Quote of the Day: “It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.” – Honore de Balzac (Yesterday was Voter Registration Day in America–Check out how to register at the link…)
Photo by: Warren Leffler ©Library of Congress (Rosa Parks at 1968 Peoples March in Washington DC)
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?
A two-foot-tall bronze statue of the Greek goddess Diana that once adorned the fireplace mantle onboard the Titanic was found during a recent expedition.
Described as like finding “a needle in a haystack,” it was one of a variety of fine art pieces that have for years been the targets of maritime archaeologists working to recover the ship’s relics.
The RMS Titanic will likely never stop fascinating people. The ‘unsinkable’ luxury liner that carried the high society of England over to the US on its tragic first voyage was, as Art Net recently described, “a a floating gallery of fine art and design.”
Photographs and written sources from the ship show how it was filled with art, from a 1912 Renault luxury automobile to this bronze statue known as the Diana of Versailles.
Cast based on an original piece kept in the Louvre from the Versailles Palace, it’s known to have been placed atop a fireplace mantle from a photograph taken onboard the ship.
The Georgia company RMS Titanic which conducts expeditions to document, monitor, and recover the relics of the ship recently finished an unmanned expedition to the site in the North Sea where the ship went down. There, half-buried in the mud, they found the goddess without a speck of green to be seen on her flowing gown.
“It’s truly a needle in a haystack that is two-and-a-half miles underwater in pitch black darkness,” James Penca, a researcher at the company told National Public Radio, adding that “we found her with just hours remaining in the expedition.”
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“There were a lot of tears in the room for a lot of us,” said Penca, “even the people who’ve been there before.”
She’s depicted wielding a club over her right shoulder, with a rampant stag standing against her left leg.
MORE UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY: Greece Opens World’s First Underwater Museum Around a 2,400-Year-old Shipwreck
While RMS Titanic leaves some pieces in situ, others they attempt to collect through expeditions, and the Diana of Versailles will certainly top the list when the company gets around to going back.
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The Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans has recently witnessed an incredible eco-renaissance following decades of damage and neglect.
Led by a local community development group, a 40-acre wetlands park has been restored to glories past with hundreds of local trees that attract over a hundred species of birds, plus joggers, picnickers, and nature lovers besides.
The story begins with Rashida Ferdinand, founder of Sankofa Community Development Corporation (CDC). Growing up in this historic part of New Orleans, where Black homeownership thrived, where Fats Domino was born, and where locals routinely went out into the wetlands to catch fish and crustaceans, she watched as it suffered from years of neglect.
Poor drainage, ruined roads, illegal trash dumping, and unmitigated damage from hurricanes slowly wasted the wetland away until it was a derelict eyesore.
In the name of restoring this wild heritage indicative of the culture in the Lower Ninth, and in order to protect her communities from flooding, Ferdinand founded the Sankofa CDC, and in 2014 entered into an agreement with the City of New Orleans for the restoration of Sankofa—a 40-acre section of neglected wetlands in the heart of the Lower Ninth.
The loss of Sankofa’s potential to dampen flooding from storms meant that over the years dozens of houses and properties were flooded and damaged beyond the ability of the inhabitants to recover. Forced out by a combination of nature’s fury and government failure, the cultural heritage of the community was receding along with the floodwaters.
Ferdinand knew that restoring natural flood barriers like Sankofa was key to protecting her community.
“Hurricane protection is a major concern in the community, but there’s a lack of trust in the infrastructure systems that are supposed to protect us,” Ferdinand told the Audubon Society.
Today, Sankofa Wetlands Park is a sight to behold. Hiking trails snake through a smattering of ponds and creeks, where bald cypresses and water tupelo trees continue to grow and cling to the ground even during storms. Picnic benches have appeared, wheelchair-accessible trails connect sections of the park to parts of the Lower Ninth, and local businesses are seeing more visitors.
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Visiting birders have recorded sightings of over 100 species of songbirds, ducks, near-shore waders of all kinds, egrets, and herons, and the park also acts as a home and refuge for otters, beavers, and a variety of amphibians and reptiles.
It needed a lot of work though. Thousands of invasive tallow trees had to be uprooted. 27,000 cubic meters of illegally dumped trash compacted into the dirt had to be removed. A 60-year-old canal dug by the US Army Corps of Engineers had to be disconnected, and all new native flora had to be planted by hand.
WETLANDS BEING RESTORED ALL OVER: ‘The Largest Environmental Restoration in History’ Continues to Restart the Heart of the Everglades
Audubon says that Ferdinand routinely can’t believe her eyes when she looks at the transformation of Sankofa into its current state.
“Seeing butterflies, birds, and other pollinators in the park is a sign of a healthy ecosystem,” she says. “All we had to do was create the right conditions.”
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Slated for official completion in 2025 with an outdoor amphitheater, interpretive signage, and additional trails, Ferdinand and the CDC have their eyes set on an even larger area of wetlands to the north of Sankofa.
Along the way, Ferdinand and the CDC attracted many helping hands, and entered into many partnerships, But the catalyst for change arose from the spirit and determination of one woman in the right place at the right time, for the benefit of hundreds in this historic heart of a historic city.
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These high school sophomores recently raised over $20,000 to surprise their favorite school janitor with a brand-new car.
The fundraiser kicked off in advance of Francis Apraku’s birthday, whom the boys describe as “super kind and friendly.”
They asked him what he wanted as a present, and, joking, the Ghanaian immigrant replied that he’d love a new Jeep Wrangler.
