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Couple Stunned to Find Childhood Letter in Attic Written by King Charles to His ‘Granny’ the Queen Mother in 1955

By
Andy Corbley
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SWNS
SWNS

We’ve all found family heirlooms and keepsakes tucked away in our attics and lofts before, but an English couple recently found a lot more than merely their parents’ third-grade arithmetic homework.

A couple from Stratford-upon-Avod were left ‘gobsmacked’ after they found a childhood letter that newly-crowned King Charles wrote to his “Granny” Queen Mother Elizabeth when she was ill.

“Granny, I am sorry that you are ill. I hope you will be better soon,” read the letter written on Buckingham Palace letterhead and dated March 15th, 1955.

On the back of the letter, a six-year-old Prince Charles signed it with “lots of love from Charles,” alongside colorful doodles and 14 kisses.

Other royal memorabilia was found, including postcards from the royal estate at Sandringham, royal dinner menus, an invitation to a ball at Balmoral Estate, a note signed by the Queen Mother for the memorial service of King James VI, and a copy of the Queen’s Christmas speech from 1956.

“We finally had the time to look through a big box file that my mother had given to us,” the 49-year-old husband and finder said, remaining anonymous because of the couple’s intent to put the items up for auction. “For the last 30 to 40 years it’s been gathering dust inside various lofts.”

The letter on Buckingham Palace notepaper, dated March 15, 1955, reads, ’Dear Granny, I am sorry that you are ill. I hope you will be better soon’. – SWNS
The letter on Buckingham Palace notepaper, dated March 15, 1955, reads, ’Dear Granny, I am sorry that you are ill. I hope you will be better soon’. – SWNS

“It originally belonged to my late grandad Roland Stockdale,” he added, “My wife said ‘wow, look at that!’ We were pretty gobsmacked…”

the man said there was a simple explanation, namely that his grandfather Roland became a Police Sergeant in the Queen’s personal protection force during the 1950s, and the box of letters contained a photo of him in the Information Room in Scotland Yard in 1952.

MORE BRITISH NEWS: Britain’s Royal Mint is Salvaging Gold from E-Waste – Recycling Precious Metals for Green Investors

“I was told he was originally involved in helping to protect the Queen Mother but he probably worked with several royals over time,” he said.

Sergeant Stockdale worked alongside William Tallon, the Queen Mother’s devoted servant whose letters were also found in the loft, one of which was addressed to Stockdale and read “Dear Sarg, Queen Elizabeth told me this morning that you are not well…”

Charles Hason with the childhood letter from King Charles – SWNS

A few weeks later on February 7th, 1983, Tallon wrote again, offering his condolences to Mrs. Audrey Stockdale following Roland’s death.

MORE FAMILY HISTORY: Wife of WWII Soldier Spends Decades to Reunite Japanese Family With Photo Album He Found on Okinawa –LOOK

A letter to her on Clarence House headed paper reads…

“I am so dreadfully sorry to hear of your very sad loss and the family have all my deepest sympathy at this awful moment in time. I always thought most highly of Ron (the best and kindest Sgt we ever had) I only hope that all was peaceful at the end and that he didn’t have to suffer.”

“I have absolutely no idea how he came to have the letter written by King Charles when he was a boy,” said the seller. “It’s one of many things he kept.”

For the inheritors of Roland’s keepsakes, their biggest takeaway was how much it seemed everyone around the royal family valued Roland’s service and character.

MORE ROYAL STORIES: Prince Charles Opens 10-Room Bed And Breakfast On The Grounds Of His Scottish Castle

“It is clear from the tone of the correspondence that the royal family held Roland in high regard for his kindness,” said Auctioneer Charles Hanson who will handle the sale.

“It has long been normal practice for members of the royal family to give away small keepsakes and personal mementos to valued servants. Such was the warmth felt for Roland, it appears the Queen Mother allowed him to keep one or two special items.”

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French Football Star Scores First Goal Since Beating Cancer – And it was World Cancer Day!

By
Andy Corbley
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Sebastian Haller - BVB.de - Released
Sebastian Haller – BVB.de – Released

February 4th, World Cancer Day at Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund, Germany: it’s a day French-Ivorian striker Sébastien Haller will always remember.

Last summer, Haller was diagnosed with testicular cancer just weeks after signing a long-term contract to play for the second-biggest team in Germany, Borussia Dortmund.

It was a difficult, scary period for the big center forward when for the first time in his life, football was clearly not a priority.

But after two surgeries and four rounds of chemotherapy, the tumor was gone, and on World Cancer Day, he started his first game for the club.

