeper stepwells of Delhi. After restoration, the Purana Qila Baoli has so much water that the entire lawns of the [Old Fort in Delhi] are being irrigated by it,” he adds.

For Krishnamurthy and Rooprai, the Moosi Rani Sagar and Purana Qila Baoli are just headline examples of stories that could be repeated many times over to the tune of millions of gallons of water for cities and towns across the subcontinent.

SHARE These Brilliant Part-Tourist Destinations Part Civic Projects… 

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