Bennett, Nick H, Nick T, Artin, Joey, Yousif, and Logan, hoped to have enough by the time they graduated from James Maddison High School in Vienna, Virginia, to give Apraku his Jeep.
After creating their GoFundMe in May, however, they had enough by summer’s end to give him his surprise.
With the help of their community, they raised $21,000 which they used to buy the Jeep in candy apple red, surprising Apraku in the parking lot of the school last Monday.
MORE GENEROUS HIGH SCHOOLERS: Students Surprise Nigerian Security Guard Who’s ‘Part of the Family’ with a Trip Home–Raising $30K
The video shows the moment Apraku rolls onto his back in disbelief, saying, “Oh My God” and “I can’t believe this.”
A VERY SIMILAR STORY: Students Raise $270,000 So 80-Year-Old Janitor Can Retire from Texas High School
“He moved to America away from his family and friends a few years ago,” the students wrote on their GoFundMe. “Ever since we met Francis he has been super kind and friendly and sometimes even says prayers for us.”
“This day, the 9th of September, I will never forget,” Apraku said to the students gathered around.
WATCH the big reveal below…
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Our history books are littered with stories that present as lessons and warnings to future generations, and for years Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, was one such warning.
Famous for its giant stone heads, or moai, the island is also infamous for the rapid depopulation of their builders, which for years has been believed to be a devastating population collapse resulting from ecocide, or lethal exploitation of the natural environment.
Now though, a genetic study published in Nature debunks this long-standing theory. The study was carried out by an international team of scientists led by faculty at the Univ. of Copenhagen.
“Our genetic analysis shows a stably growing population from the 13th century through to the European contact in the 18th century. This stability is critical because it directly contradicts the idea of a dramatic pre-contact population collapse,” said first author Víctor Moreno-Mayar, Assistant Professor of Geogenetics at Copenhagen.
In case of a population collapse, the researchers would have been able to observe a less diverse gene pool in their analysis, simply due to there being a smaller population. However, when the team analyzed the genomes of 15 Rapanui (the name for those living on the island) who lived between 1670 and 1950, they found no signal of such collapse.
Today, a few thousand indigenous people live on the island. But the previous theory held that before the Europeans came to the island in 1722, the population was much larger. The “collapse” theory claims that the inhabitants of Rapa Nui depleted their natural resources to build the moai.
This is particularly relevant with trees, which were proposed as being cut down for firewood and to make rollers to move the moai around, eventually leading to a demographic and social collapse marked by famine, violence, and even cannibalism.
Through their genetic analysis, the team of scientists has not only provided evidence against the collapse theory, but also emphasized the stability of the Rapanui society over several centuries until the disruptions caused by European contact in 1722. The “collapse” theory has been called into doubt by previous studies based on archaeological data and population dynamics arguments. This is the first time, however, that genetics has been used to tackle this question.
The researchers now believe the Rapanui people adapted to environmental challenges that indeed occurred on the island between the 13th and the 18th centuries, which undermines theories suggesting resource mismanagement led to the societal collapse in the 16th or 17th century.
“The Rapa Nui landscape changed between the peopling of the island, which is around the 1200s, and the European contact 500 years later. However, the population stability throughout this time shows they were a resilient population capable of adapting to environmental challenges,” says Bárbara Sousa da Mota, a researcher at the University of Lausanne and co-first author of the study.
Moreno-Mayer perhaps puts it best.
“Personally, I believe the idea of the ecological suicide is put together as part of a colonial narrative,” he said. “That is this idea that these supposedly primitive people could not manage their culture or resources, and that almost destroyed their people. But the genetic evidence shows the opposite.”
For those fascinated by these early oceanographers, you’ll want to stay and read the next finding, which is that in addition to challenging the “collapse” theory, the new study also found evidence that Rapa Nui was unlikely to be the last stop in Pacific voyaging.
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Although 2,100 miles of ocean separate Rapa Nui and South America, the genetic analysis also showed that the Rapanui people were in contact with Indigenous Americans before Europeans arrived on the island.
The team found that approximately ten percent of the Rapanui gene pool has an Indigenous American origin. But more importantly, they were able to infer both populations met before Europeans arrived on the island and in the Americas.
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“We looked into how the Indigenous American DNA was distributed across the Polynesian genetic background of the Rapanui. This distribution is consistent with a contact occurring between the 13th and the 15th centuries,” says Moreno-Mayar.
“While our study cannot tell us where the Rapanui came into contact with Indigenous Americans, this might mean that the Rapanui ancestors reached the Americas before Christopher Columbus,” adds Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, also from Lausanne, and co-author on the paper.
OTHER NEWS FROM THE REGION: Archaeologists Uncover Ancient City in Kingdom of Tonga That Rewrites History: ‘First City of the Pacific’
This result settles a longstanding debate on whether there was any pre-European interaction between Polynesians and Indigenous Americans. And having peopled all of Polynesia across the Pacific, is it really that surprising they were able to arrive in South America?
“Not only is there no evidence of a population collapse before the Europeans arrived on the island, but the data also shows that they were capable of even more formidable voyages across the Pacific than had been previously established, ultimately reaching the Americas,” said Moreno-Mayar. “So we can put those ideas to rest now.”
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Quote of the Day: “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” – Golda Meir
Photo by: Marcel Ardivan
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?
A pioneering Welsh running athlete has helped organize hundreds of community running events around the country, and recently celebrated his 85th birthday by racing his great-grandson who takes part in them.