“The thing you’ve been through, even if [you] don’t really realize right now, you need to enjoy even more of your moments because this is something that you’ve missed for a couple of months,” Haller told CNN.

Before the match and at half-time, Dortmund mascots came on the field to highlight International World Cancer Day by placing a model tumor in the center to raise awareness for testicular cancer.

MORE GOOD SOCCER NEWS: 

Dortmund were leading the visitors Freiburg 2-1, when in the 51st minute Haller scored a point-blank header off Raphaël Guerreiro’s cross, capping off more than 4 months of hospital visits and physical therapy.

“You remember why you play football is [sic] truly that kind of moment, because scoring a goal, it’s like I said, you feel like you are in the clouds,” Haller told CNN Sport’s Amanda Davies. “You feel like the atmosphere is changing.”

WATCH the goal and the celebrations…

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Archaeologists Uncover ‘Complete Roman City’ From 1,800 Years Ago in Luxor–Including Pigeon Towers

By
Andy Corbley
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credit - Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities
credit – Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

Archaeologists in Egypt have just succeeded in completely excavating a small Roman city in the classical capital of Luxor, which contained workshops, homes, and “pigeon towers.”

Dr. Mostafa Waziri from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities stressed the importance of the discovery, as it revealed the oldest Roman residential city on the eastern side of the modern-day Luxor Governorate, which is an extension of the ancient capital of Thebes.

The workshops for the manufacture and smelting of metals contained a number of pots, water bottles, flasks, grinding tools, Roman coins of copper and bronze, and bells.

Then there were the pigeon towers, which housed the birds as livestock. The ancestors of modern pigeons were rock doves, which preferred to nest in rocky cliffsides. Up in the tower, Roman pigeon keepers would place pots that the birds could use to build their nests.

In this video of Dr. Waziri explaining the site, the word “hammam” can be clearly heard, which is Arabic for baths.

MORE FROM EGYPT: Archaeologists May Have Discovered the Oldest And Most Complete Egyptian Mummy

Roman baths were found at this city back in the 1980s during excavations by a German-Egyptian team which included Jacek Kościuk, professor emeritus at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland.

Dr. Kościuk sent Live Science the scientific work published on the excavations in 2011, which included the findings of the baths.

MORE FROM ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Discover ‘Dazzling’ 3,000-Year-old Egyptian City, Left ‘As if it were yesterday’

Dr. Waziri’s team has dated the settlement to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, potentially during the reign of the influential Roman Emperor Diocletian (284 to 305 CE). At this date, Egypt was a Roman imperial province, and the days of the pharaohs were long gone.

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A Dog Lost For 36 Hours Rang the Animal Shelter’s Doorbell

By
Andy Corbley
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Credit - Animal Rescue League. Released
Credit – Animal Rescue League. Released

When a rescue dog found herself lost in her new neighborhood, she somehow knew just where to go to find help.

Back in January, a husky-mix named Bailey adopted by a family in Upper El Paso went missing, and her owners went to social media to try and find help locating her.

They contacted the shelter where they rescued Bailey, El Paso Animal Rescue League, who posted pictures of her on Facebook with the news. “URGENT- This beautiful girl- Bailey- has gotten loose in the area of Mesa and Sunland Park,” the post read.

But Bailey had a trick up her fur that would make the rescue efforts much easier. She walked herself ten miles right back to the Rescue League’s doors in Canutillo and rang the bell with her nose.

At 1:40 AM, the surveillance camera on the doorbell caught an image of the clever dog.

“These dogs are smarter than people give them credit for,” Loretta Hyde, the Rescue League’s founder, told a local Fox News affiliate. “How did she know what direction to go? She was 10 miles away! What did she eat and drink during those days?”

The shelter team immediately got Bailey inside and shortly thereafter reunited her with her family.

SHARE This Wicked Smart Doggo With Your Friends On Social Media…

“An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.” – George Jean Nathan

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.” – George Jean Nathan

Photo by: dy n, dynv

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Unhealthy Fat Could Be Turned Into ‘Good Fat’ to Keep Us Youthful and Thinner

By
Andy Corbley
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Photo by Kelly Sikkema
Cold exposure is the only known way to increase brown fat tissues – credit Mika Ruusunen

Did you know your body actually contains three different kinds of fat? That’s right, humans have brown, beige, and white fat adipose tissues, and a newfound ability to turn one into the other could create a revolution in metabolic disease prevention.

By turning a select number of genes in white fat cells off, they reverted to pluripotent cells, which can then become the cells for many different tissues and organs. In the case of a new study from the universities of California Davis and Copenhagen, they turned white fat into brown fat.