“I intended on walking it, but when I got there with my great-grandson, I decided to run it,” 85-year-old Eric Hughes told the BBC. “He beat me by seven minutes.”
Some things never die, and Hughes’ competitive spirit which has seen him medal at 18 consecutive British Masters Championships at various distances, is certainly one of them.
But as he ran through life’s race, his drive to succeed has morphed into the drive to see others succeed. He is one of the most prolific organizers and volunteers of Britain’s “ParkRuns” a community running event that started originally as a simple club that ran a 5K in London three times a week in 2004.
It has exploded in popularity since then, and with 20 days until ParkRun’s 20th anniversary, there are now more than 1,200 ParkRuns around the world according to the BBC, including countries as diverse as Estwani, Malaysia, Japan, and Austria.
“Hundreds of thousands of Parkrunners are processed, websites updated and millions of emails sent each week,” the official ParkRun website states on its home page. “The ParkRun community is growing all the time—but it’s all still based on the simple, basic principles formed from the start: weekly, free, for everyone, forever.”
Hughes helps organize the senior Parkrun in Bridgend, Wales, on Saturdays and the Sunday version for juniors in nearby Porthcawl. He has helped organize over 500 ParkRun events since he became involved with the movement, and told the BBC he especially enjoys watching young children take part to highlight “the natural ability they’ve got.”
“I think eventually we’ll have such good athletes in this country and that’s because of the ParkRuns,” Hughes added.
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He celebrated his 85th birthday with (what else?) a ParkRun, in which his great-grandson joined in. Hughes couldn’t replicate the success he enjoyed throughout his life against another member of his family—his brother Lynn—another runner who actually broke the world four-hour barrier for 40 miles on track.
Publicized at the time, Lynn wasn’t willing to deny Eric’s claim that he was faster than his twin brother.
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Launched in Livonia, Michigan in 2012, the USA has 75 different ParkRuns, which you can find on this map on the organization’s website.
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Reprinted with permission from World At Large, a news website of nature, politics, science, health, and travel.
Early Thursday morning at 7:58 a.m. ET, members of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn crew successfully completed the world’s first all-civilian spacewalk 450 miles above Earth’s surface.
Tech entrepreneur and adventurer Jared Isaacman was followed by Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX engineer, in exiting the hatch of the Dragon capsule while it floated over Australia and New Zealand.
There have been several days of incredible scenes and celebrations to mark this momentous occasion—including their safe return on Sunday—but one very important detail hasn’t gotten the spotlight it deserves.
“The images of Isaacman and Gillis silhouetted more than 200 miles high against a dramatic backdrop of Earth will be added to the annals of space history at a time when companies such as SpaceX are authoring new chapters of exploration,” writes Christian Davenport at the Washington Post, who explored that detail in his write-up on the milestone.
The Polaris Dawn mission tested the most recent iteration of the spacesuit. With the success of Isaacman and Gillis’ spacewalks came the success of the SpaceX new extravehicular activity (EVA) suit, which is incomparably more mobile than what the Apollo Program astronauts wore, allowing the Polaris crew to maneuver inside the Dragon capsule and exit into the hatch into space without any airlock chamber.
In an interview with the Post, powered by Starlink high-speed wireless internet, Isaacman said the suit performed well and that their “pretty good data” will inform the design innovation of a further two suits.
NASA’s Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) has been worn by ISS astronauts since 1981 but weighs over 100 pounds without life support systems, and comes in only a few different sizes, meaning astronauts have to select which size of glove, for example, is the closest approximation to their hand size.
It includes several rigid components like the upper torso and rear-entry hatch. By contrast, the Polaris suits are designed to be almost entirely soft, with thermal insulation and radiation-proof textile designs salvaged from the spacecraft itself. The design keeps in mind that a multi-planet species will need millions of EVA suits, and reflects this need by being easier to manufacture, less expansive, and more customizable.
“We have a lot of different resources at our disposal here,” Chris Trigg, SpaceX spacesuit manager said during a talk in 2022. “There’s some thermal material that we ended up using on the boot, which was developed actually for Falcon and Dragon, and is used on the interstage on Falcon, and on the trunk of Dragon.”
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Trigg also described a new heads-up display inside the helmet, allowing astronauts to view data about their suits’ internal temperature, humidity, and pressure; the display also exhibits a mission clock to monitor the durations of particular EVA tasks.
SpaceX’s (and partners) Polaris Program is a little like rolling out the welcome mat to all of humanity for the inauguration of commercial space travel and heavy industry. The Polaris Dawn mission was designed to test a variety of things, including the EVA suit. The second mission will try to visit the Hubble Space Telescope, which Isaacman suggested could be given a push by him and his crew.
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Over the years, Hubble, which is still working well, has been pulled towards Earth by gravity, and it won’t be very long before it burns out in the atmosphere.
A third Polaris mission will be aiming to test Starship—SpaceX’s massive, next-generation rocket and spacecraft that SpaceX founder Elon Musk says will take humanity to Mars and back.
WATCH the entire spacewalk below from FARZAD…
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30 years ago this month, botanists in Australia made the “find of the century” when they discovered a species of pine tree in the mountains near Sydney that have survived from the time of the dinosaurs.
Now, to mark the occasion, the Botanic Gardens of Sydney are auctioning off 6 saplings to avid horticulturalists in order to spread enthusiasm, interest, and connifer genetics, around Australia.
There’s little precedent to generate an estimate as to how much the pine saplings will sell for, but there may have never been a higher-profile plant auction in world history, to say nothing of Australia’s.
The 90 or so original trees surviving in the wild are located in an area so secretive, that entry even by scientists is barred for all but the most important requirements. Unauthorized entry into the sites is punishable by up to 2 years in prison and a fine of $330,000 according to the Australian Biodiversity Conservation Act, with ignorance of the law and the sites’ locations being no excuse.
Introduction of invasive plants, parasites, microbes, fungal spores, or plant viruses could wipe out this relic population in a matter of weeks, so any visitors must be thoroughly sanitized, and their activities carefully controlled.
The Wollemi pine evolved 91 million years ago and went extinct according to the fossil record 2 million years ago, but in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, a stand of 90 specimens were found high in the more remote peaks in 1994.
It not only survived the comet impact and global firestorms that killed the dinosaurs but all the turmoil of the ending of the last ice age as well.
For the past three decades, and in extreme secrecy, a team of specialists from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) of Australia has been gradually planting small clumps of the Wollemi pine in other locations to help ensure it has every chance to see another 91 million years.
Director of horticulture at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, John Siemon, said the greater the difference in the trees’ genetics, the better chance they had of survival.
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“Those people who are purchasing into the auction, we hope have that passion like we do, for conserving plant species,” he told ABC News Australia. “We’d be very excited to have the owners understand the importance of the plant, and be able to find homes for them that are the most suitable to live out their life to maturity and beyond.”
For readers thinking that an auction is a very shallow and unwise use of these precious saplings, 40 others were recently planted at the Blue Mountains Botanic Gardens at Mount Tomah, also with the 30-year anniversary in mind.
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Blue Mountains National Park Area Manager, Lisa Menke, said the 40 saplings planted created a full genetic picture of the tree in one place.
“It’s like an insurance population, where once these trees grow up, they’ll become the seed bank for future,” she said.
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Other areas around the Blue Mountains have been investigated for potential introduction sites, but this pine, with needles akin to ferns of Granny Smith Apple-green colors, has become almost exclusive to a few areas on the higher peaks, shivering on the cold edge of evolutionary oblivion, growing mere millimeters per year in secret, for millions of years.
Dozens of saplings have been shipped off to botanical gardens around the world where they can be stored as additional insurance populations while simultaneously inspiring conservation funding, but in terms of walking through Cretaceous Era forests, the average person’s chance to do so remains as slim as ever.
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Organic and regenerative farming practices are taking root in the polluted yet beautiful Ventura County in California, where a truly staggering amount of the country’s produce is grown.
Industrial agriculture has polluted soil and groundwater with pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, while simultaneously driving away or poisoning wildlife.
The Rodale Institute and their California Organic Center has been working to reverse this course for some time, but thanks to a new $1 million grant from Patagonia outfitters and $1.5 million from the state of California, they are now able to help farmers transition to these alternative agriculture strategies that regenerate soil and biodiversity, with almost all the startup funding covered on their behalf.
It’s been 2 years and a week since Yves Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, announced that every dime of profit his company makes from now on will go to preserving nature and fighting climate change by designating Earth as the company’s sole shareholder.
Little publicity has been generated by the non-profit arm of Patagonia, called the Holdfast Collective, since then. According to reports, it has been quietly going about its business distributing $70 million to some of the largest conservation organizations on the planet, like the Nature Conservancy, the Conservation Fund, and Re:wild.
Holdfast Collective’s executive director Greg Curtis said of Ventura’s Rodale Institute that they’re “peerless,” and their success over the last 5 years in helping farmers transition over to more regenerative farming practices made it a very easy choice for what amounts to Patagonia’s first investment into the industry since Chouinard’s decision.
CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY IN AMERICA:
According to Fast Company Magazine, the funding from Holdfast and the state will help local farmers “access business planning help, long-term contracts for their produce, and grants to buy equipment or manage weed and pests.”
“We are removing every single barrier,” Jeff Tkach, CEO of Rodale Institute told the magazine. “You think Ventura County is this gorgeous part of the world, but it’s an agriculture county, and the water is getting polluted, the air is getting polluted.”
“Eventually, the more people who buy organic and regeneratively grown produce, the more the cost will come down. We have an opportunity to reinvent our food system. And California is often a catalyst for change for the rest of the country.”
Tkach says that starting this transition in Ventura is both symbol and substance. There are more than 2,000 farms across a quarter million acres in this county alone. Particualrly prelevant in Ventura are the orchards, where lemons alone rake in a quarter billion dollars every year.
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Quote of the Day: “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” – H. G. Wells
Photo by: Jonathan Gross, CC license
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?
Reprinted with permission from World At Large, a news website of nature, politics, science, health, and travel.
With the high season in Europe underway, many famous cities are already analyzing the results of new controls and taxes on tourism to manage overcrowding. The movement towards hindering tourism is nothing short of unprecedented.
One quote from AP is particularly jarring.
“Tourists are waiting more than two hours to visit the Acropolis in Athens,” it read. “Taxi lines at Rome’s main train station are running just as long. And so many visitors are concentrating around St. Mark’s Square in Venice that crowds get backed up crossing bridges—even on weekdays”.
But this year is just a demonstration. Come 2025, even more protocols will be implemented, including an EU-wide travel authorization system that will rake in tens of millions of euros and allow offenders of various tourist control measures to be easily identified.
There has never been a better time to look for B, or even C-list cities in Europe, and in fact there are many advantages to doing so.