Brown fat is very useful for human beings to have, though many of us have very little owing to the comfortable nature of modern life. Brown fat burns a lot of calories to create heat through a process called thermogenesis.

The idea of having ‘more’ fat—of any kind—might seem a strange benefit for anyone other than a marine mammal, but the more brown fat an individual has, the less risk they are for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and all the other modern hallmarks of the standard American diet.

The researchers returned white fat cells to a state of embryonic pluripotency through the Yamanaka Factors, a set of four genes discovered by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka for which he won the Nobel Prize.

Then they changed other epigenetic switches, epigenetics being adaptations to genetic expression developed through environmental stressors, and successfully converted the white fat to brown fat.

Cultivating those brown fat cells in a lab, they then injected them into overweight sheep, who were able to use the brown fat to burn away white fat.

It actually cured the sheep’s diabetes and metabolic disorders—a huge moment in the research field.

At Copenhagen, they had already been experimenting with a potential drug that could stimulate the calorie-burning activity of brown fat by activating genetic switches in the same way that exposure to cold stimulates it which unfortunately also creates stress and high blood pressure as the body believes it’s fighting to keep warm that could be dangerous for some folks.

MORE ON HEALTH SCIENCES: Specific Gut Bacteria Extract More Energy Which Seems to be Associated with Obesity

They identified a cell surface receptor called GPR3 that doesn’t need to receive messaging molecules to activate, and which are particularly numerous on the surface of brown fat cells. They found it increased their self-signaling and increased the rate at which the brown fat chewed through calories.

Human infants are born with a lot of brown fat, but it decreases as we age. White fat on the other hand increases as we age, and creates inflammation associated with many of the hallmarks of aging.

Its primary function is to store excess sugar and carbs as glycogen. People don’t pack on the white pounds by eating fat in the form of triglycerides, but through a variety of lifestyle choices, a lack of exercise, and most importantly a high intake of refined vegetable oils.

MORE GOOD OBESITY NEWS: Breakthrough Obesity Treatment in Early Research Can Target Bad Fat Anywhere in the Body

Cold exposure is the best way to increase brown fat adipose tissue. It not only creates brown fat which was found to generate heat at a rate of 252 calories per day compared to 78 calories from those who had no detectable brown fat, but it actually absorbed more glucose from the bloodstream than insulin-stimulated glucose uptake into regular muscle tissue.

Researchers believe that finding cheap and safe ways to increase the general population’s amount of brown fat could reverse the obesity crisis in a fairly natural way.

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Stolen Trove of Angkor Royal Jewelry Returned to Cambodia After Resurfacing in London

By
Andy Corbley
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Credit - Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts
Credit – Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts

A trove of precious jewelry from Cambodia’s past has been repatriated after surfacing in London.

Totaling 77 artifacts from the medieval kingdom of Angkor, they are believed to have been trafficked from the country during the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge and the civil wars that plagued the country during the 20th century.

Angkor was one of the greatest powers in the East between the 9th and 14th centuries. Their theocratic capital of Angkor Wat is considered one of the 7 Wonders of the Medieval World, and today is still the largest religious complex on Earth.

The treasures date squarely to this period of flourishing and some of the crowns are believed to have sat on royal brows. They include items “such as gold and other precious metal pieces from the Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian period including crowns, necklaces, bracelets, belts, earrings, and amulets,” the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said in a statement.

Credit – Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts

The items came from the estate of recently-late serial art trafficker Douglas Latchford, who for many years was considered an expert antiquities appraiser, but was later discovered to have worked alongside the Communist Khmer Rouge to traffic hundreds of artifacts from the country.

Now, many of the nation’s historical treasures are returning, and this trove is just the most recent tranche.

Last year, US citizens or institutions returned either voluntarily or by court order, 30 items sold by Latchford, including a 10th-century sculpture of the Hindu god Skanda atop a peacock considered a “masterpiece.”

The year before that, the estate of Latchford, who died in 2020 before he could be convicted of antiquities trafficking, sent back five bronze and sandstone sculptures to Cambodia.

“We consider such returns as a noble act, which not only demonstrates important contributions to a nation’s culture but also contributes to the reconciliation and healing of Cambodians who went through decades of civil war and suffered tremendously from the tragedy of the Khmer Rouge genocide,” said Cambodia’s culture minister, Phoeurng Sackona.

SHARE This Inspiring Act Of Justice In Antiquities On Social Media… 

Senior With No Car Walks to Work–But After She Found $15k and Returned it She Does Now

By
Andy Corbley
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Strangers around the country are rewarding a Michigan woman for her honesty after turning in nearly $15,000 cash to the police that she found at a gas station.

It turned out to be the contributions of guests to a pair of newlyweds, who were more than overwhelmed by her integrity.