Hoping to escape tourists in Italy is like moving a house next to a termite nest and hoping to escape termites. To see Venice, Rome, Naples, Florence, or Milan, visitors must be ready to bear the tourists, controls, and taxes.
Even if you visit a secondary B-list city, like Trieste, Siena, Genova, Lucca, or Verona, there’s no guarantee of escaping tourists. The city footprint is smaller, so the tourists may seem to be closer together.
In Rome, the city is now charging for entry to the Pantheon, and controlling crowds at the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. Florence is now deliberately shrinking the number of short-term vacation rental properties in the city, a measure also implemented already in Rome that may lead to a price spike for accommodations.
Venice is doing the same but to an even greater degree. They’re also trialing a new access tax for day-trippers and regulating tourist group sizes to 25. The Guardian reports that €250 fines have been implemented for simply sitting down on the famous Spanish Steps in Rome.
Consider leaving all this behind for the city of Torino (Turin). The capital of the Piedmont region of Italy. This B-list destination is beautiful, spacious, and verdant—especially because a tree-planting program in the city has added two million urban trees.
Although last year the city saw record numbers of tourists—including the first time that international tourists overtook domestic ones—images from local papers reveal the size of the ‘crowds’ at the peak season, and lengths of the ‘lines’, which are quite modest.
Yet, Turin is a big city—just a little smaller than Bologna, and though it’s one of the 250 most visited cities worldwide, it’s merely the 10th most frequented in Italy. The per-night tourist tax at €3.70 per person for 4-star accommodations is half of Rome’s, and one-third less than Naples.
Do a search and gaze at the gorgeous scenery of Turin, which shares much of the iconic imagery of Florence and Verona, i.e. stunning plazas, a beautiful and broad riverside, and important museums.
Follow up with a visit to Padua, in Veneto, where there is no tourist tax to speak of. This hidden gem is just a 40-minute drive from the Venice airport and has been a center of higher learning and scholarship since the Middle Ages. It contains the oldest university in Europe, and perhaps the world’s oldest botanical garden for the purposes of scientific research.
Alongside numerous architectural treasures and achingly beautiful 14th-century frescoes that are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s a mystery that Padua is not more frequented.
Forbes reports that the problem of overcrowding is equally as bad, if not worse, in the small towns of Cinque Terre in Liguria, with congestion at Portofino—what is essentially a fishing village nestled in a sheltered cove—being so bad that anyone stopping to take so much as a photograph in a way that is intrusive or obstructive can be fined up to €275.
That’s a pittance compared to the €2,500 fine you will receive for walking the paths above the Cinque Terre in flip-flops or sandals. The Italian authorities mean business—behave yourself, or begone… There are good options, however, if you take them up on that offer.
If the sea is a must in your holiday plan, consider the Ante-Cinque Terre, an area south of the major city of La Spezia with very similar scenery, but perhaps one-third of the visitors. Much like Cinque Terre, this area is defined by small municipalities on the seaside, painted a variety of colors.
The route includes Fezzano, Le Grazie, Portovenere, Lerici (pictured at the top), Tellaro, and Montemarcello, which together line the shores in a curve around an aquatic feature called il Golfo dei Poeti, because it was here that the famous Romanticists Percy Shelly and Lord Byron both stayed for long periods during their exiles from Britain.
This author has seen both versions of Cinque Terre, and the differences are minimal, with perhaps the only exception being the verticality of the Cinque Terre villages adding to their drama.
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But some of the towns in the Ante-Cinque Terre, like Le Grazie and Tellaro, are still just towns—exactly like Cinque Terre used to be before Rick Steves announced their stupendous presence to the world.
PASS ON THE VALUABLE TIPS to Friends and Family Dreaming of Italy–By Sharing On Social Media…
A couple who planned separate marriage proposals to surprise each other at a special concert both got down on one knee at the same time.
Rachel Hundertmark had been planning for months to propose to her partner Rashad Polk at an upcoming concert performed by the couple’s favorite band.
They had shared their first kiss at a Modest Mouse gig in 2021, so on June 14, they headed down to the show with their friends, family, and Rachel’s 16-year-old daughter Jasmine.
Rachel had a ring tucked in her pocket ready to ask the big question—with no idea that Rashad had the same plan. Both had confided in Jasmine that they were going to propose, so the teen had to keep both secrets without ruining the surprise.
The Baltimore, Maryland mom dropped to one knee first, and Rashad burst into laughter before doing the same thing—with Jasmine ready to capture the heart-warming moment on camera.
“I wanted to get down on one knee to make him feel like a prince, just like he makes me feel like a princess.
“We were so shocked at what happened that neither of us thought to actually say yes.”
The couple, who originally met through work, said everything went perfectly on the day and they have already set their wedding date for September 2025.
“It went perfectly on the day, even the weather was perfect,” said Rashad, a photographer. “The moment was flawless.”
“It was so surreal—it felt like an out of body experience.
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“It was good she proposed first, because I was waiting for a certain song before I proposed, and they didn’t even end up playing the one I was waiting for!”
“The song she proposed to, Dashboard, will definitely be played at our wedding.”
“And in the car on the way home, the radio played ‘Marry You’ by Bruno Mars which felt so fitting.” Watch the moment below…
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A British explorer has discovered the source of an uncharted Amazon river, after being stalked by jaguars and ravaged by army ants.
The area has only ever been mapped by satellites, leading to solely inaccurate coordinates due to the jungle tree cover.
The daring 33-year-old, Ash Dykes, beamed with joy after finding the start of the Coppename River in Suriname with fellow adventurers Jacob Hudson, Dick Lock and Matt Wallace
They also named two undocumented waterfalls—Dykes Falls and Wallace Falls—after the team members who first spotted them in the largely unexplored jungle.
Speaking for the first time about their achievement, Ash said it felt “crazy” to find the elusive source of the river. “We were all screaming and getting excited.”
“We’ve mapped the coordinates and took a screenshot for any mapping associations who want that.”
Originally from Wales, but now living in London, he hired a helicopter on August 29th to drop them into the center of the ex-Dutch colony, which is 93% forested.
He and his team then spent the next six days fighting their way upstream in kayaks, carrying over 100 pounds of supplies—while being bitten by ticks and vicious army ants.
“It is crazy to think that we are going to some places that the forest hasn’t ever seen a human footprint before. And it’s not surprising… It is brutal in the jungle.”
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The group came across a terrifying Goliath tarantula, the world’s largest spider, along with snakes and caiman alligators. But Ash said the most chilling moment was when they awoke to find fresh jaguar excrement just yards from where they had been sleeping in their tarp-covered hammocks.
“We couldn’t see it, but who knows how long it was potentially following our tracks to camp. We also had army ants just take over our camp completely.
“They were all over our hammocks and our tarp, and they made four grown men stand at the side of the river bank, waiting for them to pass. And, Jacob got hit by them.”
The team survived on 500 to 600 calories a day, consuming ration packs and wolf fish they caught in the river—even though they trekked up to 16 hours at a time through jungle and fast-flowing river rapids.
But the team were thrilled to name two waterfalls that they discovered as they ventured towards the source of the Coppename River.
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“We were pretty cut open and bruised for the majority of the first two days, and that’s when we came across an undiscovered waterfall,” said Ash.
“It’s a big 15-meter (45-foot) falls that stopped us in our tracks. It’s not on any GPS, and hasn’t been mapped. We discovered a smaller falls right near the source, which I named ‘Dykes Falls’, and that one is even more remote—about 100 meters from the source of the Coppename River.”
Ash has recorded coordinates of their finds in Suriname’s dense interior, which has barely been explored since Victorian missions failed due to disease and injury in the 1800s.
“We’ll probably go a month without seeing any human activity. It’s crazy remote here.”
“I didn’t expect to experience something like this in the 21st century. We’re being thrown back in time.”
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Ash will now travel from the source of the Coppename River to its mouth, in an epic journey which could take another 40 days.
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Cars and planes could soon be built from the world’s strongest batteries, thanks to a ground-breaking innovation from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
Researchers detailed the advance of so-called massless energy storage—and a structural battery that could cut the weight of a laptop by 50%, make mobile phones as thin as a credit card, or increase the driving range of an EV by up to 70 percent on a single charge.
Structural batteries are materials that, in addition to storing energy, can carry loads. Stiff, strong carbon fibers could store electrical energy chemically and, in this way, the battery material can become part of the actual construction material of a product.
And, when cars, planes, ships, or computers are built from a material that functions as both a battery and a load-bearing structure, the weight and energy consumption are radically reduced.
“We have succeeded in creating a battery made of carbon fibre composite that is as stiff as aluminum and energy-dense enough to be used commercially,” says Chalmers researcher Richa Chaudhary, the first author of a paper recently published in Advanced Materials. “Just like a human skeleton, the battery has several functions at the same time.”
When it comes to vehicles there are high demands on the design to be sufficiently strong to meet safety requirements. There, the research team’s structural battery cell has significantly increased its stiffness, or more specifically, the elastic modulus, which is measured in gigapascal (GPa), from 25 to 70. This means that the material can carry loads just as well as aluminum, but with a lower weight.
“In terms of multifunctional properties, the new battery is twice as good as its predecessor – and actually the best ever made in the world,” said research leader Leif Asp, professor at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science at Chalmers.
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“Investing in light, energy-efficient vehicles is a matter of course if we are to economize on energy and think about future generations. We have made calculations on electric cars that show that they could drive for up to 70 percent longer than today if they had competitive structural batteries.”
The team said the goal was always to achieve a performance that makes it possible to commercialize the technology. The link to the market has been forged through the newly started Chalmers Venture company called Sinonus. And, they’ve received “a great deal of interest from the automotive and aerospace industries”.
However, there is still a lot of engineering work to be done before the battery cells have taken the step from lab manufacturing on a small scale to being produced on a large scale for our vehicles.
“It will require large investments to meet the transport industry’s challenging energy needs, but this is also where the technology could make the most difference,” added Professor Asp.
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Quote of the Day: “The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts.” – William Makepeace Thackeray (quote often attributed to Buddha)
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Patients with an inherited disease that caused them to lose much of their sight early in childhood experienced a quick return of vision after they received gene therapy.
The new treatment addressed the genetic mutation that caused their vision’s deterioration, letting them see 100 times better than before.
Some patients even experienced a 10,000-fold improvement in their vision after receiving the highest dose of the therapy, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine.
“That 10,000-fold improvement is the same as a patient being able to see their surroundings on a moonlit night outdoors as opposed to requiring bright indoor lighting before treatment,” said the study’s lead author, Artur Cideciyan, PhD, a professor of Ophthalmology and co-director of the Center for Hereditary Retinal Degenerations.
“One patient reported for the first time being able to navigate at midnight outdoors only with the light of a bonfire.”