65-year-old Dianne Gordon has been walking 2.7 miles to and from her job behidn a deli counter every day since her Jeep broke down and she didn’t have enough money to fix it. One day she decided to stop at a gas station for a snack and noticed a plastic bag. Inside there was a lot of money; turning it around there were some greeting cards, and a lot more money.

Just doing what she “was taught to do” the grandmother of two called the police, who sent an officer to take custody of the sum.

Gordon could have walked into any dealership in the state and driven something off the lot that day, but new because the money wasn’t hers, it wasn’t correct to take it.

“If it doesn’t belong to you, you don’t keep it,” she told the Washington Post. “I didn’t do anything special. All I did was return something that didn’t belong to me.”

Police Chief Dan Keller of the White Lake Township Police Department telephoned Gordon later that day to tell her they had used the information on the cards inside the bag to track down the owners. The happy couple was “overwhelmed” by Gordon’s honesty, as was Keller’s wife Stacy Connell.

“As a police officer’s wife, I typically hear the bad things, so this was obviously heartwarming,” said Connell. “I was hoping we could help her get a car, since she could have walked into any dealership and used that money.”

Connell set up a GoFundMe, and in just 6 days it raised four times as much money from people wanting to reward Gordon’s act of selflessness as she had found in the sealed bag that morning.

OTHER GOFUNDME PICK-ME-UPS: Delta Flight Attendant Consoles Fearful Passenger and Photo Goes Viral

Grateful for the money and the words of encouragement from all the contributors, who celebrated with comments like “there are still good people in the world,” Gordon said she was stunned by the outpouring of generosity, which at the time of publishing, raised $82,000 and then closed.

On February 8th, Friends of Dianne wrote: “Dianne officially signed for her new Jeep Compass yesterday at Szott M-59 in White Lake Township. Along with the new car, she also got an extended warranty, maintenance, insurance, and plates/tabs.”

MORE STORIES OF HONESTY: Family Praised for Their Honesty After Finding and Returning Bags Containing $1Million in Cash

There was also an inspection done at her home to evaluate some much-needed repairs that will be done very soon.

It’s a beautiful story that shows more often than not, honesty pays.

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Dutch Woman Smashes a World Record Unbroken For 41 Years–While Her Home Audience Cheers

By
Andy Corbley
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Femke Bol breaking the record - retrieved from Twitter
Femke Bol breaking the record – retrieved from Twitter

A 41-year-old world record in women’s track and field stands no longer after a young Dutch speed demon smashed it in front of her home crowd.

Femke Bol took off at the starting pistol at the Dutch Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, and completed a 400-meter sprint in 49.26 seconds, beating Jarmila Kratochvílová’s world record of 49.59 seconds set in 1982.

“It was because of all the fans here that I ran this record,” said the 22-year-old Olympic bronze medalist.

“Never have I ever seen that many people here. When I crossed the line, I knew that the record was mine because of the noise that the crowd made.”

Kratochvílová’s record was the longest-standing record in track and the second oldest in track and field.

Bol also set a world record for the best indoor 500-meter of 1:05.63 in Boston in her first race of this season. During the last Summer Olympics, she collected a bronze medal in the 400-meter hurdles.

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“A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.” – George Bernard Shaw

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.” – George Bernard Shaw

Photo by: Dollar Gill

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MDMA and Psilocybin-Assised Psychotherapy Approved in Australia for Treatment-Resistant Depression and PTSD

By
Andy Corbley
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A picture of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in progress at MAPS’ a Charleston Treatment Center. credit MAPS.org.
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in progress at a Charleston treatment center – credit MAPS.org

Australia’s version of the FDA surprised the nation in early February when they announced that psilocybin and MDMA would be considered medicines, and prescribable by psychiatrists for various mental health disorders by July.

Psilocybin, the psychoactive component in psychedelic mushrooms, and MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, are two of the most effective treatments for dangerous and persistent mental health disorders like treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.

The current illegality of these substances in most countries makes them difficult to study in large trials, but small ones have been universally successful.

For psilocybin, Johns Hopkins University found it reduced symptoms of depression by 71% when combined with assisted psychotherapy, and prevented any return in symptoms in 54% of trial participants.

In 2021, the Department of Neurology at UC San Francisco also concluded a phase III trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for victims of PTSD and found it improved symptoms by 88%, and smashed the FDA criteria for safe and effective.

The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said it considered several thousands of written public submissions before making its decision.

MORE PSYCHEDELICS NEWS: Psychedelics Company Gets Green Light for PTSD Therapy Study Using MDMA in Canada

“The number of such submissions is a reasonable indicator of the scope and gravity of the issues for individual and public health,” it said in a statement. “The submissions confirm the need for greater access to alternative treatments for patients with persistent mental health conditions where currently available treatments have not been effective.”

“Prescribing will be limited to psychiatrists, given their specialized qualifications and expertise to diagnose and treat patients with serious mental health conditions.”

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First of Its Kind Discovery in Mali: Vast Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Gas

By
Andy Corbley
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The Bourakébougou pilot hydrogen unit - credit Petroma, released
The Bourakébougou pilot hydrogen unit – credit Petroma, released

In the beautiful West African country of Mali, a huge discovery has a town drawing a flammable gas from the earth that produces loads of electricity without CO2 emissions.

The town called Bourakébougou was prospected by Malian energy entrepreneur Aliou Diallo, who believed the mysterious gas which in the daytime shone with a blue color like sparkling ocean water, and at night like golden dust, could represent a fortune.

In 2012, he recruited Chapman Petroleum to determine what the gas was. It was 98% hydrogen. Months later, Diallo’s firm Petroma had installed a pilot unit to turn the gas into electricity that produced water as an exhaust product, and transformed the village into one with reliable, plentiful electricity.

In the decade since, belief that a potential inexhaustible natural energy source that’s zero emissions saw scientists and energy companies fly into action, scouring academia and the world for more information on underground hydrogen reservoirs

In 2018, a science team published a paper on the Bourakébougou hydrogen well, which concluded from evidence obtained from a dozen exploratory wells in the vicinity that it was “possible to confirm the presence of an extensive hydrogen field featuring at least five stacked reservoir intervals containing significant hydrogen that cover an estimated area well superior to 8 km in diameter.”

Furthermore, the study found that the current estimate of its exploitation price is much cheaper than manufactured hydrogen, either from fossil fuels or from electrolysis.

Cratons and cash

It was long believed, a feature in Science Magazine details, that hydrogen gas reservoirs were extremely rare. It’s rare to find them in places where energy companies drill for oil and natural gas, true, but if one knows where to look, they’re more common.

One such place are Earth’s “cratons,” the oldest and stablest parts of the tectonic plates. Some continents have more than one craton, others like the North American craton, are much larger and so cover most of the continent.

Olivine, a mineral believed to create hydrogen gas underground CC 2.0. דקי

Unlike oil and gas which need thousands of years to form from decomposing organic matter, hydrogen gas is constantly being made underground as water interacts with iron minerals at high pressures and temperatures.

Among these iron minerals is olivine, which through a chemical reaction called serpentinization, steals an oxygen molecule from water percolating down from Earth’s surface to transform olivine into serpentinite, and the water into hydrogen gas.

MORE HYDROGEN NEWS: Researchers Can Now Make Clean Hydrogen Fuel By Pulling it Directly From Seawater—No Filtering Required

Deposits of olivine are richest in an underground, cratonic feature called a “greenbelt.” It’s thought that these greenbelts, because of their high concentration of olivine, act as Earth’s hydrogen gas engine.

Hydrogen fuel has huge potential to transition off fossil fuels as it’s the best currently perceived alternative for diesel or kerosene-based transport such as semi-trucks, jet aircraft, and cargo ships.

MORE ON ENERGY: World’s First 100% Hydrogen-Powered Trains Now Running Regional Service in Germany to Replace Diesel

Currently, the Malian wells could produce hydrogen gas at 50 cents per kilo, one-tenth of the cost of hydrogen created through electrolysis with solar, wind, geothermal, or other green energies.

Ian Munro, CEO of Helios Aragon, a startup pursuing hydrogen in the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees, told Science his break-even costs might end up between 50 and 70 cents, adding that would revolutionize energy production.

As for Diallo, he started a new company called Hydroma, which now produces electricity for the area via the hydrogen reservoir, and is looking into using it as a means to create green hydrogen via electrolysis.

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Amazing Footage Shows Birth of ‘Precious’ Rare Twin Tiger Cubs at UK Zoo

By
Andy Corbley
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- SWNS, Steve Chatterly.
– SWNS, Steve Chatterley.

Secret cameras have captured the amazing moment two incredibly rare tiger cubs were born at a UK zoo. The tiny twins arrived at Chester Zoo on January 7th to proud first-time parents, tiger mom Kasarna and her partner Dash.

The births have been heralded as a “major boost for the conservation of these incredible animals”, as the Sumatran tiger sub-species is currently Critically-Endangered.

Zookeepers installed covert cameras in the tiger enclosure to capture the births which also filmed Kasarna mothering the cubs. It’s not clear what sex the newborns are—zookeepers don’t feel like checking under Kasarna’s watchful gaze.