A total of 15 people participated in the Phase 1/2 trial, including three pediatric patients. Each patient suffered from Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA1) as a result of mutations in the GUCY2D gene, which is essential to producing proteins critical for vision. The rare condition, which affects 100,000 people worldwide, causes significant amount of vision loss as early as infancy.
All subjects had severe vision loss with their best measure of vision being equal or worse than 20/80—meaning if a typically-sighted person could see an object clearly at 80 feet, these patients would have to move up to at least 20 feet to see it. Glasses provide limited benefit to these patients because they correct abnormalities in the optical focusing ability of the eye, and are unable to address medical causes of vision loss, such as genetic retinal diseases like LCA1.
The clinical trial published in The Lancet tested different dosage levels of the gene therapy, ATSN-101, which was adapted from the AAV5 microorganism and was surgically injected under the retina.
Improvements were noticed quickly, often within the first month, after the therapy was applied and lasted for at least 12 months.
For the first part of the study, cohorts of three adults each received one of the three different dosages: Low, mid, and high. Evaluations were held between each level of dosage to ensure that they were safe before upping the dosage for the next cohort. A second phase of the study involved only administering the high dosage levels to both an adult cohort of three and a pediatric cohort of three, again after safety reviews of the previous cohorts.
Three of six high-dosage patients who were tested to navigate a mobility course in varying levels of light achieved the maximum-possible score. Other tests used eye charts or measured the dimmest flashes of light patients perceived in a dark environment.
Of the nine patients who received the maximum dosage, two had the 10,000-fold improvement in vision.
“Even though we previously predicted a large vision improvement potential in LCA1, we did not know how receptive patients’ photoreceptors would be to treatment after decades of blindness,” said Cideciyan.
“It is very satisfying to see a successful multi-center trial that shows gene therapy can be dramatically efficacious.”
Researchers did find some patients had side effects, but the overwhelming majority were related to the surgical procedure itself. The most common side effect was the breakage of small blood vessels underneath the clear surface of the eye, which healed. Two patients had eye inflammation that was reversed with a course of steroids. No serious side effects were related to the study drug.
This work, funded by Atsena Therapeutics, comes on the heels of another successful ophthalmological trial at Penn restoring sight in patients with a different form of LCA. Earlier in 2024, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing was used to improve the sight of many patients with a form of LCA tied to mutations in the CEP290 gene. Co-led by one of the new paper’s co-authors, Tomas S. Aleman, MD, the study used similar tests and was the first time children were involved in any gene editing work.
“The treatment success in our most recent clinical trials together with our earlier experience brings hope for a viable treatment for about 20 percent of infantile blindness caused by inherited retinal degenerations,” Aleman said.
“The focus now is on perfecting the treatments and treating earlier manifestations of these conditions once safety is confirmed. We hope similar approaches will lead to equally positive outcomes in other forms of congenital retinal blindness.”
Americans have revealed the most unusual hacks to help their gardens thrive, like keeping away cats using cinnamon, and making plants grow faster by singing to them.
The survey uncovered some weird and wonderful ways people tend their gardens, according to Sabrina Carmona, a VP at the game developer behind Farm Heroes Saga, which commissioned the poll.
How about throwing used-up teabags on soil? While the tea leaves and bag begin to break down and decompose, they release nutrients into the soil and help plants retain water—but only use on plants that like acidic soil, such as hydrangeas, blueberries, marigolds, and gardenias.
Some gardeners use baking soda in the opposite way—to make the soil more alkaline, they add ashes from their fireplace which acts as a fertilizer.
Watering plants with potato water was also cited by respondents.
The average gardener spends three hours weekly tending to their outdoor space. However, 67% would like to invest more time in their green space.
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The survey found 67% of those who garden do it because of the satisfaction they get from achieving results.
65 percent most enjoy watering plants, 36% thrive from mowing the grass, and 51 percent love harvesting their own fruit and veg, aiming to save money.
“Lots of people see gardening as an art form,” said Carmona. But it’s all about enjoyment, according to the poll of 2,000 adults conducted by OnePoll.
Almost half admitted that they would rather go to a garden center than a nightclub.