“We’ve been closely monitoring Kasarna on our CCTV cameras as she gets to grips with motherhood and her first litter of cubs,” said Dave Hall, Carnivore Team Manager at Chester Zoo. “It’s a real privilege and incredibly special to watch.”

“She’s a great mom and is being very attentive to her new infants, keeping them snuggled up in the den and feeding them every few hours.”

MORE BIG CATS: Two Zoos, Two Sets of Big Cat Twins: Welcoming the Newborn Cubs in Nashville and Oklahoma

There are only 350 Sumatran tigers in the wild and the only surviving population lives in the Indonesian islands of Sunda.

“One day, the pair will hopefully go on to themselves make a vital contribution to the endangered species breeding program, which is now playing a critical role in preventing these majestic animals from becoming extinct,” said Hall.

MORE ZOO NEWS: Critically Endangered Dancing Lemur Born in UK is ‘Landmark Moment for Species’ After Parents Sent From US Zoo

“The arrival of the cubs is a real testament to the expertise and scientific work of our teams who, only last year, paired up a female tigress, Kasarna, with a male Sumatran tiger, named Dash,” said Mike Jordan, Director of Animals and Plants at the zoo.

“They were coupled together based on their genetic make-up, age, and character and this news is cause for real celebration among the global conservation community.”

WATCH momma tiger with her new cubs… 

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“There’s poetry, wonder, and meaning, even in death.” – Steam Punk protagonist, Castle

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Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “There’s poetry, wonder, and meaning, even in death.” – Steam Punk Protagonist, Castle (TV Series)

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

Astronomers Observe 2 Neutron Stars Colliding and the Extreme Reaction ‘Defies All Expectations’

By
Andy Corbley
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Artists rendition of two neutron stars colliding - CC University of Warwick/ Mark Garlick
Artists rendition of two neutron stars colliding – CC University of Warwick/ Mark Garlick

Astronomers just finished putting into words the first observation of a “kilonova,” or the merger of two neutron stars.

The scientists described it as the “perfect explosion” as it was utterly spherical, and brighter than a billion suns. After the two heavy stars merged, for a few moments they formed a massive neutron star, after which they collapsed into a black hole.

A kilonova is a very unique event in the galaxy since few things are as materially dense as a neutron star. There are plenty of objects more massive—the two neutron stars were only a combined 2.7 times the mass of the sun, but no other heavenly bodies can pack so much matter into so small a space.

In the middle of the merger, there could be fundamental physics that astronomers don’t understand yet. For example, the magnetic field formed around it is the strongest recorded in the universe, and so strong it can distort the structure of atoms.

“It is a perfect explosion in several ways. It is beautiful, both aesthetically, in the simplicity of the shape, and in its physical significance,” said astrophysicist Albert Sneppen of the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

“This is fundamentally astonishing, and an exciting challenge for any theoreticians and numerical simulations,” Sneppen told the Guardian. “The game is on.”

MORE FROM SPACE: Incredible 3D Rendering from Jupiter Spacecraft Reveals “Frosted Cupcake” Clouds

Located in a galaxy called NGC 4993 found in the constellation Hydra, about 150,000 light-years from Earth, the two neutron stars began their life as normal stars orbiting each other billions of years ago. Neutron stars are essentially a star “heart” leftover from a supernova explosion. White, dense, small, and spinning incredibly fast, they are fascinating phenomena.

“Given the extreme nature of the physical conditions, with densities greater than an atomic nucleus, temperatures of Billions of degrees, and magnetic fields strong enough to distort the shapes of atoms, there may well be fundamental physics here that we don’t understand yet,” Cosmic Dawn Center astrophysicist and study co-author Darach Watson told the Guardian.

MORE FROM ASTRONOMY: Ringed Planet That Defies Known Physics Discovered in Outer Reaches of Our Solar System

Their merger was witnessed by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Big Telescope in the Atacama Desert, Chile, in 2017. The outer parts of the new stars were torn and stretched into long thin streamers which probably launched gold, uranium, arsenic, platinum, and other rare elements into the universe.

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North America’s Only Native Stork Poised to Fly off the Endangered Species List

By
Andy Corbley
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Wood stork - Credit Mary Ellen Urbanski CC 2.0.
Wood stork – Credit Mary Ellen Urbanski CC 2.0.

After teetering on the edge of extinction almost 50 years ago, the wood stork is now widespread across the southeastern US, and is preparing a flight off the Endangered Species List (ESL).

It’s all in a day’s work for the ESL, the world’s most successful conservation program in history, and the only stork native to North America is just the most recent beneficiary.

The wood stork faced extinction when listed in 1984 under the Endangered Species Act. The population had decreased from 20,000 nesting pairs to less than 5,000 pairs, primarily nesting in south Florida’s Everglades and Big Cypress ecosystems.

The recovery program worked to restore and protect the ecosystems which the four-and-a-half-foot-tall bird calls home.

Today, the wood stork breeding population has doubled to 10,000 or more nesting pairs and increased its range, including the coastal plains of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. These long-legged wading birds more than tripled their number of nesting colonies from 29 to 99 in their expanded range.

US Fish and Wildlife explained they’ve adapted to new nesting areas, moving north into coastal salt marshes, old, flooded rice fields, floodplain forest wetlands, and human-created wetlands.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will take comments on the proposal through April 17th, and even if it is delisted, it would remain a protected species under other legislation such as the Migratory Bird treaty.

MORE ENDANGERED SPECIES NEWS: After Facing Extinction, This Midwestern Bird is Now Soaring Off Endangered Species List

The scale-headed wader, not-so-affectionately-termed a “flinthead,” hunts fish, frogs, and crustaceans in marshes, swamps, and rivers, and is actually listed globally by the IUCN as a species of Least Concern, due to its range extending across almost the entire South American continent east of the Andes.

“The wood stork is recovering as a result of protecting its habitat at a large scale,” said Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Shannon Estenoz. “This iconic species has rebounded because dedicated partners in the Southeast have worked tirelessly to restore ecosystems, such as the Everglades, that support it.”

HONK For Joy At This Unique Bird’s Recovery On Social Media… 

Third Case of HIV Being Cured Confirmed 10 Years After Treatment of the ‘Düsseldorf Patient’

By
Andy Corbley
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Dusseldorf University Hospital - credit duesseldorf-health.de
Dusseldorf University Hospital – credit duesseldorf-health.de

The “Düsseldorf Patient”, a man now aged 53, is just the third person worldwide to have been completely cured of HIV via stem cell transplantation.

As in the case of the other two patients, the so-called “Berlin Patient” and “London Patient,” the transplantation was undertaken to treat an acute blood disease, which had developed in addition to the HIV infection.

The Düsseldorf Patient received a stem cell transplant used to treat leukemia in 2013 and has shown persistent suppression of HIV-1 ever since, including during the last 4 years after the patient stopped taking anti-retroviral medication.

“I still remember very well the sentence from my family doctor: ‘don’t take it so hard,'” the Düsseldorf Patient, who had leukemia as well as HIV-1, said in a statement. “‘We will experience together that HIV can be cured!’ At the time, I dismissed the statement.”

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a procedure used to treat certain cancers, such as leukemia, by transferring immature blood cells from a donor to repopulate the bone marrow of the recipient.

Scientists now understand that individuals with two copies of the Δ32 mutation in the gene for the HIV-1 co-receptor CCR5; are resistant to HIV-1 infection. The two previous cases of both the London patient and the Berlin patient involved receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor with these unique mutations.

Björn-Erik Jensen, a specialist in infectious diseases at Düsseldorf University Hospital, lead the treatment and subsequent research, revealed today in a peer-reviewed study in Nature.

MORE CURES: ‘Miracle’ Drug Has Young Girl Running Dancing and Swimming Again Despite Cystic Fibrosis

The patient was diagnosed as having acute myeloid leukemia and proceeded to undergo transplantation of stem cells from a female donor in 2013, followed by chemotherapy and infusions of donor lymphocytes.

After the transplantation, anti-retroviral therapy was continued, but HIV was undetectable in the patient’s blood cells. Anti-retroviral therapy was suspended in November 2018 with the patient’s informed consent, almost 6 years after the stem cell transplantation, to determine whether the virus persisted in the patient.

MORE HIV NEWS: Woman Becomes ‘Natural Suppressor’ of HIV as Her Body Completely Clears the Disease – Doctors Find Only Antibodies

MORE HIV NEWS: Fourth Patient Seemingly Cured of HIV Through Wild Coincidence

“I very much hope that these doctors will now get even more attention for their work,” said the patient. “I have now decided to give up some of my private life to support research fundraising. And of course, it will also stay very important for me to fight the stigmatization of HIV with my story.”

The authors conclude that although HSCT remains a high-risk procedure that is at present an option only for some people living with both HIV-1 and hematological cancers, these results may inform future strategies for achieving long-term remission of HIV-1.