TOP 15 UNUSUAL HACKS TO HELP GARDENS GROW
1. Using coffee grounds as a fertilizer
2. Using egg shells as fertilizer
3. Growing new fruit/vegetables from leftover vegetable roots/seeds
4. Talking to my plants
5. Using banana peels as fertilizer
6. Throwing used teabags onto the soil
7. Using ash from the fireplace as fertilizer
8. Sprinkling cayenne pepper to ward off pests
9. Using baking soda to make the soil more alkaline
10. Singing to my plants
11. Sprinkling cinnamon on the ground to deter cats
12. Using fish heads as fertilizer
13. Using potato water to water plants
14. Using white vinegar as a plant feed
15. Destroying fungus with cinnamon
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Our partner Rob Brezsny, who has a new book out, 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 September 14, 2024
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Peregrine falcons can move at a speed of 242 miles per hour. Mexican free-tailed bats reach 100 miles per hour, and black marlin fish go 80 mph. These animals are your spirit creatures in the coming weeks, Virgo. Although you can’t literally travel that fast (unless you’re on a jet), I am confident you can make metaphorical progress at a rapid rate. Your ability to transition into the next chapter of your life story will be at a peak. You will have a robust power to change, shift, and develop.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Mythically speaking, I envision a death and rebirth in your future. The death won’t be literal; neither you nor anyone you love will travel to the other side of the veil. Rather, I foresee the demise of a hope, the finale of a storyline, or the loss of a possibility. Feeling sad might temporarily be the right thing to do, but I want you to know that this ending will ultimately lead to a fresh beginning. In fact, the new blooms ahead wouldn’t be possible without the expiration of the old ways. The novel resources that arrive will come only because an old resource has faded.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Did you ever have roommates who stole your credit card and used it to buy gifts for themselves? Does your history include a friend or loved one who told you a lie that turned out to be hurtful? Did you ever get cheated on by a lover you trusted? If anything like this has happened to you, I suspect you will soon get a karmic recompense. An atonement will unfold. A reparation will come your way. A wrong will be righted. A loss will be indemnified. My advice is to welcome the redress graciously. Use it to dissolve your resentments and retire uncomfortable parts of your past.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
One of my oldest friends is Sagittarius-born Jeffrey Brown. We had rowdy fun together in our twenties. We were mad poets who loved to party. But while I went on to become an unruly rock and roll musician, experimental novelist, and iconoclastic astrologer, Brown worked hard to become a highly respected, award-winning journalist for the PBS News Hour, a major American TV show. Among his many successes: He has brought in-depth coverage of poetry and art to mainstream TV. How did he manage to pull off such an unlikely coup? I think it’s because he channeled his wildness into disciplined expression; he converted his raw passions into practical power; he honed and refined his creativity so it wielded great clout. In the coming months, dear Sagittarius, I urge you to make him one of your inspirational role models.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Let’s hypothesize that you will be alive, alert, and active on your hundredth birthday. If that joyous event comes to pass, you may have strong ideas about why you have achieved such marvelous longevity. I invite you to imagine what you will tell people on that momentous occasion. Which practices, feelings, and attitudes will have turned you into such a vigorous example of a strong human life? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to meditate on these matters. It will also be a favorable phase to explore new practices, feelings, and attitudes that will prolong your satisfying time here on planet Earth.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Few Americans are more famous than George Washington. He was a top military leader in the Revolutionary War before he became the country’s first president. George had a half-brother named Lawrence, who was 16 years older. Virtually no one knows about him now, but during his life, he was a renowned landowner, soldier, and politician. Historians say that his political influence was crucial in George’s rise to power. Is there anyone remotely comparable to Lawrence Washington in your life, Aquarius? Someone who is your advocate? Who works behind the scenes on your behalf? If not, go searching for them. The astrological omens say your chances are better than usual of finding such champions. If there are people like that, ask them for a special favor.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Over 15 centuries ago, Christian monks decided Fridays were unlucky. Why? Because they were the special day of the pagan Goddess Freya. Friday the 13th was extra afflicted, they believed, because it combined a supposedly evil number with the inauspicious day. And how did they get their opinion that 13 was malevolent? Because it was the holy number of the Goddess and her 13-month lunar calendar. I mention this because a Friday the 13th is now upon us. If you are afraid of the things Christian monks once feared, this could be a difficult time. But if you celebrate radical empathy, ingenious intimacy, playful eros, and fertile intuition, you will be awash in good fortune. That’s what the astrological omens tell me.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
One of the longest bridges in the world is the 24-mile-long Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana. During one eight-mile stretch, as it crosses Lake Pontchartrain, travelers can’t see land. That freaks out some of them. You might be experiencing a metaphorically similar passage these days, Aries. As you journey from one mode to the next, you may lose sight of familiar terrain for a while. My advice: Have faith, gaze straight ahead, and keep going.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
My horoscopes don’t necessarily answer questions that are foremost in your awareness. This might annoy you. But consider this: My horoscopes may nevertheless nudge you in unexpected directions that eventually lead you, in seemingly roundabout ways, to useful answers. The riddles I offer may stir you to gather novel experiences you didn’t realize you needed. Keep this in mind, Taurus, while reading the following: In the coming weeks, you can attract minor miracles and fun breakthroughs if you treat your life as an art project. I urge you to fully activate your imagination and ingenuity as you work on the creative masterpiece that is YOU.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
The Gemini musician known as Prince got an early start on his vocation. At age 7, he wrote “Funk Machine,” his first song. Have you thought recently about how the passions of your adult life first appeared in childhood? Now is an excellent time to ruminate on this and related subjects. Why? Because you are primed to discover forgotten feelings and events that could inspire you going forward. To nurture the future, draw on the past.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
You are lucky to have an opposable thumb on each of your hands. You’re not as lucky as koala bears, however, which have two opposable thumbs on each hand. But in the coming weeks, you may sometimes feel like you have extra thumbs, at least metaphorically. I suspect you will be extra dexterous and nimble in every way, including mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. You could accomplish wonders of agility. You and your sexy soul may be extra supple, lithe, and flexible. These superpowers will serve you well if you decide to improvise and experiment, which I hope you will.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
The internet is filled with wise quotes wrongly attributed. Among those frequently cited as saying words they didn’t actually say, Buddha is at the top of the list. There are so many fraudulent Buddha quotes in circulation that there’s a website devoted to tracking them down: FakeBuddhaQuotes.com. Here’s an example. The following statement was articulated not by Buddha but by English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray: “The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts.” I bring these thoughts to your attention, Leo, because it’s a crucial time for you to be dedicated to truth and accuracy. You will gain power by uncovering deceptions, shams, and misrepresentations. Be a beacon of authenticity!
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
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Quote of the Day: “Courage, my friends; ‘tis not too late to build a better world” – Tommy Douglas
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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?