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U.S. Agency Wants Offshore Oil Companies to Look for Shipwrecks Before They Drill

By
Andy Corbley
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Remains of the whaling ship Industry, found by an offshore oil producer Credit NOAA
Remains of the whaling ship Industry, found by an offshore oil producer Credit NOAA

As part of existing requirements for offshore energy production, 600 shipwrecks have been found in the Gulf of Mexico alone by oil and gas producers, however scientists and historians reckon this number is just a fraction of how many are actually out there.

A new proposal to the Federal Register by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management would obligate offshore energy companies to conduct maritime archaeological surveys before undertaking any operations that would disturb the seafloor off the continental shelf.

In 2011, an unnamed energy company spotted a shipwreck near its operations which was excavated last year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin. (NOAA). It turned out to be the 207-year-old whaling ship Industry 

The Boston-built Brig was associated with freed-slave and maritime entrepreneur Paul Cuffe, and hunted whales across the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico for 20 years. It was lost when a strong storm snapped its masts and opened its hull to the sea on May 26, 1836.

Current methods used to preserve undiscovered shipwrecks involve predicting where they could be found based on historic reports in newspapers and state records, as well as weather patterns and historic shipping lanes, but scientists now believe it’s a method that notably undercounts how many ships are actually down there.

MORE GULF NEWS: Watch 2,200 Cold-Stunned Turtles Being Released by Volunteers Back Into the Gulf

Furthermore, oil and gas companies are currently only required to conduct a survey when they have “reason to believe” that a shipwreck may be present in their area of operations.

“By improving our reporting requirements, we can increase the likelihood of identifying these important resources before they are inadvertently damaged by an [oil or gas] operator and help ensure compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act,” James Kendall, BOEM Gulf of Mexico regional director, told Science.

MORE FROM REGULATION: 4 Tuna Species Recovered After Decade of Fishing Quotas–With Albacore in Stores Being Truly Sustainable

The new proposal, currently open for public comment, puts oil, gas, and offshore wind all on the same page for survey requirements. Typically working beyond 5.5 kilometers from the shore, these installations must be preceded by an archaeological survey of the area before they begin construction.

Public comment will carry on until mid-April.

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5,000 Year-Old Tavern Found in Iraq

By
Andy Corbley
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A drone photo of Trench 6 at Lagash - Lagash Archaeology Project
A drone photo of Trench 6 at Lagash – Lagash Archaeology Project

It doesn’t get much older than Sumeria, but even the modern concept of going out to eat was already established 1,000 years before the Great Pyramids were built.

In the ancient Near Eastern city-state of Lagash, the foundations of a tavern were recently found by archaeologists that included an open-air sitting area, and a kitchen complete with a clay oven, clay chiller, and ancient crockery.

One of the oldest areas in Ancient Mesopotamia, Lagash was already inhabited in the fifth millennium BCE. Today it’s located on a mound 4,000 yards in length and 2,000 yards in width.

A joint project of the Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum, Cambridge University and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in Baghdad has renewed work at this critically important settlement as recently as 2019.

Using new magnetometry techniques and sedimentary analysis, the renewed work is taking a different approach to archaeology compared to past excavations of the city.

“It’s not like old-time archaeology in Iraq,” says Zaid Alrawi, project manager for the Lagash project at the Penn Museum, in the statement. “We’re not going after big mounds expecting to find an old temple. We use our techniques and then, based on scientific priority, go after what we think will yield important information to close knowledge gaps in the field.”

The Lagash Mound – Lagash Archaeology Project

According to established records of the procession of Mesopotamian city-states, Lagash might be the fourth such large important settlement in the area, following Eridu the first city, Uruk, and Ur.

MORE FROM THE NEAR EAST: Stunning Ancient Artwork Found at Site Sacked by ISIS: Assyrian Depictions Not Seen For 2,600 Years–LOOK

Among the tavern’s contents were conical eating dishes which contained the remains of fish, a staple among ancient Mesopotamian settlements, and other storage jars that contained food.

It goes to show, according to the archaeologists, that the city wasn’t simply divided into the priestly and royal strata, and the lower classes, but rather contained a middle class as well who could afford to eat out as it were.

MORE FROM ANCIENT HISTORY: Ancient Cave Markings Finally Decoded By Amateur Scientist–A Calendar of When Animals Mated 20,000 Years Ago

“The fact that you have a public gathering place where people can sit down and have a pint and have their fish stew, they’re not laboring under the tyranny of kings,” says Reed Goodman, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, to CNN. “Right there, there is already something that is giving us a much more colorful history of the city.”

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“The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual.” – Helen Keller (It’s Presidents’ Day)

By
Good News Network
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Quote of the Day: “The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual.” – Helen Keller (It’s Presidents’ Day)

Photo by: Harini Rath, Mount Rushmore, CC BY-SA 4.0

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

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